'What are they thinking?' They're not.

I know not everyone surrounds themselves with as much environmental info as I do, but I've been barraged the last few days by two stunningly ignorant comments, and one that just made me want to strangle someone.

The first, a discussion about the serving options for a recent birthday party. We were going to get about 50 inexpensive plates (not ceramic, but you know, actual non-throwaway plates) so they could be used for all such parties in our family. Someone was trying to dissuade us in favor of plastic due to the work of cleaning them. We said we didn't want to keep generating all that one-time-use garbage, buying plastic plates every time there was a get-together, throwing more crap away. The answer, "But they're already made."

The second came while talking to someone about the floating mass of platic and garbage in the Pacific north of Hawaii (I mistakenly mentioned it was the size of Texas. It's actually twice that.). Their solution, "You'd think they could figure out a way to burn it."

The one that made my hands clench hungrily was when a condo organization's board member dismissively waved off the assertion that leaving every front and back door light on all night (which she'd just suggested for security's sake) would waste a lot of energy and add to the growing amount of light pollution in the area. "Nobody cares about that." Tool.

I tend to believe it's only an information problem that stands in the way of solving most of our problems, that if we can just inform most people about the effects of certain actions, they'll come around. But it's more than that, isn't it? People need to be able to think past the very next thought in their heads, and if they don't do that habitually, who the hell has the time to train them?