Air Date: Week of January 26, 2007

Living on Earth dips into the mailbag to hear from listeners.

Transcript

[MUSIC: LETTERS THEME]

CURWOOD: It’s time to hear from you, our listeners. We got a lot of response to our recent story about Al Gore and the people who are volunteering to bring his power point presentation about global warming into their local communities. Several people wanted to know how they could become a volunteer. But Robin Leech who catches us on WAMC in Albany, New York is afraid that’s just preaching to the choir. “What’s been done to get Gore’s movie translated into Chinese,” Mr. Leech writes, “or into the hands of the industrial giants of China and India?”

A number of you got in touch about our interview with journalist Matthew Power about the massive Philippine garbage dump known as Payatas, and the people who make their living picking recyclables out of the trash. Tim Jacobson, who listens to us on KUNC in Greeley, Colorado used to live in Manila, and has been to the dump. And he took us to task for failing to discuss the cost to human life. Mortality among the children of Payatas is over 30%, Mr. Jacobson writes, and adults rarely live beyond 35. “It is a tragedy,” he says, “that trickle down economics leave the poorest of the people paying the greatest price for the waste of society.”

But KUOW listener Gerald Alexander from Seattle said he was inspired by the story and how the, “modest efforts of individual entrepreneurs can in their collective results have a significant effect on cleaning up their corner of the world.”

Well if we inspire you, or not, let us know about it. Call our listener line anytime at 800-218-9988. That's 800-218-99-88. Or write to us at 20 Holland Street, Somerville, Massachusetts, 02144. Our e-mail address is letters at loe dot org. Once again, letters at loe dot org. And you can visit our web page at Living on Earth dot org where you can hear us anytime. That's Living on Earth dot o-r-g.

[MUSIC: LETTERS THEME]