To the editor:
Lawrence, Kan., along with sister cities in Germany and Japan, could initiate a "Sister Cities Campaign" to unite the Europeans, the Japanese, the Americans and the rest of the world in a global effort to tackle global warming together as an international team.
The Ministry of the Environment of Japan has launched a national campaign called "Team Minus 6 Percent" to achieve Japan's greenhouse gas reduction target of 6 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. The concept is that all Japanese people should work together as a team to tackle global warming, and I believe this effort should be internationalized and that Lawrence and her sister cities could collaborate to internationalize the movement.
The campaign should, as the campaign in Japan does, call on people to take basic actions like wearing lighter clothing during summer and setting air conditioner thermostats higher, wearing heavier clothing in winter and setting furnace thermostats lower, by carpooling and by eliminating unnecessary auto driving whenever possible and by unplugging any power sapping devices not being used on a daily basis.
In Japan, a no-tie and no-jacket fashion for business wear was nicknamed "Cool Biz," and Prime Minister Koizumi is setting the example by dressing lightly himself.
The Ministry in Japan has set up a campaign Web site (www.team-6.jp) for people to register on the "team" and to exchange and provide information in Japanese. Lawrence could assign a Webmaster to do the same in English and our sister city in Germany could do likewise in the German language.
Les Blevins,
Lawrence
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Jamesaust (anonymous) says…
I do not often agree with the substance of the author's letters, although I have long wondered why LJW does not just allow him a biweekly editorial.
The author is right on however about the Cool Biz phenomena in Japan. Since its faddish intro it is cited as the prime cause of the most significant increase in retail sales for many years. The Japanese, unlike Americans, still retain the '50s-style need to have businesspeople dress much more formally.
That said, I think Americans are sufficiently along this path to not need any additional summertime adjustment. There are things more important that focusing only upon energy consumption. Some of the most extreme adoptees of this 'lighter clothing' phenomena appear to me to arrive at work in the very same clothes that they slept in the night before.
The opposite is more true: one of the few things I really dred about winter are the overheated buildings, which apparently are created so that people may wear tropical-weight clothing to the beach ... err... to work. On many an occasion I have heard someone complaining in mid-January about how chilly it was inside (no doubt wearing some see-through camisole) while I am almost in a sweat and I bite my tongue and avoid saying something like, "Put some clothes on!! The make these things. I think they're called .. urrr....sweaters. All the stores have them."