Consider this, please

There’s a country that contains about four percent of the world's population. Its people live pretty well, on average, and account for roughly 13 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas (GHG) that's primarily responsible for climate change. (We're not accounting for the carbon footprint of the imported goods they consume.) So, in 2022, this country's government passed legislation that, according to models, would reduce its GHG emissions a whopping 40 percent by 2030 – that is, compared to the peak level emitted in 2005. They’d already made it halfway to the 40 percent goal over the past 17 years, taking advantage of low-hanging-fruit solutions such as higher gas mileage standards for vehicles and the adoption of LED lighting, and now they're ready to achieve the remaining reductions in only eight years. Climate change is an existential crisis, the nation's leaders proclaim. Future generations will judge us sternly if we don't take decisive action.    

​For social, political and economic reasons too numerous and, frankly, boring to enumerate, the new climate legislation – inanely dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act – depends almost entirely on subsidies. There are no carbon taxes, which would dissuade people and corporations from burning the fossil fuels that produce GHG emissions. Instead, a great, green giveaway has been instituted: tax breaks and tax rebates and hundreds of billions in federal funding  for all things clean and renewable. It's like those wacky 1970s TV commercials for the discount electronics store Crazy Eddie, but now it's Crazy Green Eddie and the prices are INSAAANE! Well, not quite, but maybe low enough to make your average Joe and Josephina consider an electric car and solar panels.

This plucky country – yes, it's our United States of America – is now running a very big experiment. Can we achieve such a massive undertaking, a revolution within our energy sector, with a painless all-carrot and no-stick approach? And will this strategy become a workable template for other countries? Some say yes, some say no, some say it depends. Others point out that it's a planetary problem requiring a planetary solution, and that we should, once more, get over ourselves. But, at any rate, the deed is done. There will be no new U.S. climate legislation for a while, so it's wait and see.  

​But wait for how long? If our green gambit isn't producing the 2.5 percent per year reduction in GHG emissions that models project, at some point we'll need to unleash the stick alongside the carrot. We'll need to levy taxes and fees to raise the price of behaviors that propel climate change. So, when exactly do we admit failure – a hard thing to do, in politics and life – and adopt stronger steps to help keep global temperature increases in the industrial era below 2.5 or 2 degrees Celsius? (Temps are currently at 1.2 degrees above pre-industrial levels and soaring; sorry, the 1.5 degree goal is utter fantasy.) 

Of course, we have to give the legislation a little time, a fair chance to succeed. On the other hand, we can't go all the way to 2030 if yearly reductions are lacking. Yes, there may be a learning curve, a period of adjustment, and yes, technocrats will always urge a tweak to this subsidy and a twerk to that rebate, but the Earth's physical systems don't care one fig for our flailings. There's too much at stake to be prideful. If this "really big green sale" attempt at lessening our contribution to a gathering global disaster isn't sufficient – and, alas, it probably won’t be – then we have to be brave enough to admit it.  

So, I say, let's give it three years and a few months. It'll be the spring of 2026, with mid-term elections on the horizon. There's a decent chance that Congress and the presidency will be controlled by Democrats. At that juncture, we may be gifted one last, blessed chance to get serious, really serious about climate change. Now, if denialist Republicans are in control, it's "Katy bar the door!" and let's hope the rest of the world are doing better than us.     

I like wine – red, especially. A nice Bordeaux at the end of the week is pure pleasure. I also enjoy the ritual of opening the wine bottle with an old-fashioned corkscrew. Ceremonially, I spiral the curvy metal thingy into the firm but forgiving body of the cork. Twist, twist, twist, pull and pop! Out it comes, a bit scraggly from the puncture, red-stained at the butt end and trailing wine fumes. It’s a rare cork that doesn’t have some version of the wine’s name and logo printed upon it. Finally, I give the near-weightless cylinder a sniff, then roll it, magnifique, onto the table.  

A pox, by the way, on synthetic (polyethylene) corks, as well as the dreaded metal screw-top. Not only do these devices violate centuries of wine tradition – tradition! – but they have higher carbon toeprints than a real cork made from the peeled-off bark of the cork oak tree. That harvesting process, captured in this video, amazingly does not hurt the tree. 

Over the years, I’ve collected hundreds of wine corks in plastic Talenti ice cream jars. The other day, while cleaning out the pantry, I decided to recycle those corks (I’ll keep the Talenti jars, which are better than Tupperware). Completing said eco-task took a bit more effort than expected. And cue Kermit the Frog singing, “It’s not easy being green…”

An InterWeb search revealed corkclub.com, sponsored by WidgetCo. They don’t actually make widgets, whatever they are, but a bunch of cork products, and they promise to recycle the corks you ship to them (your dime) and donate two cents per cork to a non-profit protecting oceans and forests. It sounded nice, if unverifiable, but I didn’t feel like packing a box and going to the post office, or paying shipment. So, Google, Google, I found the good folks at ReCORK, who set up collection sites at businesses, then divert the popped corks to companies like WidgetCo that make cork boards, cork flooring, funky shoes, and coasters.  

ReCORK’s website identified Social Wines in South Boston as a partner; I called the store and was told otherwise. “We used to do it with ReCORK,” said a friendly young lady. “I don’t know what happened to them.” Whatever, back to the digital data mine. A group called Cork Reharvest partners with Whole Foods. Hence, I called a few Whole Paychecks (ha ha) and discovered that the Amazon subsidiary does, indeed, recycle corks, but only at stores that sell wine. I found one, in nearby Cambridge. It was raining, so I drove there – a carbon expenditure, I know, if I weren't driving an electric car powered by solar energy.  

The hipster at the customer service desk took my 140 corks (14 per Talenti jar). “It’s a great thing,” he enthused. According to Cork Reharvest, 13 billion natural corks are produced each year, and now 140 bad-boys were off the mean streets. Planet saved! I patted myself on the back (literally, I have long arms) as I purchased two new bottles of wine, organic marmalade and a package of puffy pita from New Jersey that, like most American pita, will be meh. All those things, of course, were shipped to the store by ecologically friendly magic carpets.  

Why recycle wine corks? So what if they go into landfills, inhabit old jugs in basements and morph into oddball art projects? Global wine demand continues to escalate – my state of Massachusetts is fifth in the nation in per capita consumption – but recycled cork cannot be made into new wine corks because of bacterial concerns. The biodiverse, cork oak forests of southern Europe and northern Africa will live or die according to factors beyond recycling, such as development, desertification and efforts to eliminate pesky “cork taint” associated with natural cork.

I guess it comes down to this: recycling and reusing cork – as well as myriad other natural materials, from cotton pants to wooden corkscrews – may result in fewer things produced from plastic. (Even though, alas, plastic consumption is rising.) Plastic is basically oil, and oil companies are prime authors of our climate crisis. Moreover, plastic manufacturing emits high levels of carbon dioxide and toxic pollutants, and plastic waste is often dumped into the oceans. There it’s whittled down into microplastics ingested by marine life. These fragments get into your fish fillets. Bon appetit!  

On the ride home, however, a doubt wormed at me.

​Will my 140 corks really be recycled? I mean, hipster-guy was reassuring but it’s not like he’s going to escort them along the supply chain to the cork-crumbling machine. All it takes is one tired, ambivalent worker, not to mention one MAGA hat-wearing climate change denier who's mesmerized by FOX News and deeply resents wine-guzzling coastal elites, to toss them in the trash or into the general recycling stream and the next thing you know my corks are powering furnaces in India that make a popular sugarcane goo. That strange outcome from this excellent Bloomberg story about the dirty diversion of recyclable products.  
 
It's all about trust. I should put a cork in the paranoia, right?