I'm sorry, but this was a pretty lazy answer. Päster does a good job of deflecting the question of the relative merits of drinking any prepackaged beverage, but then falls down when answering the real question (which was made-up...right?) about aluminum or plastic.

That aluminum is recycled at about twice the rate as PET is a nice statistic to know, but it not entirely germane to the point. First question is, what is the likelihood of your drinking from a recycled PET bottle versus an aluminum can? The statistic that was bandied about many years ago was that aluminum cans are almost universally made from non-virgin materials, while PET bottles are usually made from virgin stock. That trend may have changed, but I doubt it given the relative cost differentials between the respective virgin and recycled materials.

The second question is what happens when you toss that can or bottle into the recycling bin. I suspect that if you're equally conscientious about recycling your aluminum and PET containers, the former has a much better chance of being recycled into another consumer product than the latter. What's ratio of recycled PET bottles actually makes it into a fleece sweater versus filler for asphalt? I suspect the correct answer is pretty low. And then what about the fate of that fleece sweater...can it be recycled properly (other than a second-hand shop)? The block of recycled aluminum is virtually indistinguishable from that of a virgin stock, which means it can be recycled indefinitely. That is a very different proposition than PET, or for that mater, any plastic stock.

The third question is what are the down-stream economies like for aluminum recycling versus PET? I don't just mean to ask where are the recycling facilities, but who makes money off of the process. The last few US cities I lived in had specific recycling programs for both waste streams, but they made money off of the aluminum and lost it on the PET. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems that the recycling of PET is a byproduct of its prevalence and not for a clear economic rationale.

Maybe there is a fourth question about the relative spoil rates for PET and aluminum packaged products. Carbonated beverages last a lot longer in aluminum or glass than they will in PET, so maybe PET soda has a higher spoil rate than aluminum.

Personally, I suspect that you won't find a clear environmental leader among these two. It seems to me that aluminum is better, but that's more of an impression than a calculated fact. Perhaps if Pablo Päster was really intent on answering the question, he'd have come with with glass...

Welcome to Salon Pabo Päster. I hope your forthcoming essays and articles strive to not only teach us the numerical basis behind environmentally unsustainable practices but also show us how to overcome the emotional reasons behind them.

Judging from your debut, you have your work cut out for you.

In the case of bottled water, writing about how many tons of petroleum are needed to make the bottles carrying the product and how much more fuel is needed to get the water from source to destination is at best a phyrric exercise. Change a few nouns and a couple of verbs, and the topic isn't bottled water, it's the fleece sweaters we wear in the winter instead of wool, or the CDs and DVDs we buy instead of downloading, or the cokes we drink instead of making coolaid, or the restaurants we eat out at instead of cooking at home, or ... et cetera, cetera, ad nausium. It's an argument for the believers that lacks any emotional resonance. Any of these behavior patters certainly have an environmental consequence, but they also have an emotional reason behind them. Reciting just the bad, bad, bad numbers isn't going to make those underlying rationales disappear.

Most likely, you've already lost some readers who routinely buy bottled water--who wants to be made to feel guilty for something they feel is essential. But I'm sure you'll have plenty of opportunities to win them back.

Good luck, I hope you have a long career at Salon, and I really hope you take a different tack on your next column.

BTW, if this is truly "Ask" Pablo, you should print at least the name of the person writing the question. That makes it looks like you're actually answering a question and not pontificating to the unwashed masses.

I admit that I did read this week's installment, even if I did read the more entertaining letters first.

After six or seven weeks, I still feel absolutely no emotional involvement in this strip, no empathy with Kansas, and certainly no animus towards any other character. They, like me looking at them, are emotional blanks.

That seems to be the problem. Every other cartoon strip I read, or feel like reading, offers some sort of emotional in to the characters. Sometimes they are obvious, like Tom Tomorrow's snarky penguin, or Keith Knight's every-man, but usually it's just the fleeting glimpses of myself that spark my interest in what's going on. Even the occasionally banal cartoon penned by Carol Lay engenders some emotional connection, even if it's looking forward to something different next week.

Unfortunately Kansas O'Flaherty offers nothing of the sort. The strip is a sterile, frozen wasteland where no emotion can attach itself. Moreover, week after week, it's the same carbon copy of the tedium that was last weeks strip. Snooze!

Kansas O'Flaherty--hate her? Nahh, I close my eyes and she's gone.