Living the American Green

Oh GOD! Why is HE here?? Is he BACK?? Who would want to listen to HIM?

Today, that bastion of Liberal NewsSpeak, the New York Times, ran a story about how even the crazy conservationists were saying that, you know, maybe this whole oil spill thing might actually be able totally overblown and hey, maybe we can get this thing cleaned up after all!

The Gulf of Mexico Foundation, basically in the same tree-hugging love fest as GreenPeace, had this to say, as quoted in the NYT:

“The sky is not falling. We’ve certainly stepped in a hole and we’re going to have to work ourselves out of it, but it isn’t the end of the Gulf of Mexico.”

A realistic, but positive take on the whole kerfuffle!

The Times didn’t bother to mention that the group in question was directly connected to the offshore drilling industry, including the people who made the rig that caught on fire and started pouring out oil.  But, since Transocean, the company that owns the Deepwater Horizon rig (which rents the rigs to BP), is the paragon of virtue, we can only assume that their people are on point and that the Times was right to take them exactly at their word and not disclose anything more about them then that they were a “conservation organization”.  That is what we are assuming.  Settle down, you wild eyed Talking Points Memo hand-wringers.  (more…)

I guess Hanes has taken a hint from eTrade, and realized that it too can make exceedingly annoying commercials surrounding the fact that babies can’t talk, but we can MAKE THEM TALK with computers:

So what’s the message here?  If you don’t buy Hanes EcoSmart^® socks and/or undershirts, the children of the world (or your local mall) will descend upon you like Hitchcockian birds, wielding their Nerf Element EX-6 Action Kits or Longstrike CS-6 shooters.  Well thank you, Hanes.  Never have I felt so heartfelt about my environmental mission, so connected to future generations who will be taking up the tote-bag of progress once I give up my spirited eco-quest.  Or not.

Save this child and this sapling by buying more underwear

While I see the merit in buying 55% recycled socks over socks not made using old materials, I’m going to have to pull the good ‘ol LtAG greenwashing buzzer of bunk.  Take a jaunt around Hanes’ new online environmental site, “HanesGreen.com,” and judge for yourself.  But to me, this is yet another attempt by a gigantasaur company to make consumers think big business cares about the environment, and to get people to save the environment by consuming more.
But wait…maybe I am being to harsh! It seems that Hanes is giving out a free t-shirt if you buy 3 packages of Hanes green products!  And the t-shirt says “Earth” on it, so I can remind others what planet I helped save!

Come on, Hanes.  Think of how much shipping material, packaging, and fabric will be used in this promo that wouldn’t have used before.  Think of that ugly t-shirt which will never be worn by anyone past Earth Day 2010.  Think of the children, Hanes- just like you taught us.  But this time, think of the real children.

Remember the end of 2007?  Lo, those many years ago.  Even sitting president Shrubers came forward to tell us that Global Warming was probably happening, and might even be our fault.  Sure, we were all shocked that George “Oilz” Bush would go soft on us like that, but the country as a whole was starting to take notice.  Then came 2008, the great socialist take over, and everyone was pretty sure that we had fixed the whole climate thing once and for all, or at least had agreed to start working on it.

Well, here we are in 2010, and guess what we’re debating?  If climate change is real!  Yup, that’s right — do to a whole bunch of stupid stupid things done by the scientists side of the scientist v. loud people on the internet debate, (email gate, Coppenhagen’s dramatic fail) we’re back to having the “is this thing for real” discussion.

But this is odd: leading the charge for the “I’m dubious” crowd is a group of scientists this time: your friendly neighborhood Weathermen!   But wait, you might say, I thought all the scientists were sure that this thing was in the bag! Isn’t this what those point headed Ivory Tower intellectual ninnies have been saying since the 1950s?  Well, you would be right.  But these meteorologists — who are often completely wrong about what the weather is going to be doing three days from now — are sure that NO one could be doing it better then they are and that the long term picture is even cloudier then the weekend forecast.  Thus, De facto, QED and IED, Global Warming models are probably just taking the little mistakes the weathermen made with this years SNOWPOCOLYPSE and compounded it a few thousand times in making their extremist “we’re all going to die” claptrap.

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Well, this is new.

Apparently nervous about declining relevance, so much so that he was thrilled to take credit for a failed attempt at exploding underpants, Osama bin Laden has decided that he will be able to strike fear into the hearts of the West most effectively by warning them that their consumer habits and industrial practices would lead to severe global warming.

I don’t…even really know where to begin on this. I can’t tell whether to be incensed, confused, or really nervous of how this is going to be spun for political points among the American teabagging demographic. I can just hear the frothing sound-bites: “Obama’s new climate czar: Osama bin Laden!” “Climategate’s latest scam-artist: Osama bin Laden!” “If you don’t pump Drano into the nearest protected wetland the terrorists have won!”

Well, it’s either an embarrassment - a kind of freewheeling hopping from cause to cause, with no consistent message but “West bad!” as he  grasps to attach himself to issues that are already terrifying people without his assistance – or…

Or – it’s a brilliantly cynical tactic? Knowing full well that anything he says will instantly polarize, not to mention be instinctively discredited by those who hate him, what could be more nefarious than to drive the crazed extremist fringe to rail against global warming – thereby indelibly besmirching the already fraying global consensus and solidarity necessary to outmaneuver climate change?

Who’d have foreseen this plot twist: Osama bin Laden, eco-sabateur???

Scientists estimate that a full 73% of all blogs are people apologizing for not writing more in their blogs.

In that sense, I feel as though I am tapping into one of the great sentiments of our generation when I apologize to you (my mostly imaginary readers) for not spending more time ruthlessly stroking my own ego by capturing loose thoughts in blog form.

I have been most fortunate to spend the last 6 months or so hustling for a political candidate.   In fact, one of the only times this space had anything new and interesting recently was when I shared some of the cool work that Mark had dreamed up.

As of now, Mark’s run for City Council continues, despite the setback of losing the democratic primary.  In the mean time, I have taken a small step back from the madness of the primary election, and am trying to restart other aspects of my life to run parallel to the campaign in the general.  It is with this in mind that I hope to return to posting here.

My return to the sphere of eco-writing actually occurred last week, with a huge assist from my friend Tim over at Ecopolitology.  You see, Tim got me press credentials to make it into the Clinton Global Initiative, a new york based meet and greet for anyone with good ideas to meet up with people with a chunk of cash.

My coverage, as the week began.

Day Two: Al Gore spits some truth about capitalism.  It has long been my theory that Capitalism ruins everything, but I would be willing to let bygones be bygones if introducing negative checks for pollution allowed the capitalists to solve the climate crisis.

Day Three: A groundwork for capitalism to do exactly what Gore wanted — the Carbon Disclosure Project!

Also on Day Three: I find myself in a room with Brad Pitt and William Jefferson Clinton.  I actually exchanged words with Brad, but Bill touched my shoulder.  I don’t know which is more exciting.  I am still in shock over this.  Also, there’s a cool project that grew out of CGI and that stars Brad Pitt.  A link to that is coming soon.

First of all, full disclaimer that “locowashing” is an awful portmanteau – almost (but not quite) as bad as “he-cession.”

This cracks me up though, it really does. Thanks to the apparent trendiness of bioregional eating, the ad wizards hailing from the four corners of corporate fantasyland have decided that it would be a tremendous idea to “go local” themselves. Unfortunately – there doesn’t appear to be a crystal-clear understanding of what exactly “local” entails…

A few examples, ranging from the mildly bile-inducing to the full-on, gut-bustingly, milk-snortingly hilarious:

The one that started the attention was most likely the Frito-Lay corporation, whose marketing campaign in early 2009 gently nudged attention from the quality of the product itself to the “local people and communities” who grow their potatoes. The logic is sound, I guess, in an infuriating know-it-all 6th-grader kind of way: “Potatoes have to be grown by somebody, don’t they? And those people are growing them somewhere, aren’t they? So the potatoes are local to the place where they’re grown. Right?” My favorite feature of this ad campaign? It would have to be the “Chip Tracker” gadget that let’s you pop in a zip code and learn exactly which ”local community” has painstakingly and lovingly grown your potato chips, hopefully taking long, picturesque siestas and relaxing with big pitchers of iced tea and 2.5 children per farmhouse.  (For the record: mass produced chips are not small-batch delicacies. It’s a neat gimmick to give you the location of where potatoes are sourced, but dollars to donuts the Chip Tracker kicks out the closest farm to your zip code without telling you anything about how millions of bags of chips are actually shipped and stored around the country.)

But it’s not just Frito-Lay. Far from it. 

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pure genius.

make sure you watch until time 4:33 for the full impact.

Did you guys see this? It's an actual prehistoric shark that was just found off Japan. You could say... a MEGA shark.

I’m still actively in recovery mode from the amazing experience that was Mega-Shark v. Giant Octopus.  This cautionary tale will surly be a clarion call to action for anyone fortunate enough to view this film, and I can see future generations referencing it as the warning that turned this country — dare I say it? — this world, around.

Meanwhile, the Republicans have finally come out with a counter to the Waxman-Markey bill.  I have not, as yet, managed to track down a version of the bill to read it myself, but – SURPRISE! - it looks like there’s some off shore drilling, some clean coal, and a lot of new Nuclear plants.  They even go out of the way to make sure they let the world know they are still don’t believe in this Global Warming hoopla.

Republicans stressed that their plan remained focused on energy, not climate change, emphasizing that the party remains unconvinced about the science of global warming.

Great, thanks guys.  Way to throw that in there.

The plan appears to be more based on making fun of the democrats for believing in Global Warming then it does addressing energy concerns, but I do think that taking Nuclear of the table is a bad idea for anyone thinking seriously about changing our way of thinking about energy.  Got to be a mix, I agree.  Wait… I don’t agree because this whole thing continues to feel like a barrel to stand on while haranguing the cap and trade system, and Global Warming in general.  Joe Barton used the Republican ask:

“Is it worth it to you to have the trillions and trillions of dollars and millions of jobs lost so that at best, 40 years from the average world temperature, whatever that number means, is two degrees Celsius less than it would be otherwise?,” he asked, citing an EPA analysis (ED. Incorrectly) of the Democratic bill. “I think the answer to that question is no.”

Good lord.  Refusal to view the entire thing holistically will always make any particular claim absurd.   The reason that Mega-Shark V. Giant Octopus was SO absurd is that they were trying to put a immediate terrifying face on what is going to be slow and unpredictable.  (ED. Ahh!  Relevance at last!) There is no Mega-Shark here to push people into that mode where something becomes unacceptable (and therefor necessitating action overnight.)   What we still don’t seem to be communicating on here is the idea that we want to prevent huge catastrophe, not react to it with an I Told You So afterwords.  I don’t want to be right… at all.  It’s the same, conceptually, with education: build jails instead of addressing the problems of schools and literacy early.  And it’s the same with health: fight reform, and in doing so fight back against preventative medicine.   Keep drilling and burning, cause… well, we can deal with it later?

I don’t think that the Republican party is the party of NO.  I just think they are the party of Not ‘Till It’s Too Late.

Ethanol production

It’s tricky to get a handle on.  Many forward looking environmentalist types have decided that it’s a past fad; that essentially Corn Ethanol production was a dead end given it’s land and water use, and the amount of energy that goes into it.  People who were very excited about the potential of corn as alternative fuel in the 90’s can’t BELIEVE that people haven’t moved past it in the 2000’s.   More nuance: we might not have DQ’ed things like production of Ethanol fuel from Algae, so over-all reaction against it seems like a bad idea.

However, like everything else, there is a huge lobby for Corn Ethanol, (which has some valid points!) and many Midwestern Democrats are completely unwilling to hear about anything that might touch the status quo of cash for that cause.  It doesn’t matter if it’s good green policy (and evidence suggests that it is not) — it matters if it is good pork.

It’s a mess, to be sure… but a mess worth sinking the Waxman-Markey environmental bill over?

Yup.

Once again, Congress is the place that great ideas go to die.  Look, I realize that the Cap and Trade program is going to be hard on some folks.  But this quibbling, this exempting and counter exempting, this hijacking of the debate over things that are not central to the discussion — this is why the tax code is millions of lines long.  This is why you need a PHD in stupid to begin to track the reasoning that suggests that a bill designed to get this country on track to start combating global climate change issues is getting nickled and dimed into irrelevance by stupid riders and past gripes.

Peterson and the 26 Democrats on his committee say they will vote against climate change legislation passed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week unless it better addresses several concerns raised by farmers, including reversing the EPA decision.

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Honestly, can anyone tell me why we would still listen to what Dick Cheney has to say?

His image is plastered on LtAG too

His face is currently (10:31pm, Thursday Evening) plastered all over the news, generally making him into a rhetorical counter to Obama.  Here’s the problem: he makes things up.

Cheney, on the other hand, built a case on straw men, red herrings, and lies. In short, his speech was classic Dick Cheney, with all the familiar scowls and scorn intact. The Manichean worldview, which Cheney advanced and enforced while in office, was on full display.

Dear Dick: I’m sorry, but you failed.  All of your bluster and all of your prevaricating fail to make a convincing case as to why you needed to drag America through the muck.  You work in a democracy, and as such you need to realize that the people have voted against you.  You controlled everything in terms of message and media for most of your eight years, but eventually the stark reality, the facts of what you had wrought, knocked you off your perch.  You have no one to blame but yourself!

Ok, so why is this on LtAG?

Because I am interested as to why Cheney gets equal airtime to the President, and is viewed as speaking against him with an equal voice.  At what point does what has happened — I’m going to call this “reality” — start to make a difference?

Again, this all has to do with Global Warming.  It all has to do with the fact that everyone is used to having the GOP out there as “equal and opposite” to the Democratic party, so both view points are given equal time.   That’s because we work in an environment that says that journalism = opposition, expounded on.  It’s stupid and damaging, because there are times when that sort of equalization is a bald faced lie.

When the opposition is being responsible, that this sort of journalism makes sense.  Check this, from the New York Times:

The objections of the Republican opponents were summed up in the words of Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, who said the bill would mean sharp increases in energy costs and the loss of millions of jobs.

“This is the biggest energy tax in the history of the United States,” Mr. Rogers said.

That makes sense to me, because that seems like something I can believe in, and seems like opposition based on the principle that an argument is in good faith.   I don’t agree, but I see how the position can be tenable.  Dick Cheney? The dude doesn’t even believe that himself.  He’s pure spin, total political crap.  Even if he once belived what he was doing, his speech today is point for point designed to obfuscate and confuse.  Global Warming?  Same deal — you can’t really believe they have taken the time to read the science, because if they had… well, they could still disagree, but it wouldn’t be along the lines of HOW they disagree.  “Wind Farms are bad because they slow wind down, thus heating up the globe.”  Really?  That’s the sort of thing that is not good faith opposition.  But it’s covered as if it’s the same.

I need to stop writing this.  I’m getting all worked up, and this point is a broken record for me anyway.  Maybe I should go take a long hot bath to relax… or maybe I could go find a homeless person in the street to beat up.  You know, I’ve heard of people doing both things to relax.  They must be about the same — both are valid, it’s just a difference of opinion.