Living the American Green

I’ve compiled a unique list of what you can do this Earth Day to help save the humans from inevitable destruction via environmental catastrophe:

1. Try to exhale as little as possible today.  I know it’s tough, but puffing out all that unwanted CO2 is really a downer.

2. Ever thought about how much toilet paper you use in a year?  It’s widely determined to be about 30-40,000 sheets, which means that every time you do your deed, you’re foreclosing on the homes of hundreds of squirrels, birdies, and squatters.  Stop using that paper stuff today, and try this LtAG-endorsed ultramodern bamboo solution on for size.

3.  Old kitchen appliances are huge energy wasters- use today as an excuse to rip out your entire kitchen and revamp your eating space.  You’ll feel like a Jetson, AND can finally have room for all those magnetic poetry sets. (Hint: be sure to complete this before your significant other gets home.)

Simba finally gets the thanks he deserves.

4. Do you drink your 8 glasses of water a day?  Stop using all those plastic water bottles, and switch to drinking out of one of these instead.  It may be a little harder to pack in your bag, but it’s refillable and will keep you going all day.

5. When was the last time you thanked a forest creature?  Despite what Hallmark may have you believe, you don’t need a reason to say “thank you” to a member of the animal kingdom.  So go up to your neighborhood deer, emu, or tiger today and thank them for all they do to help sustain our ecosystem.

6. Lightbulbs are so 1854.  Forego the lightswitch today, and convince your office to hold a candle-lit seance.  When you meet the ghosts of coworkers past, you’ll be able to tell them how environmentally responsible you are!

7. Trade in your gas guzzler for this European solution.  Car pooling may be a bit harder than before, but after driving this puppy, there’s no chance you’ll be watching Hawaii 5-0 by yourself this weekend.

8. Tired of seeing all that wasted food in restaurants?  Eat for free this Earth Day: pick a diner of your choice and booth hop, snagging leftovers as you go.  Who said there’s no such thing as free lunch?

9. You can surf the net and go green- dark green- at the same time.  Just be sure to never visit a page with a light-colored background, and you’ll help save precious “watt hours” for the children.

10.  Now that you’ve completed steps 1-9, you’re due for a celebration.  Take a big old swig of green beer, and rejoice in the knowledge that you’ve done 9 completely ridiculous things that may or may not have any impact on the environment.

Tomorrow, April 14, is “Big Picture” day at Starbucks.  Now, don’t get all excited- they’re not giving away free giant photographs of coffee beans and barista tools- I know, it’s very disappointing.  But, according to the coffee cult’’s website, if you bring a reusable mug into any Starbucks tomorrow, they’ll fill it with coffee for free.  Why?  They want to encourage customers to think of the big picture by considering the life span of each thing they throw away.  Starbucks’ goal? To encourage more people to begin using reusable coffee cups daily, resulting in more trees and less disposable cups in landfills.  They’ve got an online pledge you can take, and the numbers fuel the site’s calculator which shows  “how many trees” people are predicted to save by using their own cups.

Dutiful readers, well aware of my usual attacks when it comes to company “greening” efforts, may be suprised at my reaction to this campaign.   I actually like this one!   It’s rare for a company to discuss customer’s habits, and motivate for positive change.  And this free coffee bit, followed by Starbucks’ unending promise of 10 cents off any drink when using a reusable cup, are pretty convincing perks.  Bribery works, and I’m interested to see just how many people Starbucks can get to take one step forward in reducing their daily waste.

Starbucks, no doubt, benefits widely from this plan: they get a lot of positive PR, a flood of customers tomorrow,  and reduced costs from not providing cups, sleeves, and lids to a large percentage of customers.  Still, though, I think the net positive outweighs the gain by Starbucks big wigs.  So dig out that coffee mug and get to drinking the pep juice- your environment needs you!

Pointy-bearded Ivory Tower intellectual Andrew Revkin is appearing every week for the month of April on the Radio Show for which I sometimes toil.  Known mostly for his blog Dot.earth, Revkin kicked off Earth Month by moving to the opinion page of the Times, essentially admitting that his constant crusade for the socialist “Global Whining” farce is his opinion.

That, or so that he can stop having to bring a journalistic objectivity to something that doesn’t deserve it.  In his own words,

I am an advocate, for sure — for reality.

Well… that’s just like, your opinion, man.  Either way, hear him speak his egg-headed economy killing lies on Carbon Tax and Trade here:

and on the hard science behind the Global Warming Hoax here:

Wait ‘ill Glenn Beck hears o’ this, Revkin — you might end up on his black board!

<<Fo real: Andrew Revkin is one of the more rational and reasonable voices writing on the whole climate change issue.  While his writing and thinking is saturated in the leading research of climatologists, his main focus (not completely reflected in the above two episodes) is working on understanding why the gap between what science knows about climate change and what the public perception is about climate change is so different.  One of the better writers, and a daily must check for me!>>

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.

You, dear reader, already know why we need a price on carbon. You know that burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, raising the average temperature of the earth and drastically affecting the global climate. You’re also well-versed in modern economic theory, and understand how negative externalities in a market can be mitigated by determining the cost to society and then including it in the price of a good or service.  So you don’t need to be lectured on how putting a price on carbon dioxide emissions would use market forces to equitably reduce the threat of climate change and promote sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels.  Good for you.

Sadly, though, there are some out there who don’t get it. According to some surveys, close to half of all Americans don’t get it. So, today I am going to give you two powerful tools to use in your quest to knock some sense into people:

• The long, technical, detailed version, by Paul Krugman, or…
• The short, fun, animated version, by Andy Lubershane

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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