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…)

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???

Fresh from the Huffington Post oven…

Top 10 Recent Developments on Factory Farming and Vegetarianism

Oh children. We’ve been flying by the seat of our pants around here with business, campaigning, and general tomfoolery, which I hope explains why we haven’t posted anything in a week and probably will be a bit thin on the ground for a while longer. But in a spirit of reconciling our sorry selves with you, dear reader, here are a couple news articles that one could read in any variety of ways – anything from elation to jelly-booted terror.

Fast-Food School Vicinity Ban: Prudent or Tantalizing?

So New York City councilmember Eric Gioia is trying to get a bill passed in the city that would prohibit the opening of new fast food establishments within 0.1 miles of a school. Now, granted that’s only two blocks in New York speak, which is no great preventative measure if you ask me, but there’s a bigger question at hand. I support in theory any acknowledgment by the city that fast food is a factor of childhood unhealthiness and unknown chemical imbalances later in life, and I respect the effort. But kids that want something are remarkably committed to getting it. Cigarettes, booze, energy drinks, you name it – prohibiting it may have the reverse effect of making it even more desirable than it already is. I used to babysit a kid who was incredibly lazy EXCEPT when going dramatically out of his way to acquire something his parents wouldn’t let him have. If enough noise is made out of this bill if it gets passed (and rest assured, the non-issue-obsessed e-media being what it is, noise will be made), expect to see a sharp increase in the amount of fast food consumed by rebellious high-schoolers at lunch.

So what can be done? Either try to keep kids indoors for lunch (which, I know from experience, will produce an epic shit-monsoon that no school wants to deal with), or go ahead and pass the ban and make fast food less convenient and hope to Moses, Mary, and Mohammed that they just don’t find out about it. So, I guess: shhhhhhhhh. Wait. I screwed it up already. Sigh.

This is why you're fat (double cheeseburgers with chicken nuggets for buns).

Monsanto and Your Future, or, “Really, FDA?”

Sing, Muse, of Michael Taylor! Of the Monsanto exec who at any given moment is either employed by the US government in a capacity of regulating the dangerous practices of the agribusiness industry, or (if it’s tuesday, thursday, or sunday), is in the agribusiness industry writing deregulatory proposals to be approved by the FDA. One of the architects of Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (the same one that some studies and European governments have suggested contribute to health irregularities and weirdly early puberty in milk-guzzling kids), he was also one of the FDA authorities who approved that very wonder cocktail under Clinton. 

And now! After another corporate foray, Taylor is back in the FD, back in the FD, back in the FDA. Appointed by Obama’s administration. Cool.

Now, all the environmentalist listserves that grace my email have gone into varying shades of apoplexy over this, demanding immediate censure of anything with two thumbs and a government paycheck. IF there is a silver lining or an alternative spin to this, it is that despite the long history of cronyism and impending mollycoddling of Monsanto and the other three Horseman of the Apocalypse, Taylor has in fact been pretty tough on food sanitation issues and will probably do more to crack down on such dangerous embarrassments as the peanut-contamination fracas earlier this year. I guess he’s of the “tough love” school of regulating his buddies, like the coach that wants you to succeed but isn’t afraid to make you run a few extra laps (for the record, that may be the first sports analogy I’ve ever successfully used). But if regulation of dirty agrifactories is achieved mainly by redirecting funds and manpower from the watchdogging of the special-interests science that leads to things like rBGH, as is, well, likely – then we’re no less screwed than we already were.  And I’d really like to be less screwed than we already are.

Michael Taylor. With a mustache.

I got to thinking the other day after Alan wound up with a vehement comment accusing him of armchair environmentalism because he isn’t out raging against the machine in the streets and because he tends to express reservations about  unaccommodating social tactics. Now, to be fair, he and I do spend much of our time in a shabbily awesome armchair (indeed: here I am right now), but there’s more to the story here.

The only way to be green?

The question of how to face up to the machine idols of our civilization has been asked for thousands of years, long before the Industrial Revolution made it concrete – asked by John of Patmos, by Marcus Aurelius, by Machiavelli, by Marx and Nietzsche, by Foucault and Borges, by Thoreau and Muir, and by Edward Abbey. And rage continues to be – as it has always been – only one of the options. Because the funny thing is, like I learned in aikido class, sometimes you have to gracefully use the momentum of your opponent to destabilize him and change his stance.

And I got to thinking: wait a second, I’ve heard this punchline before.

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Thomas Friedman and I have a love hate relationship.

Well, that’s a lie: Thomas Friedman has no idea I exist, yet I am still convinced that he ripped off my ideas in his climb to centrist-environmental fame, as he published one article back in the day that was pretty much the same words as mine, slightly re-ordered.  All I’m sayin’ is, that had we turned the two articles in to the same teacher, eyebrows would have been raised.

I have been trying to find a logical way to work this picture of Dr. Tobias Manhatten into a post for a week now. I've failed to come up with a logical reason, so here it is with no connection to the post what-so-ever. Enjoy!

Regardless, I have mixed feelings about the man, which extend to his most recent op-ed in the Times.

I often find that Friedman is guilty of some lazy eco-writing, and I don’t think this is an exception.  Maybe it’s simple jealousy that I am not on eco-tour with him, but the entire intro about bio-diversity and crocodiles eating fishes isn’t really the point that he goes on to make.  Rather, it reads to me like a generic eco-intro.  Just add animal name type.  Marvel at nature for 3 minutes, allow to simmer until point coalesces.  Salt to taste.

Makes me think of G’s idea for demoting Times columnists.  What we need is, a minor league of folks ready to go, prepared to step in if too many columns get mailed in.  The Times Op-Ed page has got to be one of the most read and most talked about opinion platforms in the country, and you are telling me you are wasting words and time like this?  Frankly, I don’t even think that Friedman is the worst when it comes to half-ass-ing these things (David Brooks is number one for demotion in my mind), but who would object to a little competitive fire being lit under their butts?  Maybe we can handle it like they do with English Soccer teams – a points system!

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Global Warming: it’s an issue that many recognize as serious, but one that still only resonates with most folks as affecting some point in the future.  The jury is out on when it’s going to hit, with some people viewing it as something years down the line and others convinced that its a more immanent threat, but a common theme in discussions about climate change has to do with acting now to prevent some future disaster.

Which of these fall under "environmentalism"? Or, which dont?

In part, this future reality thinking is a good thing.  I don’t think that we, as a culture, are all that good at keeping focus if something is already a done deal, and if too many Americans felt that climate change is inevitable, then they would have even less impetus to do anything to help reduce their own carbon footprint.  However, there is this new study from the Earth Institute at Columbia University that has started looking at what to do with the changes that have already occurred or are currently happening.  They don’t suggest that we throw up our hands and stop working to limit carbon:

It’s not that we are giving up on preventing additional damage, it is simply that some of the damage has already been done, and we need to learn to cope.

But rather suggest that some things could be done in the mean-between times (especially with the stimulus money?) to mitigate the effects of nature actually rearing up and smacking us in the mouf.    Clearly, this article is a focus specifically on New York, but there are many places around the country, especially in major urban areas, that should begin thinking along these lines.  The example that springs to mind is Katrina: the change has already begun to create storms and conditions unlike what our system is prepared to handle. (I don’t mean to suggest here that what happened in Katrina is as linear as “new infrastructure = less problem,” but a levy system with a new level of hurricanes in mind would certainly have helped.) (more…)

On Tuesday, I took a swing at suggesting what I thought would be the next big thing in eco-babble:

None of this, however, stops us from wanting to jump on the next trend now, and see if we can’t guess it off at the pass: Water.  Water Footprints.  Water Chaos.

Then, I had a giggle thinking about water footprints.  What a silly concept!  Everyone knows that you can’t have a footPRINT in a liquid!  On thinking more about the phrase, and in wanting to see if someone else had already coined it.

(Tangent: clearly they had.  This is the Internet after all.  If you can think of a word, someone else already has a web page devoted to it.  Side Tangent: same thing also works for sexual proclivities.  If you can dream up a sexual obsession, you can buy a picture of someone doing it online)

So, I plugged the phrase into my trusty pocket google, and lo and behold!   (there is a lot more below the fold!)

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A day after we got all up in arms about if we should be worried about how much the news might or might not be concerned about that Coal ClusterF&*%^ck in Tennessee, it turns out that other folks aren’t so happy either.  1Sky, one of the groups in the same network as our Green-for-all favorites, wants you to send a letter about how upset you are!  Well, we sent that letter.  And we are still pretty peeved at the lack of public knowledge on this thing… it is, literally, Super-fund worthy, and we are unclear as to what the issue is in getting it out into the world.

Is the problem that everyone who watches these issues just took Xmas off?  Are we about to get a slew of Angry Green Giants up in arms a few weeks later?  LtAG hopes so, because that would crack us up.  Nothing says dedication to the cause like taking off for the holidays!  (how long were we off again? 19 days?  20?)

You know what they say: If you can’t laugh at yourself… who can you laugh at?   Or: If you can’t laugh at a Millions of Tons of Coal Ash, what CAN you laugh at? Different ring, we guess…

Most important: we need a better name for this thing then the Tennessee Clusterf%&^*#ck.  The name Valdez has the resonance with our society, so what are we going to call this?   Taking suggestions below for a Snappy Title!