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Hypocrisy again

Over on Treehugger, Lloyd Alter claims to have enjoyed this Wall Street Journal piece by Dan Akst (yes, yes, subscription only). I can't say I did.

Since you can't read it, I'll summarize: People who build "green" houses that are huge and isolated are hypocrites.

It's a bit mystifying to me why this genre of writing is so prevalent. I suppose it's fun to point out that a preachy celebrity drives a Hummer, or that the head of an environmental group flies all over the country to give talks, or that some recycling suburban mom commutes 50 miles to work. For pundits, charges of hypocrisy are nigh irresistible, since they require no thought, research, or analysis. "Look, person says A and does not-A! Gotcha!" It's easy.

But is hypocrisy really that important? To the point that seemingly the bulk of writing on environmentalism begins and ends there?

I think not.

Michael Fumento gets dropped.

Another rightwing pundit has been dropped by a media outlet after it was revealed that he was taking payments from private interests in exchange for columns.

Who was the corporate paymaster this time? Monsanto.

Scripps Howard News Service (SHNS) announced Friday that it severed its relationship with Michael Fumento -- a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute -- for taking payments in 1999 from agribusiness giant Monsanto. The payola was revealed by BusinessWeek Online, which also broke the story that columnist Doug Bandow had accepted bribes from Jack Abramoff. Copley News Service subsequently dropped Bandow.

Incidentally, if any wealthy interests out there are interested in a column about, say, the evils of suburbia, drop me an email and I'll send you my rates.

Eco-media Gawker-ing

As most any enviro-news junkie with a modem knows, Tidepool has been a great online resource for the better part of the past decade. Tidepool was aggregating the daily eco-news out of the Northwest before the term "aggregator" was even a gleam in the eye of the internets.

With every day's thematic compilation of news and views from California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia and Alaska, Tidepool constructs the Northwest's identity as the unified region of Cascadia.

Tidepool split from founding group Ecotrust a couple years ago, and the uptick in requests for donations had me a little worried that the service might disappear. So here's hoping Tidepool's made a soft landing into a great new situation, now that the project's been taken over by Northwest Environment Watch:

This is what a Honda sounds like …

Normally, with the exception of those for hybrids, I can't stand car commercials. But then there is this.

As you will learn from the length of the commercial, as well as the fact the car is on the "wrong" side of the road, it is for UK audiences. Sigh ... Europeans do so many things so much better.

I'd like to see a counter ad from Toyota with "this is what a Prius sounds like ..." followed by silence.

(Via PSFK)

If you want your kid to be famous.

If you want your kid to be famous, that is.

Demographers (a notoriously "educated guess"-ing bunch) are predicting that the 300 millionth American will be born in October of this year. Do the math ... that's right. You can finish reading this post later.

You're most likely to be the parent of "Baby 300 Million" (or, as I like to call it, B3M) if you are a Latino in Los Angeles County. And it'll be a boy! Congratulations!

Unlike many of his predecessors, B3M could live to be 90. However, jury's out on the kind of world he'll be living in, due to sprawl, etc.: According to one demographer, "By the time the 300 millionth individual gets to adulthood, many of the cities today we consider small and nice to live in won't be so nice." [Ominous music]

Lest you were wondering, Baby 200 Million (who actually probably missed the two million spot by two years, according to later revised Census Bureau estimates, but whatev) is 38-year-old Robert Ken Woo, Jr. of Atlanta. I smell photo op!

In fact, B2M, B3M, and B4M might all be able to hang out, since B4M is scheduled to arrive in, oh, 40 years or so.

It’s Just Another MLK Monday

Grist won’t be publishing on Martin Luther King Jr. Day So no news from us on Monday, but we’ll be back in fine form on Tuesday. See you then.

Turn off the computer …

... and go watch some TV. Tonight, cable channel Turner Classic Movies is featuring a classic -- and visually gorgeous -- eco-manga by Japan's master animator, Hayao Miyazaki, 1984's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. In a distant future, humans struggle to survive on a disastrously polluted Earth, constantly at odds with a toxic forest and rather horrible giant insects called Ohmu. But a princess, Nausicaa, suspects there may be a way to live more peacefully with nature -- and the other remnants of humanity threatening her valley people.

It's good, really.

Farcical.

The big Asia-Pacific climate summit ended today, and I suppose I should have something to say about it. Amanda's piece on the Asia-Pacific climate pact lays out the basics, and I said a little more here.

Thankfully, Ross Gelbspan has saved me the trouble of repeating myself, with this compact and devastating post about the summit. As he says, the whole pact is basically an attempt to subsidize the further use of coal.

Clean coal technology, with its reliance on hugely expensive geo-engineering projects like mechanical carbon sequestration, basically represents a full-employment act for companies like Bechtel and Halliburton. These projects are also wasteful in the extreme. Given their huge pricetags, the same amount of money would generate far more electricity per dollar were it to be spent on constructing windfarms. A real "pro-technology pro-growth" initiative would center on a worldwide project to replace every coal-burning generating plant, every oil-burning furnace, every gasoline-powered car with clean, climate-friendly energy technologies.

Yup.

A post more interesting than it sounds

This diary on dKos about Alito isn't all that great. It does, however, confirm what Amanda's article described: The basic bone environmentalists have to pick with Alito, and with conservative jurists in general, has to do with the Commerce Clause, which empowers Congress "to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes."

(I'm not a lawyer or a law scholar, so take all that follows with a large grain of salt.)

In a depressing sort of way.

I'm depressed. But, "Blog something funny," says my editor. So here goes.

China's toxic rivers are still toxic! Ha ha!

We don't know why (wink, wink) but there's so little snow this winter that the infamous "they" are canceling snow sculpting contests and putting detours in sled dog races! Ho ho ho!

Rumor has it that the Asia-Pacific climate pact will not reduce emissions at all! Oh, my splitting sides!

There's a possibility that organic produce has more pesticides than regular produce! Ah, you slay me!

Soy and bug spray might negatively affect reproductive organs! Stop it, I'm crying!

Welp, the environment isn't funny, so it's a damn good thing Jack Handey is.