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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:

How can junk-food makers label goods laden with partically hydrogenated oil

Long a staple of industrial food processors, partially hydrogenated oils are widely known to have health-ruining effects.

After decades of looking the other way as study after study emerged documenting this phenomenon, the FDA is finally making moves to at least encourage consumers to avoid them. The industry is already retrenching, removing the vile stuff from popular junk-food products, often heralded by a "0 Grams Trans Fat" label on the package.

Restaurant chains such as McDonalds' own Chipotle Grill have followed suit. Archer-Daniels Midland and Monsanto have even forged an evil alliance to market a genetically altered, trans-fat-free soybean oil that mimics some of the properties manufacturers have come to love about partially hydrogenated oil.

Yet does any of this mean anything at all?

I ask because many potato/corn chip labels I've seen declare "trans fat free" in one place and then casually list partially hydrogenated oil on their ingredient lists. Don't believe me? Check this out.

From what I can tell, when a fat has undergone partial hydrogenation -- making it solid at higher temperatures, mimicking that grand and blameless ingredient, butter -- it becomes a trans fat. For practical purposes, trans fat and partially hydrogenated oil are synonymous.

How do they get away with it?

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.

From Slings to Scouts

Green pickle sling Putting a whole new spin on the wet T-shirt contest, Low Tee makes tight-fitting men’s swimsuits out of recycled vintage tees. Buy an existing banana hammock or send in an old favorite shirt to be converted — not too old, mind you; see-through isn’t a pleasant Speedo look. Photo: Rex Bonomelli.Click to […]

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.

Clean Energy: The New Merger

Renewable power gets ever more hip with corporate America The Man just can’t get enough clean energy. This week, Walgreens and FedEx Kinko’s joined Whole Foods as corporate boosters of renewable power. The drugstore chain will install solar-power systems at 96 stores and two distribution centers in California, along with 16 stores in New Jersey. […]

You Can Grow Your Own Way

GM crops advance on the world’s arable acreage Genetically modified crops are taking over the world. [Evil laugh here.] The acreage devoted to biotech crops jumped 11 percent last year. Biotech varieties of rice — the world’s most important food crop — are poised to take off in China, a development that would put GM […]