Climate Culture
All Stories
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The paper vs. plastic question must die
Ok, I'm whining. But the obsession with paper vs. plastic shopping bags just plain bugs me.
As The Oregonian's Michael Milstein correctly points out: both paper and plastic have their pros and cons. Plastic has some surprising environmental advantages (more here), but also some unexpected drawbacks, including gumming up recycling equipment -- which makes it hard to figure out which option is actually worse in practice. But quite clearly, reusing bags you already have is better than asking for a new one.
The thing is, we already know all this. What's more, we've known it for decades.
And (heresy alert!) the truth is that paper-vs-plastic is an astonishingly low-priority issue.
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Ed Del Grande, master plumber and how-to expert, answers questions
Ed Del Grande. What work do you do? I am a home-improvement TV host, master plumber, columnist, author, and how-to expert for Kohler Co. In my work for Kohler, I travel across the country to green building shows, consumer events, and industry trade shows to demonstrate new high-efficiency toilets that use less water without sacrificing […]
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And other tips from celebs
Happy Monday, y’all. If your weekend was as awesome as mine (read: not awesome), you’ll need some entertaining celeb goss to get you going this week. So here goes: Leonardo DiCaprio announced this weekend during press for his documentary 11th Hour (which I’ve heard, ps, is not awesome, though I hope I misheard) that he […]
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His new book, about stupid media, is treated stupidly by the media
Al Gore has a new book coming out called The Assault on Reason. It’s about the sickness of our democratic dialogue, the systemic features of our culture and media that lead us to ignore evidence, focus on trivialities, and accept deception after deception. Gore’s going to be out promoting the book, and there’s a certain […]
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Three wheels, 40 mph top speed, and 20-mile range I can live with …
… but zebra stripes?!
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Plus, He Made That Boat Sink
Leonardo DiCaprio brings climate-change film to Cannes A year ago, Al Gore spread the climate-change message at the Cannes Film Festival. Now it’s Leonardo DiCaprio’s turn. The former boy wonder produced, co-wrote, and narrated The 11th Hour, a documentary that explores how industrial society screwed itself and how it can fix the problem. Relying on […]
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Green weddings are no better than white ones
It’s not exactly news — Umbra made the point in her column on green weddings a couple of months ago, and others have no doubt said it — but a piece in Salon today on the wedding industry points out that green weddings are not so magical as they seem: Then, there’s the recent development […]
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I’m not sure if a rock concert is the answer …
… but I’m pretty sure “burning all the oil” isn’t.
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Where are low-income and minority greens in the media?
Once again this year, the spring season brought a flood of green-themed magazines to super-market checkout stands and airport news racks all across the country.
And once again, the faces of non-white and non-affluent Americans were almost entirely missing.
Our new environmental movement is rapidly gaining visibility and momentum. That is very good news. Life-or-death ecological issues finally are starting to get the attention they so urgently deserve. And we can all celebrate that.
But now we would be wise to start paying closer attention to the kind of coverage that we as environmentalists are getting. Because I see a disturbing pattern of exclusivity that is starting to set in. And that kind of elitism can sow the seeds for a very dangerous, populist backlash, down the line.
To see what I mean, just flip through the pages of Vanity Fair's recent green issue (the one with Leo DiCaprio and that cute polar bear cub on the cover).
