Green Options

Get a load of this crap from Off Grid Editor Nick Rosen (the super secksay guy with smoldering good looks and a Miami Vice sense o’ style over there on the right)…

The new Eco-nazis bang the green drum but march to a dark tune. Take Ecorazzi for example - or should that be Econazzi? They go crazy every time a celebrity launches a new eco-lipstick, but forget to report on Hollywood’s poisoning of the planet. The sleazy web site is run by two dorks from Miami with about as much fashion sense as Osama bin Laden.

Rebecca Carter and Michael d’Estries could care less about the environment - they have seen a market gap and now they are busy serving it - green gossip about celebrities, and about as much moral content as a Submarine sandwich. According to locals insiders the pair have their eyes fixed on one thing - and its not the end of golbal warming -its the IPO of Econazi.

What is most sickning about their twee reportage is the implication that anyone who is not putting out some bullshit line of green product is somehow inferiro compared to the dreary parade of hapless celebrities they use to fill their pages. More later.

(Editor’s note: Nick, spell check is your friend. It’s “sickening” and “inferior”)

What a prickstar!

First, to claim that Michael and Rebecca don’t care about the environment is beyond absurd. I am good friends with both of them, hired them to come on board as writers at Green Options, and just had Michael as a guest out here in Maine for a few days. These two are are legit and green as you can get.

Michael works a full time job as an IT guy and has spent most of his free time in the two years I’ve known him working on his mini green publishing empire. He founded the highly esteemed green blog Groovy Green, is a regular and popular contributor to Green Options, is working on the new relaunch of the Ecotality Blog, and yes- happens to also run a fun little site with Rebecca called Ecorazzi that focuses on green celebrities.

Rebecca has equally strong green credentials. She’s been blogging at GreenerMiami for years now, runs green events and whatnot to build and support the local Miami and Florida green scene, and was the lone editor of the Green Tips o’ the Day on Green Options for the first five months of it’s life.

Ecorazzi is just one of their sites, the most poppy and fun. It’s an easy way into green for people who might first come at the site as a fan of celebrity gossip. I also bet it gets ten times as much traffic as Nick’s site. Nick Rosen, in addition to acting like a petulant child, is taking himself WAY too seriously here.

I give Nick credit for the contributions he’s made to the green world. His book “How to Live Off Grid” is a good one and up to now his blog hasn’t been bad. But this is just stupid. He is coming off like a right jerkass, maybe he’s doing it for the link bait? It worked with me, I’m giving him all sorts of links, the big schmomar that he is.

Or maybe he really is offended that anyone is taking a fun approach to green. It’s deadly serious business, this saving the world and all, but Nick- you need to lighten up buddy. Maybe you should spend a few nights ON the grid, a hot shower does wonders for the spirits.

I am so ashamed of our moronic, mean spirited, dumbass President. At a recent press conference at Camp David, Bush channeled his inner 9 year old and ripped on the BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson for being bald.

Later on, Bush poked fun at the bare-pate of Robinson, joking, “You’d better cover up your bald head, it’s getting hot out.”

The respected British reporter shot back, “I didn’t know you cared.”

Bush responded with a cool, “I don’t.” The Mirror reports that Bush then “snorted disdainfully” and “walked away to laughter.”

Fischer Price just announced a massive recall on a ton of toys because of Lead Paint. What year are we in? How in the fracking world do Fischer Price toys have lead paint?

I have two little girls who like Dora the Explorer. I think Swiper the Fox is cute and it’s a good little educational show and we have a bunch of Dora toys. I’m beyond mad at all the douchebags in the chain of corporate events that lead to my children playing with toys coated with lead. What kind of society do we live in that builds poison toys?

Wake up and smell the Cradle to Cradle.

The complete list of toys being recalled is after the jump, you can go here to see pictures of the affected toys (the site was down when I tried to check, probably because there are millions of worried parents flooding there for help).

Every time you read something good and green about Walmart, remember that they still pull shit like putting a bunch of poor Mexican kids to work for nothing.

Wal-Mart is Mexico’s largest private-sector employer in the nation today, with nearly 150,000 local residents on its payroll. An additional 19,000 youngsters between the ages of 14 and 16 work after school in hundreds of Wal-Mart stores, mostly as grocery baggers, throughout Mexico—and none of them receives a red cent in wages or fringe benefits. The company doesn’t try to conceal this practice: its 62 Superama supermarkets display blue signs with white letters that tell shoppers: OUR VOLUNTEER PACKERS COLLECT NO SALARY, ONLY THE GRATUITY THAT YOU GIVE THEM. SUPERAMA THANKS YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING. The use of unsalaried youths is legal in Mexico because the kids are said to be “volunteering” their services to Wal-Mart and are therefore not subject to the requirements and regulations that would otherwise apply under the country’s labor laws. But some officials south of the U.S. border nonetheless view the practice as regrettable, if not downright exploitative. “These kids should receive a salary,” says Labor Undersecretary Patricia Espinosa Torres. “If you ask me, I don’t think these kids should be working, but there are cultural and social circumstances [in Mexico] rooted in poverty and scarcity.”

Half of the population of Mexico lives on less than $4/day, so any job- even one for nothing an hour with the possibility of tips, is an attractive one. Wal-Mart is exploiting kids who already live on the bottom of life’s heap. They live in crappy houses in crappy neighborhoods and have to live their crappy lives every day on what I spend on buying a smoothee.

I promise you, I am not making this up. This is not from the Onion.

GM hired Rush Limbaugh to do a radio ad about how Green a company they are.

Rush Limbaugh. The fat drug addict right-wing hypocrite ignorant jerkass blowhard.

GM. The most un-green company this side of Monsanto, the one that builds gas guzzling monster cars and blocks any bump in fuel efficiency standards, the one that Killed the Electric Car.

Green. The simple idea that we shouldn’t poison and destroy the world we live in.

It’s rare to find those things together in a sentence, rarer still to find them together without a lot of “nots”, “aren’ts”, and “scoffed at” in between.

Seriously, this actually happened.

.

We. Must. Get. Out. Of. Iraq.

There are too many reasons now why Bush’s stupid war needs to be ended yesterday. Add this one to the pile…

As would be expected, Iraqi children living in Jordanian camps report witnessing gruesome events related to the war. These sorts of trauma leave indelible marks on children’s social and emotional development. According to a World Vision report Trapped! The Disappearing Hopes of Iraqi Refugee Children, “43 per cent of children surveyed in Amman, Jordan witnessed violence in Iraq, and 39 per cent said they lost someone close through violence.”

I can’t imagine how it would be to grow up in a war zone or have to flee your home for a refugee camp. Even as refugees, the children do not feel safe. Electronic Iraq reports, “‘These children have been kidnapped and held for ransom, witnessed brutal home invasions, suicide bombings and murders. Now refugee life offers them little option but to go to work as child laborers, exposing them to the threat of deportation,’ said Ashley Clements, author of the report. Understandably, 25 per cent of the Iraqi refugee children World Vision surveyed did not feel safe in their Jordanian homes. This is a combination of past experiences, lack of refugee status, which leaves the entire family unsure, and the absence of healthy routines like going to school, the report says.”

Tennessee Senator (you guessed it, a Republican) Lamar Alexander is a moron. He thinks wind farms “destroy the landscape“.

To a lot of people, it’s hard to imagine why anyone would actually be against renewable energy. It’s a little bit like being against puppies. Yet these opponents exist, and I’m sorry to say some are warming seats in the United States Senate.

Take Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, for example. Sen. Alexander hails from a part of the country that is home to “six of the nation’s 10 largest carbon-dioxide-emitting coal-fired power plants,” according to Tennessean.com. You might think that Alexander is somehow beholden to the coal industry because of this, or that his Martha’s Vineyard property and the debate over the Cape Wind project might influence him, or that the campaign contributions that flow his way from the most carbon-dioxide producing utility in the country are the source of his clean energy antipathy. Not so, says the Senator. He doesn’t like wind power, he claims, for aesthetic reasons. “I think they absolutely destroy the landscape.”

Let’s look at some photos and see how his opinion stands up.

I found this clip of Glen Beck bashing Live Earth over at Gristmill. I can’t STAND Glen Beck. What is wrong with CNN, why are they keeping this guy on the air? It’s not like he’s even pulling in big (or even good) numbers- his ratings suck. Who is this guy giving backalley backrubs to to keep his show on the air? Grist writer Adam Browning writes:

I’m not the first to note this, but it is really remarkable that CNN, a formerly respected former news network, stoops to this egregious low.

Mike Brune of the Rainforest Action Network does an admirable job of keeping his dignity, not committing any felonies no matter how justified, and calling him on his bull.

If, in the unlikely event that I am ever asked to do a similar interview, my only request will be that I be within smirk-smacking distance.