earth day 2011
some tools for the day
http://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/
http://www.nature.org/greenliving/carboncalculator/
…a funny one here and here is the first Earth Day poster (1970)
The hypocrisy of Earth Day exposed• Green Watch A load of stinking compost
By Sylvie Barak
THE INQUIRER • Wed Apr 22 2009
STAND BY YOUR BEDS HYPOCRITES because Earth Day – that cynical, bloated, empty-gesture, 24-hour orgy of self-righteous smugness – is upon us.
Yes, the day when hypocrites from all over the planet spout about ‘going green’ until the rest of us go green with nausea.
The day when sleazy executives who drive gas guzzling, soot-spewing, space-hogging vehicles will make a big show of delaying their one day business trip to Asia until next week in a vain attempt to demonstrate that they “respect the earth.”
The day when Hummer and other humongous SUV driving fat cats invoke Al Gore and scare their children witless about the dangers of global warming, before driving their obese little brats to McDonalds or some other fast-food franchise for a greasy, factory farmed, antibiotics and artificial hormones laced burger, with a side of trans-fat soaked fries.
It’s less dumb and dumber than it is hummer and hummerer.
It seems this Earth day malarkey is nothing more than a day for collectively patting ourselves on the back for remembering – one day a year – that we should turn off the tap whilst brushing our teeth, just to be that little bit kinder to the abused planet we stomp all over and foul up on every single other day.
It is a day when rich Caucasians (mainly) can tut-tut and shake their heads and denounce all the greed, excess and waste in the world, whilst boasting “Today, I left my SUV in the garage and car-pooled to work”. Well whoopee for you! Why don’t you carpool to work or ride a bike or take a bus every other day too, huh?
Better yet, why don’t you use cloth bags every time you go shopping, instead of just once a year so you can make pious dinner party conversation.
Why not make a concerted effort to fly less, drive less, build a compost heap, recycle, carpool, insulate, change your light bulbs, switch off your computers at night etc, etc, [ad nauseum] on a daily basis rather than just one day a year?
Why not? Well, you don’t do all that because it’s just too much hassle, isn’t it. And no one will care if you do it every day, so you might just as well save yourself the bother, do it one day a year and claim some ‘green’ creditability. That’s the kind of energy conservation most of you practise, isn’t it. It’s laziness, in layman’s terms.
If every day was Earth Day, what on, er, Earth would companies do for a marketing boost on April 22nd? They’d have to invent some other horse manure holiday to write self congratulatory, back slapping press releases about. Some other pointless, empty, environmental or social ritual to make them good, momentarily, before they go right back to ‘getting theirs’ the next day.
Just who do big firms think they’re kidding with this sanctimonious greenwashing?
Do they truly believe we will all buy into this packaged, toxic hype and allow them to salve their consciences whilst their soulless multinational corporations rack up pollution and toxic waste footprints larger than the land areas of some third world countries?
A while ago we asked an Intel executive how big his carbon footprint was, only to be told he probably had “a very, very big one.” Really? You don’t say! And an AMD marketing vice president drives a Hummer, but told this writer that was okay because it was actually “the most efficient model.” Barf.
And before, dear reader, you accuse the INQ of being just as hypocritical, bear this in mind: WE are not ‘celebrating’ Earth Day here or giving ourselves a sickening standing ovation for green-ness. None of us own (or can even afford) an SUV. We work from home.
Oh, and instead of throwing all the self-laudatory Earth Day press releases in the bin, we have a company policy to recycle them for remanufacturing… into toilet paper.