PS3’s, Microsoft X-Box 360’s, and Nintendo Wii’s , although abused by some, are the source of harmless entertainment for millions of people worldwide. Greenpeace, however, argues otherwise. On their website, Greenpeace posted and article that exposes Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo for using harmful substances in the production of their popular game consoles.

Greenpeace’s report, Playing Dirty, claims polyvinyl chloride (PVC), phthalates, beryllium, and bromine are found in all three game consoles. Beryllium, according to Greenpeace, is particularly nasty because it “does not break down easily and builds up in the environment” and “long term exposure can lead to impaired learning and memory functions” and can “interfere with thyroid and estrogen hormone systems and exposure in the womb has been linked to behavioral problems.” Phthalates, Greenpeace claims, are just as bad, inhibiting “sexual development in mammals: including humans and, especially, males.”

Though the report gives sound evidence and information about the materials found inside the internal electronic components of the game consoles, the report gives no information about how the materials could be transmitted to children and/or adults playing video games, and whether or not the video game systems present an actual risk of harming users. No mention is made about the how and if it’s even possible to come in contact with the chemicals (like, for example, if you were to take apart your Playstation and lick its bromide-tainted circuit board…what? You never tried it?).

Its hard to say what Greenpeace is trying to achieve with this article/study. Are they trying to save people from being poisoned by video game systems or developing an online gaming strategy? If they believe eating game consoles is a common practice, they may really be trying save lives….

Perhaps, the more realistic conclusion is that Greenpeace is just trying to ruffle people’s feathers—using the game systems’ popularity to gain publicity for their organization and foster support for their noble causes. For Greenpeace, this tactic could backfire and make the public believe that the organization seeks to merely stir up controversy, rather than make a real difference in the world. Perhaps they should stick with the battles that matter—the fights that everyone can get behind, like saving endangered animals, fighting pollution, and curbing global warming.

Anyway, I’m off now to play poker at my favorite online casino. Take that Greenpeace.

But move five steps closer, and the illusion fades. He is in the corner, yes, but the slouch is affected — he’d be more comfortable standing straight. His worn blue jeans? Brand new, but distressed. His ironic t-shirt? That once most noble badge of indie cred? It’s been on sale at the Urban Outfitters down the street for a month. And the paintings – the paintings! Up-close, they show themselves as crude copies of those prints featured in the discounted Salvador Dali calendars sold at Barnes and Noble: forced line, muddy colors, uninteresting ideas.

What’s offensive is not the young student’s pose, for at least he is trying to do something with his image. And the paintings, while bad, are not so bad that his art school scholarship would be threatened. No, what’s most worrisome is that he doesn’t know he’s posing, doesn’t know that the elements he’s so carefully cultivated as “his own,” are not. He’s exuding “originality” in the most culturally acceptable way, possibly the only way he knows: he buys it.

Those shelves of products that our young hero peruses in his off-time– all copyrighted, patented, or otherwise “pre-approved” for consumption – give him the feeling that he has freedom of choice, while, in fact, his freedoms are limited. “Have a problem? Use this face cream. Buy a car. Wear these blue jeans.”

These are his only options.

We should feel pity for him – after all, he’s lived in Pasadena his whole life, he doesn’t know. This is what he thinks is edgy.

Because he has taste, he makes do with what he has. But because he is young, he is a bit too proud. More seasoned personalities whisper to each other: His shirt, the off-white one? With the cartoon of a red-bearded lad, holding close his seven bottles of bear, stating, “Irish 7-Course Meal?” Done. His blue jeans? 700 dollars, faded in all the right places, do not connote the roughshod life. Oh no, they scream, “Mom buys my clothes!” And the Art. Oh God, the Art.

What can save our young hero, apart from extended sit-down sessions with Roland Barthes or concentrated perusals of Frederick Jamison (both of which are, for the most part, impossible to comprehend at such an age)? What can pull away the cowl of ignorance, freeing the young artist from that most hated of appropriations – derivative?

Ready? Here comes the answer – and it’s not drugs, religious experiences, or world travel. The answer is that he must study and learn the copyright laws of United States.

And in order to learn the copyright laws of the United States, he must first know what a copyright is.

Here are the simple definitions, according to onelook.com:

# noun: a document granting exclusive right to publish and sell literary or musical or artistic work
# verb: secure a copyright on a written work

Why is a knowledge of the legal presedence of copyright important to a young artist? Because in order to create, a good artist should know as much as possible about all his tools. This means not just the origins of his fine bristle brush, or the interesting history of the chemistry of his pigments.

While copyright law is not as glamourous as brushes or paint, it is nonetheless as important. For within copyright law lies the secret of what to do after.

And what do American’s do after they’re done? They sell. They horde. And, in turn, they covet, they hide.

While squirreling away money is a good idea, hiding creative output is not. Keeping the creative hidden leads to problems such as our hero’s – too much confidence in too much little.

Our hero’s problems stem from this ignorance – for, despite his fancy education, he is creatively ignorant – too many things have been kept from his eyes.

But wait! you say. Surely it is his responsibility to educate himself! There are libraries, public exhibitions, and teachers.

Of course, these are necessary elements in any person’s education. But our hero cannot personally own a library book, an outdoor concerts, or the mind of a great teacher, and the relative unavilability of ownership of fine works of art encourages a lazy attitude towards authenticity.

Within copyright law, too, lies a history of the role of the Artist within American Society, a role our hero has wanted to play, desperately, for many years. Is it not also his responsibility to know his legal rights?

Sadly, our hero does not know about the Berne Convention, held in Switzerland, in 1886. Led by that most diligent, most empathetic of writers, Victor Hugo. He does not know of Hugo’s obsession with la droit d’auteur.
He does not know most of his European and Asian contemporaries not only consider intellectual property more important than money, but that the status of the artist is more socially powerful than that of entrepreneur.
He does not know that Europe and Asia have historically made political concessions to facilitate their artists’ creativity.
Or that the United States didn’t join the Berne Convention until nearly one hundred years after its inception – on March 1, 1989.

Here is something else he doesn’t know: copyright laws in the United States, had, until 1989, been focused on keeping intellectual property private in order to facilitate economic growth. In other words, in the US, copyright law has historically been a monetary issue, not a creative one…Thus the shelves of products posing as freedom as choice.

And here is something else: thanks to the acceptance of the Berne Convention, which decrees that work belongs to its creator as soon as it’s created, without having to fill out government forms, the tide is turning.

And finally, another fact: the most notable example of progressive copyright translation in the United States is the group called Creative Commons. Creative Commons gives artists the information and encouragement needed to not squirrel their work away, in fear that someone might steal their ideas, but rather, to share and remix their work with the work of others.

And now, for a theoretical leap: This is a necessary step on the incline from being derivative to being truly POSTMODERN.

(Ugh, but why postmodern? Isn’t that old hat? AU CONTRAIRE).

The hallmark of postmodernism is the desire to combine.
And we are at a point in cultural history where the only thing left to do is combine.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Marcel Proust, that most beloved of all neurotic writers, stated as a child that he did could not name a single color as his favorite, but rather, he found the most pleasure in their combinations.

And all postmodern art is a hybrid – a little of this, a little of that – which in turn encourages the creation of the global ego – an ego much less offensive than the ego present in our young hero at the start of this article.

Some say the start of the Enlightenment was thanks to the creation of factory-produced mirrors, which allowed even the most plebian life form to see themselves as individuals. But today, we don’t look to the mirror for accurate reflections. Instead, we gaze into the computer monitor. Our thoughts, words, and images, regardless of original source, create a collective brain, one that can be harnessed most powerfully through an artist’s understanding of copyright.

And even science is beginning to consider human beings in a similar way – the millions of individuals that populate the Earth are really a single, throbbing organism, a human membrane, if you will, that covers our planet, hovering, blue and bulbous, like a helium balloon bobbing about in the milky way.

Which takes us back to our hero’s work. Remember? Those great blue swathes of sky and stars that looked so good from a distance? Does he know about Turner? And if he did, would not his unpleasant ego dissolve, leaving him – his ideas and his work – behind to do the talking. And would not his art – our art – be improved?

Here’s the The Fancy PDF, as published in “Let Go” magazine

After the Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (“mad cow”) that decimated massively the cattles in Great-Britain primarily, the H5N1 bird flu virus that proliferated in Hong-Kong, a less perceptible enemy is diminishing the population of bees.

If it doesn’t have any direct incidence on our well-being on the short term, its long term effect is questionnable giving that the survival of our specie is intrinsically tributory to this little symbol of technology of the Apoideas, the Apis Melifera.

Knowing that 3/4 of the worldwide plants, 1/3 of the human food supply, six million people depend viscerally on this uncommon plant-animal relationship, who could have imagined that such little insect performed a vitale role in our societies? Who could have imagined that it had such impact on our economies, our fates? Who could have imagined the magnitude of the damages awaiting us?

Five million of domesticated bees vanished in less than 48 hours without a trace from the surface of Earth : that is without ambiguity the problem the bee-keepers and the scientists are facing, have to solve, to defuse. The CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder) is the explanation to their brutal hives disaffection. As the scientific community delves into finding the cause, they keep on banging their heads against the walls.

Whatever searches demonstrate : presence of white pockets in their abdomens asserting of their non digestion, growth of fungi in their tissues, existence of forty different chemicals in the analysis of their pollen, malnutrition linked to single crop diets (due to human forced pollination)… They all concord and conclude to the weaknessing of their immune system.

Pesticides are undoubtedly the key suspect in the investigations. French researchers support the theory by confirming that bees thrive in cities (where trees and flowers are not showered with pesticides). If it is so, how can we explain the desertion of hives in organic hives, too?

Many questions are in suspense, eager to be elucidated. Why do bees fail to return to their hives?  As an organizational structure maybe going back to the hive means imprisonment? Why humans be the only ones to aspire to freedom? Freedom of gathering pollen and nectar from all type of flowers opposed to exclusively one? Couldn’t they have this intelligence? Maybe it’s a natural order? Is their ability to learn affected or do they leave to avoid to infect the whole colony? Maybe their death is a conjecture! What if it was the end of their domestication? Why only adults die? Is it from a chemical or nutritional origin? Is it a virus or a neurotoxin? What if, it was simply a natural extinction of the specie? How many other species die without our awareness? And as I said precedently what if they were not dying? What if wild life has more temptation than the domesticated one?

The haze obviously still floats over the scientists’ orbit. I understand their frustration while challenging the probability of a problem impossible to thwart.

The stakes are high, the world depends on bees.

Six million people cover the seven continents. With the constant increase of the demand, production had to adapt responding by pressuring agriculture to augment extensively the superficie of arable exploitations, to develop intensive methods of output.

Rented by farmers, hives of bees travel by trucks to Florida (for oranges), to Maine (for bilberries), to California (for its almonds) to transfer pollen from the anther of a flower to the stigma of the same or another flower. The process is called pollination. In this harmless (at first sight) exchange, the bee participates as the active element for fecondation. As a fair retribution, the plants reward them by a sugary liquid called nectar.

Thousands of hectares of lands rely on bees to perform a natural role for an unatural scale. Californian almonds, for instance, reperesenting 80% of the international market require 1,2 million colonies to do the job! Imagine yourself only eating pizzas or broccoli! Can’t human forced pollination be one the  major sources of bees decline? We, late, understood that their dance was their mean of communication. So therefore bees have no more secrets to reveal us? I wish Nature was that simple!  As a certainty, our ecosystem is fragile!

With the reduction of bees, economic sectors directly involve in bees activity experience already losses in pollination contracts, in honey productions. Other industries like the ice-cream feels already the repercussions.

Unless scientists find the harm, farmers, at the example of the southern Sichuan (China), will resort, as they did for their pear flowers to blossom, to hand pollination. Nature, now, needs a helping hand! What is feasable for a local production would be an Herculean task for a higher scale!

At a yearly rhythm of 30% of death rate, within 3 to 4 years bee-keepers will disappear (it may not be a bad future!). If bees don’t make the headlines now, believe me in 2035, date of their total extinction, they will make it!

On another hand, the death of domesticated bees doesn’t signify their extinction, does it?

Here in California two recent stories have found a near-permanent loop on the lower-third ticker tape.  The first is that of the fate of Los Angeles Schools Supt. David Brewer agreeing to have his contract bought out by the state, effectively removing him from his position.  LA County schools have most certainly had their share of hardships — steadily increasing class sizes, a gross lack of funding, and declining test scores over the past ten years — but LA County schools have also begun to turn around in more recent years.  However, Supt. David Brewer’s lack of such intangibles as being able to deal with the media, the beauracracy, or instill hope for the schools in the public has placed him in a position to be removed from his post.  This quote from the Los Angeles Times explains that Brewer does not want to turn this into a racially driven argument:

“As an African American, I’ve experienced my share of discrimination,” he told reporters, school board members and district employees Monday. “I know what it looks like, smells like, and the consequences.”

“Although this debate is disconcerting and troubling, it must not become an ethnic issue. When adults fight, it can manifest itself in our children,” said Brewer, the district’s second African American superintendent. “This must not become an ethnic or racial battle that infests our schools, our campuses, our playgrounds. This is not about settling an old score; this must be about what is best for every LAUSD student.”

However, many civil rights activists are crying foul, saying Brewer is being used as a scapegoat, that a decade’s worth of problems can not be expected to be solved overnight, that one’s race can not be overlooked.  I suppose it really is one step forward, two steps back.

A more tragic story occured Monday when a disabled F/A-18D fighter jet crashed and exploded in a residential area in San Diego.  After losing power to one engine and then losing power completely, the pilot ejected safely from the spiraling plane.  Upon impact with the ground, the jet ignited into a massive fireball, destroying two homes and killing a grandmother, mother, and young child.  Another child is still missing.  The Marine Corps. has yet to comment on further details of the malfunction.

OJ Simpson became plastered on the news once again, thirteen years to the day since his heavily-debated acquittal.  This time, Simpson was tried and found guilty on 12 charges, conspiracy to commit a crime, robbery, assault and kidnapping with a deadly weapon stemming from a September 13, 2007, incident at Las Vegas’ Palace Station hotel and casino garnering him a sentence of up to 33 years in prison and the possibility of parole after 9.  Although the Honorable Judge Jackie Glass stated that the circus of thirteen years ago played no part in either her or the jury’s conviction, it’s hard to imagine something as ingrained in the public consciousness could not play some part.  Simpson’s apology was heartfelt and laden with emotion, but it was brushed aside by Judge Glass who simply stated the sentence without much regard for the emotion.  Of course, protestors and denouncers alike gathered outside the Nevada courthouse, and for some Simpson got what had been thirteen years coming, for others, well, he’s still just a victim.  However, it turns out that the evidence did fit this time around.

The appalling acts of terrorism seen in Mumbai from November 26th to the 29th are still being sorted out.  Although many signs are pointing to Pakistan as the terrorists’ country of origin, the evidence remains far less than concrete.  This trajedy continues to unfold its gloom, an attack killing at least 188 people and injuring at least another 290.

And most recently in the wave of WTF inducing events is the arrest of Gov. Rod Blagojevich of the state of Illinois.  This morning, at around 6:30 AM Blagojevich was taken into FBI custody after wire taps in his home and campaign office led to enough evidence for corruption charges.  Most horrific of the alleged corruption charges involves the selling of the Senate seat vacated by President-Elect Barack Obama.  Illinois has long been said to be the most corrupt state in the U.S., and it’s stories like this that continue to solidify its position as such.  Perhaps the look and feel of Chicago came in second when Christopher Nolan, director of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, chose to use the city as the location of the notoriously corrupt (and fictional) city of Gotham.  Perhaps it was the very real political seediness that made the decision a no-brainer.

And all the while the economy continues to be volatile, bail-outs are being proposed and given and denied, even the Screen Actors Guild is on the verge of strike in Hollywood.  Is there any good news?  Well, at least the rapper Common feels that Barack Obama will help to change the face of hip-hop — a face showing a more positive outlook with more hopeful themes.  That’s good news, right?  How about the gas prices?  They’re approaching a five-year low!  Good news?  Good news is hard to find when so much of the 24 hour news cycle is dominated by WTF inducing stories.  My suggestion: turn it off for a while, enjoy the holidays, enjoy your family, friends, fellow humans.  Make your own good news, because the world at large sure isn’t going to without all of us pitching in.  Happy holidays, all.

So, what was it  if not a strict program to control the banking business and the financial sphere. A black list was established omitting deliberately (?) the Delaware, Honk-Kong…(financial havens). Are they real measures or smoke screens?

Nonetheless, the optimism that prevailed in London summit transpired in the different stock exchange places with the increase in value of indexes like the CAC 40…
In September in NY will be the consequence of those intentions, the concretization of those measures, the result of the implementations. Let’s not put our expectations too high, we as individuals will be deceived. The measures are international meaning macro-economic with little influence on the principal actors of the economy, you or I.
Meanwhile, unemployment, foreclosures, inflation are the logic consequences of their restless behavior.

There are many things I think about when I think of McDonalds, and being green isn’t one of them. According to an article on Sustainable Life Media, McDonalds has released their green – sustainable best practices, with the urging that their customers vote for “best of the best”. The report apparently highlights over 80 best practices from numerous McDonald’s markets that cover initiatives such as energy reduction, green packaging design, customer engagement on environmental issues, and greener supply chain management. Here are some of the highlights from the article:

Information and inspiration through innovative software – McDonald’s France’s use of an interactive software, EcoProgress, to manage and reduce energy usage in the restaurant, achieved an 11% savings in electricity for participating restaurants over the same three month period between 2007 and 2006.

Water conservation in Australia - McDonald’s Australia has implemented a variety of water conservation measures including extensive landscaping and smart irrigation practices. Advanced stormwater retention tanks can save almost four million liters of water over a 20-year period.

Supporting the development of Biodiesel - In Brazil, Chile and Argentina, McDonald’s has partnered with local organizations that transform used cooking oil into biodiesel. Currently, 270 restaurants in these markets deliver their used oil to be converted into biodiesel, representing over 1,000,000 liters of oil to date.

Creating a gold standard for green design - In August, 2008, McDonald’s USA opened its first corporate-owned pilot green restaurant and received Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification in April, 2009. This “green building lab” in Chicago will help McDonald’s USA refine its green building strategy and identify practices that can be incorporated into future restaurants.

Engaging our employees and consumers on climate change – McDonald’s Japan participates in the Japanese government’s Team Minus 6% program to reduce CO2 emissions by 1kg per person, per day, by offering a discount to consumers who registered to participate in the program. During the 2007 campaign, McDonald’s Japan helped raise the number of participants from 40,000 to 380,000.

Uh, I don’t think so.

The idea of  “green-washing” really gets under my skin, but on some levels I think any step to raise the consciousness is a good one. A fellow designer (Ronny Bagdadi ) posted this message in response to asking the community what they thought and I think his words sum it up quite niceley:

All life depends on topsoil, the thin layer of nutrient-rich earth. 200 years ago the US had 21 inches of topsoil, today we have about 6 inches left. About 6000 sq. miles of land are cleared every year to raise livestock or about 10,000 acres/day. Land clearing leads to topsoil running off into the rivers and sea. It takes about 500 years for nature to create 1″ of topsoil. One lb of California beef requires 5200 gallons of water; one lb. of lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes or corn each require 24 gallons.

Going vegetarain is the most powerful way to protect the environment, and to prevent needless suffering of millions of sentient beings with nervous systems and brains just like ours. Going to SF on the 5N one is overwhelmed by the stench of filth and death as one drives past “Cowschwitz”

When McD’s stops selling flesh it will be green, until then it’s PR/marketing BS sold to naive folk.

I have always supported “little steps…” among those that are just waking up to the global consciousness. On some levels, this is that step, even though we are talking about McDonalds. I suppose if they are exposing and awaking consciousness to the importance of green issues among those who don’t have a channel to that info, that’s positive. Next step might be “McDonalds the Vegetarian Restaurant”…After that, I can only hope…

However in the great scope of things, I don’t believe McDonalds gives a shit about anything but thier bottom line.

What I am talking here is a matter of green. We in the jungle strive to work with socially and ecologically conscious businesses or those trying to be. We’re not perfect, heck, nobody is, so we’ve been told. But, there is a difference between just capitalizing on the green movement and really walking the walk.

In the jungle, we believe in a little thing we like to call ‘captivism’. As the name implies, it is the implementation of socially conscious business practices which are both sustainable and profitable. Being green can make dollars and sense, when it’s done right. We’d like to make ‘captivism’ part of your vocabulary as well.

So, how does one captivate through capitalism? It’s quite simple, really. You can be big, small and in between, so long as you make an effort to promote, practice and implement good business practices. And by ‘good’, we mean simply socially and ecologically aware philosophies and means of doing business. If you walk the walk, we can help.

Torn apart between two main factions, the pragmatic science and the fervous religion, between the original chaos preceeding its organic birth and the birth of  the prophets that legitimated the datation of its existence, the explanation of the formation of the world  is still synonymous of schism between the rival theories. Which one among the two eternal enemies will take over? Reason or obscurantism?  Science?  Or religion ?

In all matters, Science rationalizes what Religion mystyfies. In this tempestuous environment,  a more realistic standpoint stands up and plays the spoilsport, giving to the birth of the world another dimension, more human we shall say.

From the Big Bang of the galaxies where atoms play the key role to understand the expansion of the cosmos and the planets, justifying the evolution of  Mother Nature and its progeniture  – the diverse species inhabiting the planet -,  to the experimental iron pouring along 300 square kilometres of the South Atlantic ocean to populate the receeding phytoplancton that will absorb the excess of CO2 contained in the atmosphere by the “Polarstern”  laboring in collaboration with the Indian National Oceanographic Institute, science prevails in the elaboration of a rational explanation.

Years of atomic explosions, of organic transformations, of genetic mutations and organisations assert nowadays that our descendance as a specie has its ramification and origin among the primates. Although the lemurians appeared (to relativize the primate theory) to be a possible variable in our gene pool, the evolution from the Australapicus (2-3 million years ago) to the latest vestige of our hominid (animals able to walk upright) inheritance, the Cro- Magnon man (90,000 yrs ago) is irrefutable. Our far, far away cousin Lucy born in the African savannas testified without any doubt of  the hominid presence.

At a time where its majesty the “satellite” reigns in the cosmos sending us pictures revealing the unexpected like water on Titan on its south pole (Saturn’s satellite),  lava flows around Caloris crater on Mercury, at a time where our ascendance will experience the birth of a new ocean (thousand years) in the Afar triangle region in Ethiopia or the first step of the genetic surgery, what would be the weight of any flat religious explanations versus the round omnipotence of science? Nowadays, no more Galileo ban by the Roman Inquisition for his “lack of empirism”…

When science through history, geology… and facts speak out for our past and echoes our future, elevates our reasoning ability, religion distorts our reality to a more convenient story. Pumping its power from ignorance and fears that it instilled us, religion’s only goal was and still is to control. Now that we dispose of science to rationalize the incomprehensible, the unknown, it’s a blow to the truth not to acknowledge its predominance.                                                                                                    . 

Created from the generosity or the anger of a God, from the mix of earth and water or from Jupiter’s thigh, or whatever absurd and bogus human interpretation of their own ignorance, the uncertainty about the origin of humanity attests of the flaw of religion.

When science refers to prehistoric and glacial period extending life to million years ago, religion despizes the unknown and starts naturally its history with the christian, muslim… calendars with the birth or the emigration of their respective prophets. As a contradiction our history should not be fragmented in the acceptance of  the term “BC” as a referal point for datation. But I guess it’s taken for granted!

If, between science and religion, any doubt still subsists in your mind on the origin of the world, let me bring another source of enlightenment by considering Gustave Courbet’s interpretation, althought scandalous at the time, as veracious. Don’t you agree?

The Greenwash Brigade

2008′s greenwashes of the year

The Greenwash Brigade brings you our favorite greenwashes of 2008. Some good, some bad, some just plain funny — and in no particular order. (Vote for your favorite in the comments.)

• Fiji Water’s new green campaign: Yes, shipping water in container ships from a pristine aquifer in paradise is somehow green. Really? (Heidi)
• Big Three CEOs Drive Hybrids to DC: Taking a more economical and less carbon-intensive mode of travel on the second trip was an obvious choice, after the roasting they got for taking private jets. However, anyone who has done serious carbon footprint analysis on their travel has learned one thing — there’s not much difference in CO2 per mile, unless you up your passengers per vehicle. Using TerraPass, I did a quick round-trip calculation of a first-class ticket on Northwest from Detroit to DC and a 35mpg hybrid (slightly better than the Chevy Malibu Hybrid) and… the flight was 578 pounds and the car was 560. Fiscally and environmentally, it would have been better to fly a commercial carrier — even first class — than drive, because who wants to pay their CEO to spend two days driving to and from meetings? If they really wanted to show serious fiscal (or environmental) responsibility, they would have flown economy or carpooled with each other. The only reason I can think of for them to drive hybrids is to make the companies look green. (Janne)
• Clean Coal? – The ultimate oxymoron. Have a low-fat glazed donut with your clean coal. Burning coal is the leading source of global warming emissions. Burning coal isn’t clean. Mountain top removal isn’t clean. Carbon Capture and Sequestration is a pipe dream at this point. And the 2008 presidential candidates fell for it. Do they seriously think we think they believe it? (Jim/Janne/Dennis)
• Democrats and Republicans both have green conventions to cover for their lack of green policies. I don’t want to make the claim that the two parties have equally bad environmental policies, as a matter of fact I argued that one had acceptable policies (except for the coal thing) and the other had an astonishing lack of policies here. Neither party has policies that come anywhere close to equaling the efforts they put into greening their conventions. (Here’s a less-than-positive report from the Democratic convention, but hurricane Gustav and Sarah Palin seem to have drowned out any post-game news from the RNC, and all I could find was this analysis.) (Janne)
• Shell gets in trouble for greenwashing — though in the UK, not the US. I’m thankful that somewhere, someone has first determined that lying to customers is not acceptable, and that someone with the authority to enforce that law has bothered. (Janne)
• A Greener Apple? – Don’t eat that apple. Despite previous commitments to phase out the use of these chemicals by year’s end, it appears that the latest 3G iPhone’s ingredients include polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brominated flame retardants (BFR). Sony Ericsson and Nokia have PVC & BFR-free product lines. Source here. (Jim)
• GM’s “gas friendly to gas free” campaign: The company begging for money from American taxpayers spends far more on its SUVs than on investing in fuel-efficient vehicles. And like its brethren, it continues to spend millions opposing CAFE standards. How about “gas free to full of gas”? (Heidi)
• Beyond Petroleum — BP recognized the public demand to move to a post-fossil-fuel economy. While most of their advertising message has been updated with images of wind turbines and solar, 97% of their investment is still unfortunately in oil and coal.