It Grows On Trees

Bursting the Green Bubble, One Leaf Blower at a Time

When I was a reporter, the editor of the investigative paper I wrote for once shared this nugget of wisdom: "Sometimes the people who expect us to be their allies are the ones we piss off the most," he said. "And those are the people we actually need to piss off the most."

That's stayed with me ever since. The idea that you should inoculate yourself against your own tendency to dogmatism is one a lot of folks should try. Especially those in the environmental movement and business. If it's good to "question authority," start with the authority you actually like.

That's not easy. Which is why for so long, only the court jester could get away with telling the king he was a dipstick. So it was Monday night, when Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert poked fun at he "green Emmys," with Colbert taking the stage with a leaf blower powered by "Al Gore's tears."

Whoever wrote that line deserves an Emmy. The sketch is timeless. I can't wait to look back at this in a year to see how well it still applies.

Via ecorazzi.

A little self-deprecation is a good thing. Poking fun at — and pissing off — those who take for granted your blind allegiance is even better.

BTUs: WTF?

The war over global warming — or is that "climate change?" — is often  a war of words. To win it, advertisers with sustainable products have win the skirmishes.

Newsweek stirred up the academics and true believers last week with its story on the greenhouse-effect disinformation machine. The deniers, as the article reveals, are masters at framing conversations to the disadvantage of those with the science on their side.

And while companies like Philips bask in the glow of adulation from treehuggers in love with their CFLs  (180,000+ of 'em "take the equivalent of 12,650 cars off the road," per a previous post) folks in ethanol (whose product took the equivalent of over a million cars of the road in 2004 alone) struggle with semantics that frame their renewable fuel in unflattering, even inaccurate terms.

So sayeth Michigan State University professor Bruce Dale. The question of net energy gain is a red herring, he explains in an article at Renewable Energy Access. The real issue is how effective an alternative energy source is at replacing fossil fuels.

"Net energy analysis is simple and has great intuitive appeal," Dale says, "but it is also dead wrong and dangerously misleading -- net energy must be eliminated from our discourse."

It's always been ironic to me that detractors of biofuels throw around BTU figures and claims of net energy gain or loss in the production of those fuels without applying the same standards to petroleum production. Dale says we need to reframe the conversation to get the appropriate picture of the benefit of renewable energy.

How are you framing your conversation?