Sick and green over Earth Day
The French Revolution gave us Thermidor, which refers to the inevitable, conservative reaction that follows a time of radical upheaval. And what better day than today, Earth Day, to celebrate Eco-Thermidor, the ecological movement's plunge into narcissistic self-parody and mind-numbing idiocy. To paraphrase the critic Dorothy Parker: You hear the word "green" and you want to fwow up.
On the grand level, there are policy disasters like the agro-industrial complex's embrace of ethanol, which the World Bank says has driven up world food prices 83 percent in three years. Ethanol is a huge win-win for corporate America - What's Good for
Want eco-scams? We got eco-scams. Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported on the sliding fortunes of United Kingdom-based EcoSecurities, which was coining money in the growing marketplace for traded carbon credits. In theory, Big Factory A pollutes, but EcoSecurities finds a "clean, green" Investment B to offset the damage to the environment. Lately, United Nations officials have been asking whether carbon trading "provided real environmental gains, or are just padding the pockets of middlemen like EcoSecurities." I wonder.
You know the slick green tide is coming in each year when Vanity Fair publishes its Armani-scented "green" issue, which celebrates the eco-worthiness of such regular guys as Leonard DiCaprio and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Last year, you may remember, Leo was posing on an ice floe with a cute little polar bear Photoshopped in for the occasion. Leo has since moved off the glacier into an eco-friendly New York luxury apartment, boasting low-emissions paint and, of course, solar panels.
Last year RFK Jr. was yammering about falconry in VF. This year he's pushing wind farms, as far as the eye can see. You mean he no longer opposes the Cape Wind project off Uncle Teddy's mansion on Cape Cod? Not a chance! Kennedy wants to plant wind farms all across states like North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas. No Beautiful People live there.
But wait. Earth Day isn't over. It's just beginning!
Here is some promotional material from the website Take Part on how to "green up" my sex life. They are hawking Fair Trade Aphrodisiacs, a bondage starter kit made from 100 percent organic hemp rope, and the inevitable vegan condoms. These might prove quite useful for assignations on green singles.com, a dating website that features "personal ads for progressive singles in the environmental, vegetarian, and animal rights community."
GS has a spinoff website, veggielove.com, "a place where single vegetarians, vegans, raw foodists, and others who seek and value a plant-based diet can meet and network for friendship, dating, marriage and the exchange of information and ideas." A member using the log-on "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" writes: "Lately I've found myself in my Prius in the middle of a multi-fast-lane freeway surrounded by Hummers, wondering what happened to the environmental idealism of the sixties?"
Good question. Maybe it took a wrong turn around the time that the Red Sox started issuing press releases about their solar-powered trash compactors. I was recently alerted to the comic possibilities of an Oregon company called Eco-Luxury Fur, which purports to sell "the world's most eco-friendly fur." Among people who oppose slaughtering animals for their pelts, there is a lively trade in faux, or synthetic fur sometimes made from cotton, wool, or acrylic blends.
But that's not what Eco-Luxury is about. Their suppliers slaughter brushtail possums in Australia, and greenwash the whole venture by explaining that the possums pose a threat to Australia's "unique biodiversity." But as they would be happy to explain to you over at the greensingles.com website, "green" killing feels pretty much the same as plain old killing, if you are the ox being gored. As The Wall Street Journal explained, succinctly: "The Problem With Eco-Fur? It's Still Fur."
More or less innocently, I learned the website econsciousmarket.com is marketing "Fair Trade footballs," made by certifiably unexploited and non-child Pakistanis. There's more! "The footballs' inner lining comes from responsibly harvested rubber trees." Paging Commissioner Goodell! Can a green Super Bowl be far behind?
Earth Day, 2008: An event that was once historic has become farce.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com.
