• Use a solar cooker to roast all your barbecued goodies.  Check the weather forecast and start cooking on July 3rd.
• Invite Al Gore over for a barbecue – make sure you have plenty of potato salad and corn relish.  Al’s such a big eater you may want to invest in carbon offsets to counter-balance his food intake!
• Take the heartfelt advice of my neighbor, Four Fingered Tony – lock-up any explosives or fireworks before you start guzzling any organic wine, vodka or tequila.
• Keep your event’s size manageable.  Invite only guests descended from countries that have adhered to the guidelines of the Kyoto Agreement.  This will guarantee plenty of room on the dance floor and ensure tons of leftovers.
• Create a menu of strictly local fare.  Avoid this approach if your patio is located next to a Nebraska cattle feedlot, your vegetable garden is regularly irrigated by run-off from the local coal mine, or your neighbor’s cloned sheep are known to sport a couple of extra, calorie-rich appendages.

My Space, Facebook and the current crown prince of social media, Twitter, are sucking up bandwidth left and right.  Between blogging, texting, tweeting and emailing I’ve developed a serious vitamin D deficiency.  Is Twitter bringing us all together?

Is the 140 character tweet a cultural step forward, the next mile marker in the transmutation of our culture into one giant organism of instant mass communication?  Is Twitter a global catalyst for social activism and digital communal living, or is it another mutation of a behavior that’s undermining our social fabric and weakening our interpersonal connections?  I’m just asking.

And don’t get me started on texting.  (more…)

I admit it, I’m becoming a green corner cutter.  I’m in Florida this week and I need to get some eco-indiscretions off my sweaty chest.  Perhaps it’s the cookie-cutter sameness of this environment, the heat or the humidity, or just a congenital deficiency in the moral fiber department, but I’m losing it.  Anyhoo, today’s green shame list:

• Took out the in-laws recycling to the curb.  Hopped into my rental car, a fire-engine-red Dodge Charger.  Headed to Dunkin Donuts to get NY Post and coffee.  Three strikes.  I’m out.
• Got back to the hacienda.  Turned up the AC a notch.  I’m can feel the bad karma building-up…
• Didn’t fight with the lady of the house over the use of a paper plate (no it wasn’t made of recycled paper).  Damned convenience.  I’m losing my grip…
• Left the laptop on all night (was in sleep mode).  A minor indiscretion but they all add up…
• Forgot the reusable bags in the car when I went into the local Publix for supplies.  I can feel myself slipping away…

More later as the struggle for redemption begins…

• Trim some fat off your carbon footprint by stuffing less raw material in your mouth.  Eat less beef – those cattle pump out methane and the process of raising cattle and livestock is an energy intensive endeavor.  Don’t eat foods shipped to your local grocery store from Bimini, Guam or some other exotic locale.  A lot of fossil fuel is burned getting that kiwi into your belly.  A thinner, more compact ‘you’ will also take up less space, (more…)

Ponds, lakes and oceans should be serene settings where no gas or oil is spewed on waterfowl, swimmers or beer swilling boaters.  Hence, the beauty of the electric boat.  Here’s a quick look at a ragtag fleet of solar-powered craft propelled by renewable energy.  Some may not be pretty but they are a beginning.

• The folks at SolarWaterWorld have designed the 20 passenger SunCat 2000 to reach speeds up to 6.5 knots.  This baby will run for an unlimited amount of time with sunlight, and 10 hours without.  Better have a paddle ready. (photos below)

• Perfect for solar boaters with no friends, The Solar-Powered Personal Boat will only cost you around $10k at Hammacher Schlemmer. (photo below)

(more…)

• The A List of Influential Green Trendsetters appears to consist primarily of Ed Begley, Jr. and Bill Nye the Science Guy.
• I can’t seem to find Al Gore on Twitter.
• My three favorite foods are Dove Bars, Twinkies and Cheetos.
• My immediate family can’t fit in a car that seats less the 12.
• A common national prejudice equates a man carrying a reusable bag with “manscaping” and poodle carrying.

Is excess, the antithesis of sustainability?  I do believe it is.  This hi-tech trunk commissioned from Louis Vuitton by an unknown Chinese mega-millionaire turns the concept of eco friendly upside down.  Why anyone would even conceive of this monstrosity confounds me; (I know, it’s all about the dinero). This luxury suitcase contains an assortment of gadgets and unnecessary tripe like a (more…)

Earth Day – what’s the dillio?  I’ve been inundated with Earth Day related blather for about a month now so I can truly say I’m suffering an acute case of Earth Day Fatigue.  From receiving umpteen emails from Grist about its intentionally provocative “Screw Earth Day” campaign, to press releases hawking everything from eco friendly search engines, organic teas, low VOC paints and tips on everything from green driving, to how to green my manicure, the emails keep pouring in.  Everybody is going green…at least for one day.  Maybe someone could count the number of new products out there with the word ‘eco’ in their name, and let me know.  Now watch, someone’s going to ride our coattails and run a contest about it (maybe we will…).

Back to the task at hand…when, like moi, you’re immersed in green issues 365 days a year it becomes a challenge to join the chorus on a contrived holiday like Earth Day.  Of course, the event gets tons of press and exposure and raises general awareness, but Earth Day’s transformation into a giant marketing and PR event kind of leaves me uninspired.  Ultimately, it’s just another day in the ‘green’ world.

Oh, did you know that just for Earth Day, “The Price Is Right” is going green?  I’d usually rant on for another paragraph or two but I’m so not jazzed I’ll just leave this here, and return to our regularly scheduled programming…

1. Reality television.  If you’ve ever been exposed to tripe like Real Housewives of NY you know the wasted time, energy-loss and psychic damage that can result from watching it.  Please don’t get me started about the toxic emissions spewed forth by programs like Project Runway or that unwatchable, faux-green turd, Battleground Earth starring Tommy Lee and Ludacris.
2. All manner of recreational vehicles and yuppie outdoor toys.  Ever try reading a book while some bozo on a jet ski keeps brainlessly churning up the same patch of lake?  Or, how about getting forced off a hiking trail by some cammo-clad lard-ass on an emissions spewing ATV; or better yet, try appreciating a bucolic winter’s scene as you’re surrounded by avalanche-inducing snowmobiles…
3. Suburban lawns and the machines that maintain them.  Why is it, the only people you see on the beautifully manicured, 4-acre lawn encircling your neighbor’s suburban mcmansion are the 20 foreign gentlemen on ride-mowers it takes to give it its weekly haircut?  Did you know that an hour of gas-powered lawnmowing use creates the equivalent emissions of a 100-mile car ride?
4. Green, sustainability experts’ book tours and speaking engagements.  Write a book on saving energy and using sustainable products, and then rack-up the commensurate frequent flier miles and airline emissions selling it to the masses.  I look askance at their buying of guilt…I mean, carbon offsets.
5. Almost anything made in China.  Sure, you saved $1.99 at WalMart buying that Chinese space heater but what have you just done to the environment?  China produces more electricity from coal-powered power plants than even the U.S. (unfortunately, it’s close).  Follow the dotted line – pack thousands of ‘Made-In-China’ Barbie doll knock-offs onto an emissions-spewing container ship bound for a 5,000 mile journey to L.A. or New York, when you get to the docks, put those containers on a diesel burning 18-wheeler truck to get them from Chicago to Omaha where the dolls will hit the shelves of your local big box store.  You’ve just created a Shaq-sized carbon footprint.  Did you really save $1.99?

After being inundated for the past three weeks by press releases related to the fast approaching Earth Day,  I have to admit I’ve begun to just scroll by them in my inbox.  I’ve seen the articles bemoaning the fact that Earth Day isn’t “everyday” and there’s no doubt that it does bring awareness of our critical relationship to Mother Earth to any Somalian pirates, English soccer fans or former members of the Bush administration who may have become distracted and disassociated from the planet, but we don’t all have to jump over the proverbial wall into the polar bear enclosure like some crazed woman at a German zoo.

It seems like I’ve just turned the lights back on from Earth Hour, and now I have to get out there and plant some trees for Earth Day.  Well, I’ve already planted dozens of trees, recycled til my hands bled and coasted down countless hills in my Subaru to save on gas and emissions.  I’m tired, and suffering from Earth Day Fatigue and it’s not even Friday.  Let’s not let Earth Day join the pantheon of over-marketed, over-hyped events that just drone on until only the converted are listening.  I’ve watched “An Inconvenient Truth” until my eyes went blurry and Al Gore started looking like Elton John, so maybe it’s just time to let the newbies get out there and do their thing for the planet.  Please save your energy – hold off on sending me that press release for your compelling article on “Five Ways to Green Your Earth Day Barbecue;” I’ve already been there.