Matt Damon’s Clean Water PSA Freakout

Does Matt Damon secretly have a wicked temper? The Bostonite has been captured on camera giving a verbal ass-kicking to environmentalist and actor Adrian Grenier while filming a PSA for clean water organization OneXOne as Grenier’s fellow Entourage star Jeremy Pervert Piven looks on.

Damon is set to appear in a cameo on Entourage next week promoting OneXOne, which is his real-life charity. Here’s the scoop, from US Magazine via Ecorazzi:

“The joke is that Matt is very passionate about his charity — almost in a stalkerish kind of way,” Adrian Grenier, who plays movie star Vince, said. “Vince becomes intimated by his intensity. He ends up bullying Vince into giving much more than he should.”

Costar Emmanuelle Chriqui, who plays Sloan, added: “Matt gets Vince to make a massive donation. He’s like, ‘Bro – whip out your checkbook!’”

So, of course it’s just promotional for Damon’s appearance on Entourage. But, it’s still funny to see this notorious ‘nice guy’ drop the F-bomb a dozen times in a two-minute clip!

Link [Ecorazzi]

User-Unfriendly Green Gear: Weird Solar-Powered Cell Phone

Imagine that you’re forced to call 911 for some extremely emergent reason – like, say, a psycho killer in a clown costume is chasing you with a chainsaw (my worst nightmare). You whip out your totally awesome solar-powered cell phone… but, wait. You’ve got to mess with weird little stickers before you can place a call.

Okay, so the clown scenario is a little far-fetched, but still – you want your cell phone to be ready when you need it. That makes the strange “Label With Green” phone concept a little hard to swallow, since you’re required to power individual components of the phone with ‘Eco-Green Electronic Labels’.

From Yanko Design, via Treehugger:

Upgrading a redundant cellphone means adding to the pile of toxic trash that accumulates all around the world. The Label With Green is a concept phone aims at weaning you off the upgrade mania. To power the phone you need to use ECO-Green Electronic Labels, which are solar paper labels that juice up the phones various components (display, speaker, keypad, camera, and solar battery) independently. So to turn on any function, say display, you need to stick on enough solar labels onto the rear cover to power it.

The more functions of the phone you want to use, the more solar stickers you need to paste on the rear.

The idea is to make you conscious of the amount of toxic waste being accumulated due to improper disposal of electronic gadgets, our greed for upgrades and the amount of energy we consume to power our stuff. Essentially you can use this concept for a variety of gadgets.

It’s an interesting idea, especially given all the toxic electronic waste that is generated every day in the form of outdated cell phones. But the concept needs some work. As Treehugger noted, the ‘Label with Green’ phone is great as an educational device, but those of us looking for a more environmentally friendly cell phone that’s actually usable will have to keep waiting.

Link [Yanko Design] via [Treehugger]

Add an Upcycled Whip to Your Green Sex Tool Kit

Did you hear? Synthetic, chemical-laden sex aids are out in favor of eco-friendly choices that are healthier for you and healthier for the planet. Hopefully you’ve already given your sex tool kit an eco-makeover with wind-up vibrators, biodegradable condoms and organic lube. Now, you can even add an upcycled whip to your trunk of treasures.

Etsy seller TheInnerWorks turns bicycle inner tubes into “light and extra-stingy eco-floggers” with knotted, fine 12-inch-long tails.

This flogger is made entirely from upcycled and repurposed bicycle tubes that have been discarded and have found a new life in these creations! Each flogger shows subtle signs of these rough-and-tumble past lives- whether slight raised numbers on the rubber or white manufacturers’ marks. These floggers are made without the use of glues or tape, so there’s nothing to crack or get sticky with time.

They’ve even got a recycled inner tube and chain garter, if you’re into that sort of thing. Meow!

Link [TheInnerWorks Etsy]

Hummer Owners Claim Moral High Ground

Most people who buy Hummers do so out of vanity or to make up for certain physical deficiencies. But, Hummer owners themselves actually believe that they’ve got the moral high ground because they’re – get this – defending America’s frontier lifestyle against anti-American critics.

A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research came to this conclusion after the authors researched attitudes toward owning and driving Hummers. They found that Hummer drivers see themselves as patriotic defenders of the American spirit, framing themselves as “moral protagonists” even as they unapologetically contribute to harming the very country they claim to love so much.

From Eurekalert:

“As we studied American Hummer owners and their ideological beliefs, we found that they consider Hummer driving a highly moral consumption choice,” write the authors. “For Hummer owners it is possible to claim the moral high ground.”

The authors explain that Hummer owners employ the ideology of American foundational myths, such as the “rugged individual,” and the “boundless frontier” to construct themselves as moral protagonists. They often believe they represent a bastion again anti-American discourses evoked by their critics.

“Our analysis of the underlying American identity discourses revealed that being under siege by (moral) critics is an historically established feature of being an American,” write the authors. “The moralistic critique of their consumption choices readily inspired Hummer owners to adopt the role of the moral protagonist who defends American national ideals.”

Amazing, isn’t it? Of course, Hummer owners aren’t the only ones that take this stance – conservatives in general employ similar excuses for their desperate attempts to preserve what they see as “the American lifestyle”. To them, being American is apparently synonymous with being selfish assholes who don’t give a shit about the next generation, only about their own desires.

Fuck you and your H2!

Link [Eurekalert]
Photo credit: FUH2

Bottom of the Barrel: Newsweek’s Least Green Companies

Which of the S&P 500 companies are the least environmentally friendly? Newsweek unveiled its Green Rankings last week and while there has been a lot of discussion about the top 5, there’s another story to be told in the bottom 5.

Unsurprisingly, nearly all of the bottom-ranking companies on the Newsweek list are in the energy industry. Here they are with their green scores (based on environmental impact, green policies and performance, and reputation):

Consol Energy – Basic Materials – Green Score: 28.65
ConAgra Foods – Food and Beverage – Green Score: 27.49
Allegheny Energy – Utilities – Green Score: 25.04
NRG Energy – Utilities – Green Score: 22.75
Peabody Energy – Basic Materials – Green Score: 1.00

Pretty big drop there for the bottom company, Peabody Energy (the world’s largest private-sector coal company). Peabody Energy comes in dead last thanks to its incredibly high toxic emissions and the negative impact that its product has on the environment.

This company is one of the biggest offenders in violating the Clean Water Act, injecting billions of gallons of coal slurry and sludge into the ground in the past 5 years. Pine Ridge, a subsidiary of Peabody Energy, reported to West Virginia officials that 93 percent of the waste it injected into the city of Charleston has illegal concentrations of chemicals like arsenic, lead, chromium, beryllium and nickel.

Green business expert Joel Makower has a great overview of how the companies were scored and, as he notes, the list isn’t perfect. Since it’s only a list of the S&P 500, far greener companies than the top 5, like Patagonia, are left out. However, it does bring together a lot of data in a way that’s efficient and easy to understand. If only they included a greenwashing factor – each company’s real efforts versus its claims about being green. Maybe next year.

Link [Newsweek] + [Joel Makower]
Photo credit: PeabodyEnergy.com

How to Live on Earth: Experts Suggest User’s Guide

When it comes to living in harmony with nature, we humans have repeatedly screwed up, big time. But there’s no instruction manual that explains exactly how we should do things so we don’t harm the earth – yet. 28 scientists have suggested nine key areas including freshwater use and chemical pollutants where governments could define limits to ensure a “safe operating space for humanity”.

From Reuters:

“Today we are clearly driving development in the world blindfolded,” Johan Rockstrom, leader of the study and director of the Stockholm Resilience Center at Stockholm University, told Reuters of a lack of international guidelines.

“We are not considering the risks that there are deep holes we can drive into,” he told Reuters. The call, for setting “planetary boundaries,” was published in Thursday’s edition of the journal Nature.

Rockstrom said there were signs human activities had already pushed the world into the danger zone because of global warming, a high rate of extinctions of animals and plants and pollution caused by nitrogen, mainly used in fertilizers.

Among limits, they suggested capping the percentage of global land area converted to cropland at 15 percent. At the moment, the percentage is 11.7 percent, they said.

Though conservatives are probably shrieking in terror at the idea of global guidelines for a range of human activities, such a ‘user’s guide’ would be extremely helpful in uniting people around the world with a common goal of keeping this planet a safe and healthy place to live. Imagine if world leaders had concocted such a guide back at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution – the world would probably be a much cleaner, healthier place today.

It would definitely have to be a group effort, however, without giving any one person or organization too much say in how the guidelines were developed. Otherwise, we could end up with another Bible on our hands (and Great Flying Spaghetti Monster, we sure as hell don’t need that.)

Link [Reuters]
Photo credit: Alan Dean/Woodley Wonderworks

Ancient, Bizarre New Species of Ghostshark Discovered

The Eastern Pacific Black Ghostshark is a bizarre, highly unusual, newly discovered species… yet it was found off the coast of California. This ‘chimaera’ is part of an ancient and strange group of fish that branched off from sharks, in terms of evolution, nearly 400 million years ago. They’re normally found in deep waters.

From Science Daily:

The new species, the Eastern Pacific black ghostshark (Hydrolagus melanophasma), was described in the September issue of the international journal Zootaxa by a research team including Academy Research Associates David Ebert and Douglas J. Long. Additional co-authors included Kelsey James, a graduate student at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, and Dominique Didier from Millersville University in Pennsylvania. This is the first new species of cartilaginous fish to be described from California waters since 1947.

This new species belongs to the genus Hydrolagus, Latin for ‘water rabbit’ because of its grinding tooth plates reminiscent of a rabbit’s incisor teeth. This new species was originally collected as early as the mid 1960s, but went unnamed until this year because its taxonomic relationships were unclear. A large blackish-purple form, Hydrolagus melanophasma (melanophasma is Latin for ‘black ghost’), is found in deep water from the coast of Southern California, along the western coast of Baja California, and into the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California). This species is known from a total of nine preserved museum specimens, and from video footage taken of it alive by a deep-water submersible in the Sea of Cortez.

Deep sea creatures are so fascinating, aren’t they? Finding new species is always fun, but it’s even more interesting when they are so ancient and have remained mostly unchanged for millenia. The sea is packed with so many amazing, mysterious things.

Link [Science Daily]

For Shame: UGA Tailgaters Leave Behind Trash, Sewage

Jerkass fans of the University of Georgia football team descended upon the Athens, Georgia campus last weekend and left a wake of trash, abandoned grills, urine and feces behind when they left. And this is far from the first time it has happened.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that tailgaters left the lawn covered with 70 tons of trash. They peed in doorways and shat in various places that are definitely not toilets. UGA President Michael Adams said he was “appalled” and is asking for help from fans before the next home game to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

From AJC:

“There were tons and tons of trash and lots of inappropriate behavior that most of our fans don’t like or tolerate,” he said.  “It’s not pervasive. I don’t know if it’s 15 or 20 percent, but it is a substantial enough group. But if you’re going to haul all this stuff in for pregame, why not add a recyclable bag or two and either take it with you or put it on the side of the street where the appropriate people can take it away?”

“What happened last week is typical,” said George Stafford, UGA’s associate vice president for auxiliary and administrative services. “It takes 200 to 300 people on Sunday morning to pick up and bag up all the trash, throw it on a truck and haul it out to the landfill. A typical day game produces 35 to 40 tons of trash. A night SEC game like this we have 70 or more tons.”

Stafford said last year’s “Blackout Game” against Alabama produced a record 75 tons of trash on campus.

Are these people Neanderthals or what? Seriously, aren’t college sports fans supposed to have some pride in their schools? Sure, sports crowds can get unruly anywhere in the world, but to walk away at the end of the night and leave this much destruction is just shameful.

Wake up, people: there are these things called trash bags and toilets that keep us from having to live in filth. Party foul x 1000.

Link [AJC]
Photo credit: Tom Ritch

GOP Politicians Parrot False Climate Bill Talking Points

What’s more important – actual facts, or talking points filled with false figures designed to knock down the competition at any cost? To the GOP, it’s clearly the latter. They’ve never been known for fighting fair, but in the past year or so the Republican Party has apparently decided that anything goes, with a series of jaw-droppingly dirty tactics centered upon outright lies and propaganda.

So, it’s not too surprising that eight GOP politicians are continuing to parrot talking points about the supposed costs of climate legislation, despite the fact that they’ve been repeatedly proven false. The $1,761 figure is an inflated estimate of the cost of a bill that was never even considered by Congress.

Hell, in the right-wing sphere, claims made on the news don’t have to have any basis in truth whatsoever. ThinkProgress has a great rundown on the process used to spread these false figures (via The Huffington Post):

STEP ONE: “News” generated by right-wing think tank.

STEP TWO: Right-wing print journalists write “breaking news” story.

STEP THREE: Promoted by Drudge, story repeated endlessly on right-wing blogs, Twitter, and talk radio.

STEP FOUR: Republican politicians, right-wing think tanks, and polluter front groups release statements of shock and outrage.

STEP FIVE: On Fox News, Glenn Beck calls President Obama a liar/socialist/Marxist/communist/fascist/racist.

Josh Nelson of EnviroKnow listed the many politicians who have repeated the false figure including Sen. Lamar Alexander, Sen. James Inhofe, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Rep. Roy Blunt, Rep. Fred Upton, Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, House Minority Leader John Boehner and House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence. Check out the details at The Huffington Post – it’s truly sickening.

The GOP is happy to use any means necessary to protect their wealth and power against any perceived threat, real or imaginary. But who cares about climate change or health care as long as Republicans can keep their Hummers and McMansions?

Link [ThinkProgress] + [The Huffington Post]
Photo credit: Flickr user Ingrid Taylar

Current Green’s Weird Green Video Film Festival

There are plenty of bizarre green videos out there – from ‘Magic Marvelous Compost Bin’ to the Kate Moss paper doll video we featured last week – and Current Green wants to bring them all together for a fabulous film festival of weirdness.

Among the videos nominated for the festival are cheeky rap song ‘In My Prius’, ‘Due to Global Warming, Hell Freezes Over’ and ‘Eco Boy’. Watch Eco Boy kick the evil Pollutor in the balls right here:

Got a weird green video you want to nominate? Head over to Current Green, and check out the rest of the videos while you’re there.

Link [Current Green]

When Trees Attack: Woman Impaled by Falling Limb

Trees are not always our friends. Just ask Sonny Bono… oh, wait, you can’t. Because A TREE KILLED HIM. Well, you can ask Michelle Childers, the woman who miraculously survived being impaled in the neck by a wayward tree limb that was hell-bent on destruction.

Childers was enjoying a leisurely drive on a rural road in Idaho on September 5th with her husband when a spruce tree crashed through the passenger side window of the vehicle. All she felt was a “strange pressure” as her husband told her she’d been impaled.

They drove to a nearby lodge for help, and a helicopter transported her to the hospital where the tree limb was safely removed after 6 hours of surgery.

The photos and video are a gruesome reminder that just about anything, no matter how innocent it may seem, can be deadly. Watch out for that tree!

Link [The Huffington Post]

Want Big Veggies? Pee in Your Fireplace Ashes

Just about anyone will tell you that pee and food don’t mix. The idea of someone urinating on your food before it makes its way onto your plate is probably enough to make you feel a little nauseous – but, surprise! Piss can make veggies grow bigger and tastier, especially when mixed with wood ash.

It’s common knowledge that urine is good for compost – some gardeners even install toilet seats above their compost piles to make it easier for women to contribute. Now, a study has confirmed that human urine mixed with wood ash can produce as many high-quality tomatoes as synthetic fertilizers without risks to human health.

From Science Daily:

In the study, Surendra Pradhan and colleagues point out that urine, a good source of nitrogen, has been successfully used to fertilize cucumber, corn, cabbage, and other crops. Only a few studies, however, have investigated the use of wood ash, which is rich in minerals and also reduces the acidity of certain soils. Scientists have not reported on the combinaton of urine and wood ash, they say.

The new study found that plants fertilized with urine produced four times more tomatoes than nonfertilized plants and as much as plants given synthetic fertilizer. Urine plus wood ash produced almost as great a yield, with the added benefit of reducing the acidity of acid soils. “The results suggest that urine with or without wood ash can be used as a substitute for mineral fertilizer to increase the yields of tomato without posing any microbial or chemical risks,” the report says.

So, basically, if you want big tomatoes, just pee in your fireplace ashes and then spread them on the soil. Cheap, easy, and your drunken party guests will be more than happy to assist. Gotta love it!

Link [Science Daily]
Photo credit: Flickr user Wonker

Belgian Farmers go on Milk-Dumping Binge to Protest Low Prices

In Europe, you can get a liter of milk for 20 (Euro) cents. That doesn’t even begin to cover dairy farmers’ expenses – and to make a point, they’ve dumped millions of liters of the cow secretions into a field. The mass dumping was just the latest move in a protest that has also included blocking deliveries and holding back supplies.

From Reuters:

They blame both the European Commission and local governments and about 7,000 liters of milk was dumped in front of German agriculture ministry buildings in Bonn on Saturday.

Leaders of the protests say they want the European Union to freeze planned increases in production quotas and on Wednesday they demanded the creation of a pan-European institution to regulate the demand and supply of milk.

“It is really sad that we have to throw away the milk,” Romuald Schaber, president of the European Milk Board, said at a demonstration in Belgium where protesting farmers watched hundreds of tractors spew milk over fields.

“Our demands were not heard by the politicians.”

That field is seriously going to stink like hell for a while – and imagine all the hormones seeping into the soil. What a waste. Ironically, over in Britain, there’s a milk shortage, with British farmers saying they simply can’t meet the demand for milk. Dairies and supermarkets in Britain have to import millions of liters a day from abroad, but apparently that’s not enough to help out the angry European dairy farmers.

Link [Reuters] + [Times Online]
Photo credit: BBC

Naked Kate Moss Paper Doll Warns Against Overconsumption

What does turning model Kate Moss into a used-up hag have to do with being green? Well, Kate teamed up with Green Thing to create a pair of videos that are basically like a green version of the movie Sliding Doors. In the first one, Kate, played by a paper doll, takes every chance to consume as much as possible, and in the second she reuses and recycles things instead.

Green Thing says:

Take one person and make her the ultimate twister, taking every chance to consume something new. Now take the same person and make them the ultimate sticker, sticking with what they had wherever possible. How different would their lives be? That was question that the talented animators David Altweger, Mira Loew, Guillaume Cornet of Unit 10 Collective (www.unit10collective.com) wanted to explore – with one super-ironic twist. What if that person was the world’s premier consumption temptress, a certain Katherine Ann Moss? The result is a brilliant slice of double stop frame fantasy exclusive to Green Thing.

Check it out:

As the soundtrack repeats “New dress, new bag, new phone, new shoes, new man, new phone, but still not happy,” Kate is seen caught in the cycle of consumerism, slowly falling apart over the years until her death in 2037 (announced with the headline, “Overused Kate disintegrates in club”).

But the alternate reality Kate happily dances away in a garden to the tune of “Keep it – play with it – mend it – love it.”

To say that it’s bizarre is putting it mildly – why is there something coming out of her boob? Who are the scary faceless black cutouts in the club? Why is Bruno still front-page news in 2037? But beneath the weirdness is a good message: reuse good. Overconsumption bad.

Link [Green Thing]

Robot Seeks Out Toxic Waste Dumped by the Mafia

The mafia is going to have to rethink dumping toxic waste into Italian waters now that there’s a robot submarine on their trail. Italian authorities have deployed the underwater surveillance robot to a shipwreck off the Calabrian coast to see if it’s loaded with radioactive waste. An informant has told police that the ship may be part of a lucrative toxic waste-dumping scheme.

From The Huffington Post:

Calabrian prosecutor Bruno Giordano has cautioned in TV interviews that that until the contents of containers on the sunken ship are known, he can’t say if the allegations by a mob turncoat about the ship are true.

The robot sub began filming Saturday. On Tuesday, it was still unclear what the cargo held, or even if the ship was the Cunsky cargo vessel that turncoat Francesco Fonti has spoken about to magistrates and in interviews on Italian TV.

No name of the ship is visible, and it wasn’t known if someone had removed the name or if algae might have covered up writing.

Giordano said the former mobster, Francesco Fonti, from the Calabria-based ‘ndrangheta crime syndicate, has claimed the mob sank “hundreds” of barrels of illegally disposed of waste.

It won’t be surprising at all if it turns out the ship is carrying toxic waste. The Italian mob is renowned for orchestrating serious offenses against the environment in addition to their other crimes, dumping toxic waste on rural lands and in the waters off foreign countries for huge sums of money.

And, crazy as it may sound, this surveillance submarine is far from the first robotic pollution-detector. UK scientists developed creepily lifelike robotic fish that will be released off the coast of Northern Spain in 2011 to collect data on pollution.

Link [The Huffington Post]

Mysterious Glow in the Sky was Astronaut Urine

A trail of light sparkled through the sky on Wednesday night, observed by some skygazers who marveled at its beauty. Was it a shooting star, or some other romantic celestial occurrence? No. It was astronaut piss.

Astronauts aboard the space shuttle Discovery were merely dumping water and urine out into space in preparation for a landing attempt on Thursday. Poor weather forced them to postpone, but the Discovery safely landed in California on Friday.

From Space.com:

The light show Wednesday was aided by an unusually large amount of water being dumped all at once – about 150 pounds (68 kg), said NASA spokeswoman Kylie Clem. Discovery had just undocked from the International Space Station the day before, and had not been able to unload waste water during the 10-day visit.

“It would have been a large quantity because we don’t do water dumps while docked to the station now,” Clem told SPACE.com in an e-mail. “That is a fairly new restriction over the last couple of flights in order to prevent potential contamination of the Kibo module.”

The Kibo module is a new Japanese-built research lab on the space station that includes an external platform to expose science experiments to the space environment. Water dumps from a docked shuttle could potentially pollute the experiments.

So, why would dumping water cause a shimmering light trail in the sky? When astronauts dump waste water, it usually freezes into a cloud of tiny ice droplets. When the sun hits them, the ice turns into water vapor and disperses in space.

It’s probably safe to say that piss has never been so pretty.

Link [Space.com]
Photo credit: Painting by Scott Listfield via BOOOOOOOM; Inset: Space.com

Jay Leno Show to Feature Green Celebrity Car Races

A new time slot isn’t the only change coming this fall as Jay Leno takes the helm of his own late night show after leaving The Tonight Show. MNN spoke to Leno, who’s a major car buff, about one cool (and somewhat strange) addition to his new show: an eco racetrack, where celebrity guests will face off a couple times a week in the Green Car Challenge.

From MNN:

Ford is supplying electric Focus models outfitted with in-car cameras and microphones.

“All celebrities talk about being green. We want to see who is green and fast,” Leno tells MNN. He got the idea from the attention he’d get — especially from women — whenever he drove one of his electric or hydrogen-cell vehicles (which he parks in a solar-paneled garage) to work.

“It’ll be fun to see if Shaquille O’Neal is faster than Cameron Diaz,” says Leno, noting that Tom Cruise requested a practice run — and was denied. “Nobody gets to practice,” he warns. Drew Barrymore has already accepted the challenge, and Leno would love to get race enthusiast Patrick Dempsey. No word yet on whether first guest Jerry Seinfeld will get behind the wheel.

Hey, it’s a slight deviation from the standard late night older-white-dude-behind-a-desk schtick, so it just might draw in some extra viewers. And Leno knows a thing or two about green cars. Though his huge car collection may not exactly qualify as eco-friendly, a number of those vehicles are ultra-efficient and/or powered with renewable energy. He also co-designed the EcoJet concept, which runs on biodiesel.

“The Jay Leno Show” debuts tonight, September 14th, at 10pm EST on NBC.

Link [MNN]
Photo credit: GM

World Bank Funds Destructive Palm Oil Industry

Should the World Bank be lending to the Indonesian palm oil industry, which is an environmental disaster, when the Bank may be called upon to manage international forest carbon funds? Rainforest Rescue definitely doesn’t think so – and they want your help in getting the Bank to end finance of industrial development that impacts rainforests.

From Rainforest Portal:

The World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) ignored its own environmental and social protection standards when it approved over a twenty year period nearly $200 million in loan guarantees for palm oil production in Indonesia. The IFC has temporarily frozen new investments in oil palm projects and is reviewing all current oil palm projects. The message must be conveyed to the World Bank that oil palm and any finance of industrial development that deforests or diminishes primary tropical rainforest must permanently end. And certainly oil palm — or any logging of primary forests, or replacement of primary forests with plantations — is not worthy of REDD forest carbon funding.

Indonesia is home to large primary rainforests and peat swamps, which naturally hold and continue to remove carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas that causes climate change.  Rampant destruction of these forests, largely to make way for palm oil plantations, has caused giant releases of CO2 into the atmosphere, making Indonesia the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet.  Oil palm inevitably causes widespread clearance of forests and peatlands and the theft of indigenous peoples’ lands.  Auditors found that Wilmar International Ltd., the recipient of IFC loans, was illegally using fire to clear primary forests, and seizing Indigenous peoples land without free, prior, and informed consent.

Protest this conflict of interest at the Rainforest Portal website by simply adding your name and email address to a protest email that will be sent to IFC officials.

Learn more about how palm oil production is threatening endangered orangutans and other wildlife, destroying Indonesian rainforests and ‘cooking the climate’ at Greenpeace.

Link [Rainforest Portal] + [Greenpeace]
Photo credit: Redapes.org

Smug Glenn Beck Not Smart Enough to Come Up with Van Jones Attacks

Glenn Beck, idiot wannabe provocateur of Fox News, is undoubtedly more than happy to take the credit for Van Jones’ resignation as green jobs adviser to the Obama administration – but the fact is, he just isn’t doesn’t have the brainpower to be the mastermind behind the attacks.

Beck launched a vicious smear campaign against Jones, accusing him of being a communist and 9/11 truther among other things, on national television. But the campaign was actually orchestrated by Americans for Prosperity, a conservative think-tank that’s also responsible for a vast global warming denial campaign.

From DeSmogBlog:

On Fox News forum AFP’s director of policy, Phil Kerpen brags about how his organization brought down Van Jones:

“I spent the next two weeks researching everything I could find about Jones and the Apollo Alliance (much of which is still to be published, including a forthcoming paper from the Capital Research Center next month), the national umbrella organization for coordinating between the environmentalists, the labor unions, and the social justice street organizers that Jones has served as a board member and a primary national spokesman for.”

This was all then fed to Glenn Beck who gleefully took it to town and hammered away on Van Jones. No kidding, Beck is bent on bringing this administration to its knees and rallying the right-wing fringe players to follow suit. And it won’t stop here, the likes of Kerpen and AFP have found their rallying cry: “Don’t argue clean energy, but instead paint Obama’s policies as a socialist/communist plot to control America.”

There’s no doubt that Jones made a mistake when he signed that 9/11 petition – but he’s not a Truther, nor do any of the other epithets thrown at him recent weeks apply. David Roberts of Grist wrote two excellent articles about the whole debacle that refute the accusations made against Jones (Cleaning Some of the Fox Off Van Jones and Thoughts on Van Jones’ Resignation).

Is it any surprise that Americans for Prosperity has received vast amounts of cash from Exxon in the past? This is an anti-green organization that will do anything to preserve the status quo, and they’re happy to take down anyone in their way. Beck is just their puppet.

Link [DeSmogBlog]

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