In Which We Throw Much Link Love to Our #1 Commenter Roy

We’re just a week or so away from launching our new and improved site design and actually starting to marketing this beotch to the rest of the net. For the past two months or so we’ve been tinkering with things behind the scene, getting our voice worked out, finding good writers to help us bring great content to the site, and everything besides actually driving page views.

When our new design is up and running we’ll turn on the traffic machine and expect a veritable flood of new readers, linkers, and commenters. But all this time it’s been pretty lonely. Lonely, except for our #1 (and only regular) commenter Roy. Before things get crowded around here I wanted to give him a big thanks for participating and encourage all our other handful of regular readers to go visit his site All Your Green.

Thanks Roy! We appreciate you taking the time to let us know what you think about our writing.

Link [All Your Green]

Confessions of A Greenwasher: Like an AA Meeting, but with More Guilt

Hello, my name is Stephanie Rogers, and I’m a former greenwasher. It’s true. I know, I’m ashamed. I’m a writer and graphic designer from Asheville, North Carolina and once worked for a company that was attempting to jump on the eco-friendly bandwagon. When I say attempting, I mean they had good intentions and were really trying to be legit, but realized after a good six months of planning that they were in way over their heads.

Being the staff writer, I was in charge of coming up with all kinds of ways to justify calling the products we were selling ‘green’. “Was part of it possibly handmade? Can we verify whether it was handmade by an 8-year-old in Cambodia? No? Okay… hmm.” It could get particularly challenging when said product had, for example, a solar component, but the main part of it was shipped in on a boat from China. Moral dilemmas galore.

That’s just one of many reasons why I’m happy to be joining EarthFirst. I’m excited that instead of being a part of the problem, I can now be a part of the revolution that’s gathering steam - the call to change. I’m dedicated to earth friendly practices in my own life and am constantly seeking ways I can improve, and I’m psyched to share in that process with all of you. So howdy, EarthFirst readers - I hope this is the start of a beautiful friendship (sniff).

Excuse the Mess as We Renovate the Ol’ Site

We’re going to be rolling out our new site design over the next week or so. We have a lot to tweak and massaging to do so things may look a bit messy for a few days. Rest assured that at the end of our work you’ll have a much nicer, easier to use site to get your daily dose of green snark.

What Are The Other Green Blogs Are Doing Today for April Fools Day?

Here’s a round up of some of the April Fools Day fun bouncing around the green blogosphere today.

Plenty Magazine: ExxonMobil creates new oil based sports drink that sequesters CO2 within anyone who drinks it.

Environmental Graffiti: Al Gore and Crew Admit: Global Warming is a Big ol’ Hoax.

Ecorazzi: PETA will be changing their name after a disastrous pita bread lunch mixup.

EcoGeek: Virgin and Google announced plans to colonize Mars- Sergey Brin and Larry Page will join Richard Branson as some of the first colonists.

Inhabitat: Scientists have made a technological breakthrough in the development of super efficient rainbow panels.

Treehugger: TH takes a look at the carbon footprint of carbon footprint calculators. We wonder what the carbon footprint of the post is.

Happy April Fool’s Day From EarthFirst

I spent a lot of time thinking about how we wanted to roll out on April Fool’s Day. Images of headlines screaming about Al Gore being caught in a dirty motel with Bill O’Reilly and a 17 year old swirled around in my head as I went to sleep. I wanted to do something unique, something beyond the usual silly story about Exxon-Mobil going green. I wanted to do something that hasn’t been done.

So we’re going to celebrate a delayed April Fool’s Day. We will publish three posts sometime in the next year that are written in grand April Fool’s Day fashion. The first reader who picks up on it and calls us out on it in the comments will get a shiny badge, a parade*, and a cool $100.

If you know what you’re getting for Christmas it makes unwrapping your presents a lot less fun. Knowing you’re going to be pranked on a certain day of the year gives the same effect- much better to get hit on the side of the head with our prank hammer when you’re least expecting it. It’s our gift to you.

We’ll be doing roundups of all the April Fool’s action on the green blogosphere today. There will be some good ones and some goats, we’re looking forward to spending the day sorting through them all.

Oh, and I’d like to announce that EarthFirst (us) has acquired Earth First! (the radical eco-activists)for $4.3M in cash and stock. We’re going to merge our snarky green capitalism with their radical eco-activism and form EarthFirstEarth First!, leading provider of organic Kabbalah bracelets. Press release to follow.

Photo credit: Flickr user INTVGene

*- Winner will not actually get a parade. We were lying there.

Catch Us After You Plug Back In: EarthFirst is Liveblogging Earth Hour Tonight 8-9pm

I’ll be liveblogging tonight from 8-9pm to help celebrate Earth Hour, the 60 minute span when the world is being asked to turn off all lights and electricity. I will be camped out at EarthFirst HQ East (my living room) with all my lights on watching the TV set to something good and trashy while warming my hands over my plugin heater. My posts will cover what I’m watching on TV, any snacks I happen to make, and the general atmosphere in the room as we suck up all the excess energy left on the power grid by the rest of you do-gooders.

If you’re a good little greenie you’ll have to catch up on things after you plug back into the system at 9pm. Woot.

Q&A With Mr. Cranky Green: Send Us Your Questions!!!!!

We’re starting a new feature here at EarthFirst called “Q&A with Mr. Cranky Green“. Every Tuesday we’ll be bringing you questions asked by readers and answered by our very own Mr. Cranky Green, a amalgamation of EarthFirst personalities and anonymity that we hope will add a little crack up to your day.

You can send questions about the environment, “going green”, green business, gadgets, environmental activism, or anything else under the eco sky to CrankyGreen@earthfirst.com. We’ll pick the ones that don’t suck and answer them here for all to read.

Send us some questions so we don’t have to make them up. To sweeten the deal we’ll send some free green swag or whatnots to ya if we choose your question.

EarthFirst Blog Week in Review: March 10th - 14th

It was another busy last week here at the EarthFirst blog. We covered samurai swords, expensive green washed handbags, big business green hijinks by GM and Wal-Mart, expensive gas, the green Pope, “clean coal” crap, and toilet paper. We’ve nailed down the design for the new template which we’ll be rolling out in a few weeks. It looks great and we’re really excited to show it to our readers. Happy reading!

Have you subscribed to our RSS Feed? Why the hell not!?! Get on it already.

• Grocery Bills Soar as Retail Food Prices Spiral Up
• The War on Iraq is Costing $4,000 a Second, or About $120,000 in the Time It Took to Write This Headline
• Global Warming Doesn’t Necessarily Mean It Gets Warmer Everywhere All The Time
• Rant: Shut the F*&% Up About High Gas Prices
• Animals vs. Humans: Humanity Gets Pwned
• The Vatican Declares that Polluting the Earth is Now a Sin
• The Three Ingredient Vegan Junk Food You’ve Probably Been Eating for Years
• EcoGeek Kills “Clean Coal” Ad and Calls Them Out for the Greenwash
• Florida Senator Pushing Bill to Require Restaurants to Have “Enough” Toilet Paper on Roll
• GM CEO Rick Wagoner: Vice Chairman Bob Lutz Doesn’t Speak for GM on Global Warming
• Doggie Style Commute: Ride the Bitch Cruiser to Not-Safe-for-Work
• Coal- Cheap. Abundant. Cheap.
• What is RSS and How Can It Make My Life Better?
• Want to Create Jobs? Invest in Education and Mass Transit
• A $360 Cardboard Bag Coated with Water-Resistant Spray with a Leather Handle is NOT Green
• The Friday Video Round Up: Will Ferrell, Big Angry Fat Guys, Al Gore, and the Hummer Hybrid
• Wal-Mart CEO is a Master of the Obvious: Our Company is Not Green
• Japan Steel Works- Builds 600 Ton Parts for Nuclear Power Plants and Samurai Swords
• Eco-Fail! HGTV’s Green Home Giveaway and The Yukon Hybrid

What is RSS and How Can It Make My Life Better?

If you don’t know what RSS is, watch this 3 minute video. Then subscribe to our RSS feed. You’ll feel loads better and will probably get a raise at work.

EarthFirst Blog Week in Review: March 3rd - 7th

Last week was a good one if only because I turned 30 on Saturday. Three cheers for Pisces!

You can feel Spring in the air here in Maine, though we’re probably due for another good storm or three. We’re slowly ramping up things on the ol’ blog here and should be getting our Official Launch on in the next few weeks. You’ll start to see some new writers get into the mix and our editorial intern Caroline starts this week. Yeeeehaw!

Here are the headlines from Earthfirst.com from March 3rd through the 7th.

• The Internet Saves 10 Watts of Energy for Every Watt it Uses
• War’s a Comin’! Alabama, Georgia and Florida Will Fight it Out Over Water
  
• Bush 0 Whales 1, Federal Court Rules Against Use of Navy Sonar
• Al Gore Calls out Major Media at TED: Ask More Green Questions to Presidential Candidates
• It’s a Long Way Back to The Office- A Pull Back in Work At Home Policies?
  
• Very Stupid Eco-Arsonists Torch Green Homes in Seattle Suburb
• Tiny Homes Are Full of Awesome, 100 Square Foot Tumbleweed Tour Video
  
• Higher Gas Prices + Road Congestion = Greener Mass Transit
• Great Flying Spaghetti Monster! Look at Those Gas Prices!
  
• Alyssa Milano Makes a Very Strong Argument for Vegetarianism
• Ripping Off Mother Nature For Design Tips Nets Better Wind Turbines
  
• George Bush Bends Space and Time to Recast America as a Leader on Climate Change
• The Pedal Powered Snow Plow Is Chock Full of Awesome
  
• Tripp Isenhour, Pro Golfer and Dick, Kills a Hawk with a Well Aimed Bal
• Bullet Proof Vest Saves Anti-Whaling Activist from Japanese Whaler’s Bullet
  
• Clearly You’re Doing it Wrong
• The Friday Crazy: The Can Man Suit is 35lbs. of Aluminum Can Awesome

Next Page »