Eco Clothing Store Owner Sued for $20M After Exposing Scam

When business owner Leslie Richard of eco-clothing store The Oko Box was first contacted by Vision Media Television, the offer of an interview for a documentary about eco fashion they were producing sounded like a great opportunity.  VMT’s producer told Leslie that the documentary would air on CNN and PBS and that it would be seen by 84 million viewers worldwide.

Of course, there was a catch: the company demanded $22,900 in production fees and $3,000 airfare to do the program.  Leslie told The Mountain Xpress, “I was shocked.  I didn’t know what to say. My store doesn’t have that kind of money.”

It wasn’t long before some searching on the internet revealed VMT’s questionable history, with several reports of scams on consumer-report websites like the Ripoff Report.  Leslie wrote about what happened on The Oko Box Blog, including several email exchanges with VMT in which they try to rationalize the charges and react indignantly when Leslie tells them she has reported them to the Better Business Bureau.  One reads, “You need to call me before spreading wrong information about our company in any way. Vision Media Television’s Legal Department will follow up with you promptly if you do not.”

Unfortunately, when Leslie didn’t remove the blog postings – in the hope that she could help other small businesses that might be similarly targeted – VMT’s legal department did just that. Leslie has been served with a $20 million dollar lawsuit – an amount that a small business like The Oko Box could never pay.

The federal lawsuit, filed in the Southern U.S. District of Florida on July 17th, accuses Leslie of defamation, libel and “tortious interference with business relationship.”  Leslie, who lives in Asheville, North Carolina, is trying to figure out how to deal with the lawsuit, hoping she’ll be able to get it transferred to her state and find a lawyer to represent her pro-bono.  She has answered the summons and written a motion herself to try to get the lawsuit dismissed or transferred.

The Mountain Xpress has more information about VMT’s false claims, reports of them scamming others and the details of the lawsuit.  The New York Times also wrote a piece about VMT on August 15th, “Company Pitches a Television Production, and Nonprofit Groups Are Wary”.

Talk about jerkass haters. We wish Leslie much luck in this – we know that VMT’s claims will be thrown out.  They’re ridiculous.  Surely, a U.S. court will be able to recognize a scam for what it is.  Hopefully, the press that this story has picked up will help ensure that other business owners avoid being scammed out of their own hard-earned money.

Link [The Oko Box] + [Mountain Xpress] + [The New York Times]
Photo credit: Tooth and Jaw

Why You’re a Global Warming Denier

So, you don’t believe that global warming is real. You might fall into the ranks of those who think it’s all a big hoax engineered by Al Gore to take your money, or perhaps you make money off oil, pollution-creating factories or other environment killers. There are a lot of reasons that global warming denial can affect you, and you may experience a broad range of symptoms. These symptoms don’t just affect you; they’re harmful to everyone around you.

Global warming denial hurts. EarthFirst.com can help. Here are some common reasons for global warming denial, and what you can do to treat them.

Because you fear change.

You may be among our country’s elder generations, who share a collective re-imagining of how America used to be in the fabled ‘good old days’. In your mind, America was at its best in the 1950s: a time of wholesomeness, when family values came first. You’ve conveniently forgotten that the reality of this time period doesn’t exactly match up with ‘Leave it to Beaver’ or picturesque Norman Rockwell scenes of burgers and malts at the diner – but that doesn’t even matter anymore. You can’t imagine a future where things vary too much from this idealized model – in your mind, that would be a big step down.

The fear of change is closely related to ‘I’m an American, and You Can’t Tell Me What to Do’ syndrome. You believe that you’re entitled to the things you’ve gotten used to: unlimited use of personal vehicles running on cheap gas, homes far larger than they need to be, hundreds of electronic gadgets plugged into your power outlets, 20-minute showers. Basically, using resources as much as you want because, in your mind, you’ve earned it. What you fail to understand is that you’ve grown up in an era of waste and excess, and now you’re spoiled. The prospect of giving up all of those things to ‘save the planet’ makes you angry or scared because damn it, they’re yours and you don’t wanna.

The first step is accepting that change is inevitable. The world is in constant flux. You can’t freeze it and live forever in a bubble of idealism. Things are going to shift and alter around you in a never-ending stream that will drive you insane unless you just let go. The Roman Empire fell. Periods of prosperity don’t last forever. And for that matter, all of the fierce patriotism you can muster up doesn’t make the way America has been doing things right. You may think of wastefulness and complete disregard of the consequences of your lifestyle as the American Way, but the fact is that the world can’t sustain that lifestyle anymore. For a reality check, we recommend watching the documentary The 11th Hour, which quite effectively explains the need for changes to the way we live. But don’t worry too much – the truth is, the world will go on without you, and younger generations aren’t attached to your unreasonable ideals.

Because you’re too caught up in your petty everyday life.

You’re remodeling your kitchen, planning a wedding, trying to decide whether to change your hairstyle and mentally preparing for that weeklong visit from your in-laws. Tonight, Lisa and Dean are coming over to watch The Hills and help you choose nail polish colors, oh and can you believe what LC said to Brody the other day?! Who has time to care about the environment? You don’t believe in global warming because you don’t have the first idea what it even means. You have way too much going on.

The first step is to turn off the television, for the love of god. We’re a nation of zombies who can discuss the latest episode of Grey’s Anatomy ad nauseum but don’t know the first thing about real problems that affect our lives and our surroundings. You know, stuff going on outside that pane of glass that leads to the real world rather than the one that displays advertising with some mindless prepackaged entertainment thrown in every now and then.

You tend to think that what’s going on in your everyday life is more important than the overall scheme of things. This is called narcissism, folks. To get a feel for what the rest of the world is like, we recommend going on a trip to a place like Africa, India or China to help you understand that the world doesn’t revolve around you. Or, you could just volunteer some time at a local homeless shelter or participate in a clean up in a poor community. It might just help awaken you to the fact that there are more important things than who’s screwing who on Desperate Housewives or what you’re wearing to that party tonight, and that might – MIGHT! – lead to awareness of the world at large and the problems affecting it.

Because you’re uneducated or misinformed.

Your neighbor told you that Al Gore is a swindler and that he and a few companies that stand to profit made up the whole ‘global warming’ thing to rob people of their hard-earned money. An email you got from a co-worker said that climate change is caused by sunspots. You read an article on some website (you can’t remember which) that said the earth is actually cooling down, which obviously disproves the global warming theory, right?

The problem is, none of the people who created all of the nonsense you’ve swallowed as truth are scientists. There’s a lot of misinformation out there. We live in a country where email forwards touting ridiculous claims spread like wildfire regardless of whether there’s a grain of truth to them, because nobody bothers to fact-check. People want to believe something so badly that they pass it on as truth, and the more it gets passed on, the more people believe it. But, that doesn’t make it true. Worse yet, there are a lot of people out there paid by lobbyists and/or corporations to pump out misinformation about climate change. Did we not learn from the ‘cigarettes don’t cause cancer’ fiasco?

The answer is to do some research yourself instead of sounding like an uneducated jackass who just repeats lines that have been fed to you. Seek out authoritative sources. And Jesus tapdancing Christ, stop watching Fox News.

Because you make money off dirty products and/or practices.

The factory that makes the widgets your company sells emits dark billowing pollution from its smokestacks on a daily basis. You’re not entirely sure what’s coming out of there, but one thing you are sure of is that it would be expensive for you to change the way your company operates in order to reduce harmful emissions. Or, perhaps your fortune – or the fortune you’re still seeking – is tied to a polluting industry like oil, and you don’t have the balls to be innovative and seek out moneymaking opportunities in the emerging clean energy industries.

Corporations are reckless polluters, and they fear that climate change legislation will affect their bottom line. The ones run by people with a conscience have already begun working on ways to change, while the rest deny global warming because they don’t want to admit that they’re doing something harmful. Hey, it’s understandable that you don’t want to see everything you’ve worked for go down the drain – but the fact remains that there is a clear right and wrong in this case. If you consider yourself to be a good person, taking a critical and open-minded look at how your business might be harming the environment (and along with it, human health) is the right thing to do. If you’re a slimy, greedy jerk who only cares about making money, see the final item below, ‘Because you’re an asshole’.

Because your religion has caused you to believe that it’s impossible.

The bible doesn’t say anything about global warming, and you take the bible literally, not considering the possibility that a) the bible is creative fiction written by people trying to further their own interests or b) the bible was meant as a guide to moral behavior, not a line-by-line manual to the world. Plus, you think that any day now, you’re going to be beamed up into the clouds to sit around a strum a harp all day while the rest of us are tortured in very creative ways back here on earth, so who cares?

Many religious folk intentionally walk around as if they’ve got blinders on because they don’t want to be exposed to information that may cause them to doubt ‘the word’, often believing that science is the tool of the devil. Religion is a tricky thing. It can be a shining light in the darkness for some people, but it’s also a major cause of death and destruction.

Religion and reason aren’t mutually exclusive. If you believe in god, then it follows for you to believe that god left humans in charge of taking care of the planet. Even if you truly believe that god wouldn’t let global warming happen or that ‘The Rapture’ is going to make it all a moot point, don’t you believe that we as the dominant species on the planet are responsible for looking after god’s creations? There are a lot of bad things in this world that humans are responsible for – how could that not include destroying the earth? Furthermore, if you’re a Christian, shouldn’t you be following the advice on your own cheesy bracelets and asking yourself ‘what would Jesus do’? Seems to me like he’d be out there participating in trash cleanups, riding a bicycle and snacking on organic veggies. In fact, you’d probably label him a hippie. Call me crazy.

Because you’re an asshole.

You don’t give a rat’s ass about the generations to come. You’ll happily go on polluting as much as you can during your limited time on Earth, and go out laughing. The ‘asshole qualities’ that cause you to deny global warming may also be caused by greed (see above, ‘Because you make money off dirty products and/or practices’). Or, you just want to do whatever the hell you please and take offense to the idea of having to change your lifestyle, no matter what the reasons are (see above, ‘I’m an American and You Can’t Tell Me What to Do’.)

Luckily, the global warming deniers who are truly assholes aren’t nearly as common as the other types. It’s nearly impossible to rehab a born-and-bred jackass. The rest of us will just step around them and leave them to die out like the fear-of-change generation, because they’ll be proven wrong before too long.

TCPR’s Campaign of Misinformation about Al Gore’s Energy Use

There’s a lot of misinformation out there about Al Gore’s energy consumption, and the Tennessee Center for Policy Research is behind most of it. This ‘research organization’, which declines to identify where it gets its funding, has now put out two press releases detailing what they call Al Gore’s “massive home energy use”, citing information from the Nashville Electric Service.

According to the TCPR, Gore, who they call a “global warming alarmist”, is wasting tons of energy while laughing all the way to the bank with “global warming hysteria” profits. From their June 17th, 2008 press release:

“A man’s commitment to his beliefs is best measured by what he does behind the closed doors of his own home,” said Drew Johnson, President of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research. “Al Gore is a hypocrite and a fraud when it comes to his commitment to the environment, judging by his home energy consumption.”

In the past year, Gore’s home burned through 213,210 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, enough to power 232 average American households for a month.

Since taking steps to make his home more environmentally-friendly last June, Gore devours an average of 17,768 kWh per month – 1,638 kWh more energy per month than the year before the renovations. By comparison, the average American household consumes 11,040 kWh in an entire year, according to the Energy Information Administration. The cost of Gore’s electric bills over the past year topped $16,533.

Their first press release on the subject, released last February the day after Gore won an Academy Award for his documentary An Inconvenient Truth, trumpeted similar claims. The problem is, the data that the TCPR gained from public records is from a period of time when Gore’s home was in the midst of a three-year renovation, which naturally caused a temporary increase in power usage. Since then, the home has been praised as one of the country’s most environmentally friendly.

‘Short of tearing it down and starting anew, I don’t know how it could have been rated any higher,’ said Kim Shinn of the non-profit U.S. Green Building Council, which gave the house its second-highest rating for sustainable design. [Denver Post]

Al Gore’s spokesperson Kalee Krieder refuted the TCPR’s allegations to the Nashville Post on June 18th:

I am happy to provide more information about this from the Gores’ perspective. First, this release yesterday are [sic] a mere re-release of old bills. If any of you have ever worked with contractors, you know that renovations take years. The Gores renovated a 80 year old house from stem to stern. This took about 3 years to go through all the ducwork [sic], to install a geothermal system, to replace all the windows, to put in solar panels (which used to be illegal in Bellemeade and took 6 months to reverse).

So, to be clear, the Gores’ achieved Gold LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification in November 2007. The reduction in the electricity and natural gas bills–you need to look at both in order to truly evaluate their carbon footprint, really kicked in in 2008. At that point, evaluating both, there is about a 40 percent reduction.

Their natural gas bill has seen the biggest reduction as a result of the geothermal system. For electricity, they purchase green power through their utility, which is called “Green Power Switch.” It isn’t an offset, any customer can purchase green power (solar, wind, methane gas) and its a wonderful program.

Indeed, the TCPR chose to ignore the fact that the energy used by Gore’s home is now all green power, an omission that was repeated by Fox News’ Brit Hume on an airing of Special Report.

That’s not all. MediaMatters.org reports that on a February edition of MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Olbermann stated that the TCPR’s claims “omits several other key facts. The former vice president’s home has 20 rooms, including home offices for himself and his wife, as well as a guest house and special security measures. Furthermore, the Gores buy energy produced from renewable sources, such as wind and solar. Tonight, Countdown confirmed with the local utility officials that their program, called the Green Power Switch, actually costs more for the Gores — four dollars for every 150 kilowatt hours. Meaning, by our calculations, our math here, that the Gores actually chose to increase their electric bill by $5,893, more than 50 percent, in order to minimize carbon pollution.”

Furthermore, Gore donates all of the proceeds from An Inconvenient Truth – both the DVD and the companion book – to environmental causes. He also donated 100% of his Nobel Peace Prize award as well as his salary from the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers to the Alliance for Climate Protection.

What motivates the TCPR to put out this misinformation? Is it a desire to make sure the public has the facts, or an attempt to kill the messenger by a group that seeks to discredit global warming?

TCPR is a global warming denial group actively working to discredit information about climate change and anyone who works to educate the public about it. The TCPR reportedly joined the ‘Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change’, a group that claims to have “been established as a response to the many biased and alarmist claims about human-induced climate change, which are being used to justify calls for urgent action by governments.”

TCPR ‘staff and scholars’ are made up of individuals who have supported anti-environment causes and/or received support from anti-environment groups. TCPR president Jason ‘Drew’ Johnson has a long background of working for groups that deny global warming and seek to discredit it. Others have openly called environmental activism “destructive”. MediaMatters.org has some of the details:

Further, as part of the Charles G. Koch Summer Fellow Program, Johnson interned at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in 2002. As MSNBC host Keith Olbermann noted on the February 27 edition of Countdown, Johnson worked at “the same American Enterprise Institute that takes money from big oil, cheerleads the war in Iraq, and consistently, and now to pretty consistent laughter, downplays global warming.” Indeed, AEI has received nearly $1 million in funding from ExxonMobil in recent years. Moreover, according to The Washington Post, AEI “has been soliciting critiques” of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released in February and “has offered $10,000 to academics willing to contribute to a book on climate-change policy.”

TCPR scholar Charles Van Eaton also serves as a trustee for the Lincoln Heritage Institute (LHI). The institute’s “About LHI” page declares: “We … cannot stand idly by and allow … destructive environmental activism … to become an accepted way of life in America.”

The Department of Revenue commented to the Nashville Post – in a story that has since been deleted from their website – that the TCPR is “not a legitimate organization”.

When it comes down to it, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research’s attempts to discredit Al Gore and paint him as a hypocrite are a pathetic effort to derail the climate change awareness movement. As important as Al Gore has been and continues to be for climate change awareness, he is only a very small part of a growing urgency to act. The world is starting to wake up, and no matter how hard groups like the TCPR may try to stop it, the movement to act on climate change is going to keep on rollin’.

Link [TCPR] + [MediaMatters.org] + [Washington Post]

Grist Explains How to Smack Down Global Warming Deniers, Point by Point

If you’ve ever gotten into an argument about global warming with a skeptic, you know how frustrating it can be. Grist.org has a crazily comprehensive guide to smacking down climate change deniers and their tired, weak arguments as to why they think global warming is a hoax.

Grist guest author Coby Beck has created an entire outline that goes first through the ‘Stages of Denial’ – there’s nothing happening, we don’t know why it’s happening, climate change is natural, climate change is not bad and climate change can’t be stopped. Then it cycles through scientific topics, types of argument and level of sophistication. For example, under ‘Uninformed’ you’ll find the answer to the argument, ‘what’s wrong with warmer weather?’ and under ‘Naïve’ you can read the answer to ‘it’s the sun, stupid’.

Here’s a sample from one of my favorites, which you hear so often: ‘They predicted global cooling in the 1970s’.

Objection: The alarmists were predicting the onset of an ice age in the ’70s. Now it’s too much warming! Why should we believe them this time?

Answer: It is true that there were some predictions of an “imminent ice age” in the 1970s, but a cursory comparison of those warnings and today’s reveals a huge difference.

Today, you have a widespread scientific consensus, supported by national academies and all the major scientific institutions, solidly behind the warning that the temperature is rising, anthropogenic CO2 is the primary cause, and it will worsen unless we reduce emissions. (Read more)

This is the first time we’ve ever seen such an extensive reference of climate change information in one place, laid out in a way that’s so easy to navigate. Props to Grist! This is a great resource.

Link [Grist]
Photo credit: Flickr user Neubie

Cyclist Killed by Car During ‘Bike to Work Week’

A 22-year-old cyclist participating in ‘Bike to Work Week’ was killed on Monday when the owner of an SUV opened their car door in his path. He was riding in the bike lane. Clinton Miceli was the fifth bicyclist to die in Chicago so far this year. WTF, people. Can we really not manage sharing the road with cyclists? Is it that hard to go a little slower, avoid going around blind curves at high speeds and give these people some room?

The Chicago Sun-Times has it:

Miceli, 22, was cycling in the bike lane on La Salle around 6:45 p.m. Monday when he slammed into an open SUV door, was thrown from his bike, then struck by a second car. The driver of the Nissan Xterra who opened the door into Miceli’s path was cited for opening a car door in traffic, police said.

A second rider collided with a CTA bus around 8:50 a.m. Tuesday at Broadway and Patterson in Lake View. That cyclist was taken to Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center in serious condition, a Fire Department spokesman said. The CTA driver was cited for failure to yield and suspended without pay, authorities said.

First of all, it never fails to amaze me when people throw their car doors open without checking first to see if there’s anyone coming. Second, you would think that drivers would be a little more conscious, especially during ‘Bike to Work Week’. But everyone is so preoccupied with cell phone conversations, iPods, fiddling through their purses, putting on mascara, eating Big Macs or just plain zoning out. Wake up. Bicyclists have a right to safety on our roads.

Link [Chicago Sun-Times]
Photo credit: Flickr user borkur.net

Global Warming Deniers Pretend to be Scientists for Anti-Kyoto Petition

The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine held a press conference yesterday announcing that 31,000 scientists had signed a petition rejecting the notion of man-created global warming. The problem is, most of these people aren’t even scientists.

Envirowonk checked it out, and what they found is pretty hilarious:

So what does it take to be included among the 31,000 “experts” on the petition? Well, according to the OISM criteria, any undergraduate science degree will do just fine. Bet you never thought that BS you earned 20 years ago made you a qualified climatologist. Congratulations!

OISM also wants to let you know that 9,021 of the signers hold PhDs. They don’t specify what the doctorates are in, but they repeat that figure quite a bit, as if it means something. Since the group was nice enough to list all 31,000 signers, including the dead people, let’s take a look at the qualifications of three randomly-selected “climate experts.”

• W. Kline Bolton, M.D. is a professor of medicine and Nephrology Division Chief at the University of Virginia. Nephrology deals with the study of the function and diseases of the kidney.
• Zhonggang Zeng is one of the 9,000 with a PhD. He is a professor of mathematics at Northeastern Illinois University. His most recent publication is entitled “Computing multiple roots of inexact polynomials.”
• Hub Hougland is a dentist in Muncie, Indiana. He was inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame last year.

My, my. If these three were just randomly selected, I’d love to see a full list of how many of these ‘scientists’ are really school cafeteria ‘food science technicians’, garbage collector ‘sanitation engineers’ and mad-scientist-costumed partygoers.

Nice try, OISM, but this isn’t going to impress anyone with a brain.

Link [Envirowonk]
Photo credit: Party Theme Place