Exxon-Paid Scientist Claims Earth Doesn’t Have Enough Greenhouse Gases

A scientist on ExxonMobil’s payroll is trying to convince people that all those greenhouse gas emissions flowing freely around the world are nothing to worry about – in fact, we need more! Princeton University Atomic Physicist Dr. William Happer testifed before the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee on the 25th, claiming that the real concern is a ‘CO2 famine’.

Check out the video, in which a smirking, slouched Dr. Happer smugly explains his belief that carbon dioxide emissions will be “good for mankind”.

Senator Barbara Boxer revealed after Dr. Happer’s testimony that he is in fact affiliated with an institute that has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from ExxonMobil over the past decade.

Treehugger gleefully points out Happer’s stupidity and hopes that he’ll get even more publicity so people can see the caliber of so-called ‘experts’ that global warming deniers have on their side.

What an embarrassment for Princeton which last year sponsored a Lecture series [that] explores ethics and climate change, and which has the AAAS Center for Science, Technology and Congress, and which hosts the annual Carbon Mitigation Initiative..

Are we not yet past the point where the “A List” of climate change experts parading before Congress includes people with such fantastic ideas and foolish outlooks? Apparently not. And that’s a good thing.

Get that fellow up on the Hill a bunch more times. Play him on prime time news, over and over. Get him on the David Letterman Show talking about how lovely things were back in the Pleistocene. (I’m pretty sure he said “Pleistocene;” even thought that does not match up at all with the 80 million years ago answer he provided to Senator Boxer regarding the time to which he referred. Is that what you heard?)

Did you SEE this guy? Talk about a smug alert! He did that thing where he kept closing his eyes while he was talking. Parading this assclown around would be great for the cause.

Link [Treehugger] via [The Huffington Post]

Smug Self-Important San Francisco Stereotype Springs to Life

There’s a certain stereotype that San Franciscans just can’t seem to get away from. Smug, Prius-driving, Whole Foods-patronizing with a my-shit-don’t-stink attitude that is unleashed upon anyone who isn’t flawlessly green 24 hours a day. That stereotype doesn’t actually fit most residents of this beautiful California city, but it came to life in a maddening episode of ABC’s reality show Wife Swap in the form of Brit transplant Stephen Fowler. The episode aired weeks ago, but the fallout continues.

Fowler, wearing t-shirts with slogans like ‘Treehugger’, ‘Go Solar’ and ‘Sustainability’, made a complete and total jackass of himself by treating Gayle Long, the woman who was forced to live with him for a week, embarrasingly badly.

From The Huffington Post:

At one point, as Long read a list of rules for the Fowler family, Fowler told her, “I didn’t know you could read.” When Long challenged Fowler for acting like he was better than her, he responded: “I probably make more in a week than you make in a year.”

At the end of the visit, he said, “God, that woman is the most stupid woman I’ve ever met in my life.”

Friends quoted anonymously in the San Francisco Chronicle said Fowler told them he was instructed to ham it up by “Wife Swap’s” producers. His performance evoked a stereotype of the San Francisco elitist liberal — the tree-hugging do-gooder who acts morally superior while putting down others.

Watch the video clips to get a real sense of just how much of an asshat this guy really is:

Shea Gunther said it best over at MNN.com:

Fowler does not represent the vast overwhelming majority of environmentalists (and San Franciscans) who are very nice people who just want to pass on a nice world to their grandkids. Sure, a few are snobby jerks like Fowler, but most of us are really nice folks.

I’m happy that Fowler seems to be paying mightily for his terrible behavior. His wife has publicly said he needs to “get professional help” and the Internet has responded in full force, spawning StephenFowlerSucks.com and a Facebook group called “I Can not Stand Stephen Fowler from `Wife Swap’ “. I hope he takes a lot of lessons away from this and comes out a less douchey person on the other side.

On behalf of all greenies – especially San Francisco greenies – you suck, Stephen Fowler!

Link [The Huffington Post] + [MNN.com]

7 Green Ways to Lose Friends and Alienate People

You may take a lot of pride in being deep, dark green – but what you see as shining examples of eco-sainthood may come off to the rest of the world as rude, condescending and downright disgusting. Nobody wants to be friends with a sanctimonious bastard that looks and smells like he just rolled out of a dumpster. If any of these 7 greener-than-thou missteps apply to you, it might be time to tone down the smug and improve your personal hygiene.

7. Giving unsolicited green tips while in someone else’s home

Are you an eco consultant? Great! People will pay you good money to tell them what’s not green about their home and how to fix it. Otherwise, shut up. Going to a friend’s house and nitpicking everything you see that’s less than spectacularly eco-friendly is a fast-track to a lot of unreturned phone calls.  Skipping the ‘suggestion’ part and simply walking around their house turning lights and electronics off is a great way to end up with a boot in your ass.

Sure, you’ve got some golden nuggets of green wisdom to share and you hate to see people throw their money away and harm the environment. If it comes up in conversation, offering your tips is great – but critiquing people’s habits and possessions unprompted will get you branded as an eco-snob.

6. Hoarding in an attempt to cut back household waste

You cut back the amount of trash that you send to the curb every week by 75%. Congratulations! Now, if only you could make a tunnel through all of those plastic bottles and packing peanuts to get to the bathroom…

Holding on to stuff like electronics, batteries or light bulbs long enough to make a trip to a recycling center is cool – but hoarding tons of trash just so you can say you didn’t throw it out doesn’t accomplish anything. It’ll get thrown out, eventually – when your neighbors realize they haven’t seen you for weeks and the cops discover your body under a pile of rotting food, junk mail and used condoms. The idea is to cut back your consumption of throwaway stuff in the first place, not to turn your home into a public health hazard.

5. Ungraciously refusing gifts that aren’t green enough

So, Uncle Ted gave you a Wal-Mart gift card for Christmas and the look on your face when you opened it didn’t exactly convey the gratitude he expected. You were horrified, and decided to make your righteous indignation loud and clear so everyone in the family could learn a lesson about how Wal-Mart is an evil corporate virus that’s destroying the environment. That’s a great way to make everyone think you’re a stuck-up asshole who has no appreciation for nice gestures.

Take the gift card (or whatever), thank the person who gave it to you and donate it to someone who really needs it – or use it in any green way you can possibly think of. Letting people know, especially ahead of the holidays, that you prefer eco-friendly gifts is cool – but not right after receiving something that doesn’t pass muster.

4. Being the Green Office Nazi

Suggesting green changes in your office is a great way to spread sustainability. Taking it upon yourself to ration office supplies is not. Guarding the supply closet like it’s Fort Knox and snatching paper out of the secretary’s hand because she’s already used 3 sheets today isn’t going to win you any green converts.

Instead of loudly berating your co-workers for using paper cups and tossing used batteries in the trash can, put your well-meaning energy to work in a way that might actually accomplish something. Talk to your bosses about how going green could save them money and they’ll be more than happy to provide some recycling bins, refillable pens, recycled paper and other eco-friendly supplies.

3. Mistaking gag-inducing body funk for pleasant ‘natural scent’

It’s true that not everyone needs to wear deodorant. Some people are blessed with armpits that don’t knock other people over with noxious clouds of funk – but others seem to think that body odor is cool as long as you’re going deodorant-free to be green. If people’s faces are melting in horror and disgust when you pass them on the street, it’s time to address your problem.

We’re not suggesting that you douse yourself in AXE body spray. But seriously, a little deodorant can be a really good thing, and despite any frustration you may have experienced in the past with natural deodorants that don’t work, there are some that do. Kiss My Face Liquid Rock, for one, works just as well as conventional brands and is very safe and gentle.

2. Conserving water… by not showering

Throwing personal hygiene out the window in order to be green just isn’t necessary or fair to the people who have to be close to you at any given time. Going without deodorant is bad enough, but deciding not to bathe altogether ventures into Howard Hughes territory. When your hair looks like you could squeeze out enough oil to fry up a batch of hush puppies and your ears start to smell like parmesan cheese, you’ve taken it much too far.

We’ve all got to bathe, and with low-flow showerheads, timers and biodegradable cleansers, you can keep yourself passably clean without too much guilt.

1. Forcing guests to use “Family Cloth”

To follow the mantra “If it’s yellow, let it mellow, if it’s brown, flush it down” in your own home is a fine way to cut back on use of resources in the bathroom. Even putting a sign up for your guests is okay, though some will be too squicked out to comply. However, ‘family cloth’ takes bathroom eco-friendliness a bit too far when it comes to guests.

For those unfamiliar, ‘family cloth’ is a term for washable fabric wipes as an alternative to toilet paper. Yes, it’s ultra-green, especially considering that most toilet paper is made from virgin tree pulp – but your friends probably don’t want to share ass-wiping cloths with you. Provide backup toilet paper for guests, for the love of all things holy.

Earth Day Awesomeness, from Conception to 2008

Smug Alert! It’s Earth Day, people!

Obviously, if you’re a fan of EarthFirst.com, you act as if every day is Earth Day (you do, of course, don’t you?), but that doesn’t mean the symbolism of the holiday isn’t significant to all of us. No, not because we get to go on Smug Alert. Luckily, for the most part, the general public no longer considers Earth Day to be that annoying day that sanctimonious little shits in Greenpeace t-shirts tell everyone else what to do with their pickup trucks and recyclables. More and more people are starting to actually, like, care and stuff.

How’d Earth Day start, after all, in this nation of McDonalds and fossil fuels? Envirolink.org has the scoop straight from the source. Senator Gaylord Nelson, founder of Earth Day, says the idea started back in 1962:

For several years, it had been troubling me that the state of our environment was simply a non-issue in the politics of the country. Finally, in November 1962, an idea occurred to me that was, I thought, a virtual cinch to put the environment into the political “limelight” once and for all. The idea was to persuade President Kennedy to give visibility to this issue by going on a national conservation tour. I flew to Washington to discuss the proposal with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who liked the idea. So did the President. The President began his five-day, eleven-state conservation tour in September 1963. For many reasons the tour did not succeed in putting the issue onto the national political agenda. However, it was the germ of the idea that ultimately flowered into Earth Day.

Senator Nelson kept on truckin’ for the next seven years, trying to get the message out despite little interest from politicians. The people were starting to get it, though, and what better time than the summer of love, 1969, for it to take off? In September of that year, Senator Nelson announced that the following spring, April 1970, there would be a ‘nationwide grassroots demonstration on behalf of the environment’ and asked everyone to take part. The message spread, people got excited, and the day itself turned out to be a great success. 20 million people demonstrated in thousands of schools and communities nationwide, with Senator Nelson marveling that it ‘organized itself’.

Since then, Earth Day has been celebrated in thousands of different ways all over the world. Many cities center their festivities around local natural wonders and efforts to preserve them, while others take the chance to educate the public about what they can do to be ‘green’. At Earth Day events you can typically find local environmentally friendly retailers, purchase local organic food & beverages, participate in interactive exhibits and enjoy live music.

Of all the Earth Day celebrations, the largest and best known is the nationwide Green Apple Music Festival which actually took place this past weekend (April 18th-20th) in 8 cities around the U.S. including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, Denver, Chicago, Miami, Washington DC & NYC. In Miami, Menudo played. Menudo!

Others who celebrated over the weekend include Tokyo and Barcelona. Buenos Aires and Russia plan to be fashionably late, throwing their own Earth Day bashes on the 26th. Some of the happenings around the globe include awareness of genetic modification of our food, showing off new advances in green technology, cultural performances, and (in America) voter registration.

Sure, there are still people out there that think global warming isn’t real. And there are plenty of trees all over the world, so we’re not going to run out any time soon (eye roll), humans were meant to lord over the earth and everything will just adapt to our gluttony and gross misuse of the amazing natural bounty we’ve been blessed with by God, nature, science or what have you. Right? Uh, no, and that’s why you should take this opportunity to spread the Earth Day love.

So let’s all hold hands and sing: “Come on, people now people now… people driving hybrids people now…” Kidding, kidding. Ride your bike to work, attend a festival in your area, do something good for the earth or at least get outside. Or, you can join us as we live blog Earth Day, all day long! Come on, it will be fun (but you should take a break to go outside at some point, seriously).

Link [Envirolink]

Photo credit: South Park Studios & Wikimedia Commons