The Cadillac Escalade Hybrid is Big Pile of Greenwashed Steel

Inhabitat points out the very long stretch of the imagination it takes to call the Cadillac Escalade Hybrid that NY Giants QB Eli Manning won in the Super Bowl “green”. We’re talking about a giant beast of an SUV that only pulls 18 miles per gallon of gas.

Excuse me, but WTF. Since when is 18 MPG green? Sure, it’s greener than the normal Escalade, but that’s not saying much- kind of like saying Nicky is the less trashy Hilton sister.

Here’s what Inhabitat has to say…

The hybrid SUV is a classic example of the “how much is good enough” issue inherent to so much of corporations’ going green efforts. Okay, so the Escalade is greenER, but isn’t this really just a green marketing spin on a bigger issue? Should we applaud GM for even making such efforts or scold them for their continuous production of such an unnecessarily large and inefficient vehicle? The fact that it’s given as the prize for winning America’s biggest sporting event is even more troubling- we’re essentially sending the message that the best reward is misrepresented, irresponsible luxury.

I suppose the silver lining is that Eli Manning chose the hybrid SUV from a variety of Cadillacs. The Hybrid Escalade, which will be available later this year, was Eli’s “responsible” choice, however clouded in materialism it may have been. “I know it comes out in the summer. I want the first one.”

Link [Inhabitat]

New York City Honors Winning Giants by Showering Tons of Litter on Them

So the stupid NY Giants beat my team in a little football game you may have seen on Sunday and New York City threw them a tickertape parade yesterday. A couple of thousand pounds of shredded paper and five TONS of confetti later and the Big Apple has one big ass mess to clean up. Green Daily wonders How green is a ticker tape parade?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few days, you know that the New York Giants won the Super Bowl on Sunday. In order to fully celebrate their unanticipated win against the New England Patriots, the City of New York is throwing a parade in the team’s honor today (it started about half an hour ago)! As is the tradition, the parade will be a ticker-tape one (actually it will be mostly shredded newspaper, ticker-tape is hard to come by these days). The city is anticipating that approximately 5 tons of confetti will flutter down over the course of the parade today.

The New York Times has an article about the festivities but doesn’t say jack about how or if all that paper waste is going to get cleaned up. In the face of all the oil spills , depleted uranium bullets flying around, and smokestacks in the world a couple of tons of paper being wasted maybe isn’t such a big deal, but it’s still an interesting ungreen end to a depressing story. 18-1 sucks.

Link [Green Daily] & [New York Times]