Bio-Bluths: Green Mantras In Arrested Development

Arrested Development is a classic “so good it got canceled” TV show–it was fiercely loved by the fans that bothered to watch it, and ignored by everybody else, with no pasty middle ground lazy viewers to carry it through season after season (Everybody Loves Raymond, I’m talking to you). Should some of those devotees be looking to the green movement for the Bluth-shaped hole in their lives? Here are a few green things we found in Arrested Development.

The Banana Stand

The source of George Sr.’s start and the repository for his dirty money, the Bluth Banana Stand is a great way for us to be sucking down petroleum-light treats. Sort of. While bananas have to be transported long distances to get to the stand–and frozen when they’re there–they don’t have to be sweetened by high-fructose corn syrup, and the production of that is incredibly petroleum intensive, thanks to the use of fertilizer to make up for the amount of corn we can naturally produce, refine the syrup, and then get the processed food to your gut.

Gob’s Segway

Gob is best known for being a bad person in pretty much every respect, but his chosen method of transportation straddles the line in between “lazy” and “green” petty effectively. While Gob has a bad habit of not walking places he can Segway, he also Segways everywhere a normal person would drive. It’s more energy effecient, that’s for sure, but he’s using up so much juice that it’s worth asking what sort of power plant they’re charging off of.

Blowing Up The Yacht

We’ve discussed with you in the past how bad ships can be for the planet when they’re just used for luxury cruising, and so it’s probably worth mention that Gob strikes a pretty big blow against these floating Humvees by sinking the Bluth family’s…to “The Final Countdown”…for MTV.

Michael’s Bike

I think the point that AD is trying to drive home is that Michael makes every sacrifice for his family–he was living in the attic when we first met him–and lets them drive the car while his humble bicycle is the way to commute. We certainly don’t see him talk about the environment any, but hey–he’s getting at that, too.

The Stair Truck

What, you might ask, is a carbon-belching behemoth of a 1980s pickup doing on a green list? Simple–by continuing to use it until the end of its service life, the Bluth family has saved all of the energy needed to produce a new car–almost a 1,000 mile difference depending on the automobile. And it’s great for cruising for chicks, too.

Jamie Olivers Pulls the Curtains Up on Eggs: It’s Not A Pretty Picture for Baby Boy Chicks

There’s nothing like a good hard dose of brutal reality to start the week.

Do you eat eggs for breakfast? (I don’t)

Do you eat things with eggs in them? (I do)

If you’re like the vast majority of people, you buy your eggs in a grocery store. Maybe you buy the cheap ones in the styrofoam container though if you’re reading this site it’s likely you dole out an extra buck or two for cage free organic eggs- but either way you slice it, you’re an egg buyer.

Those eggs are squeezed out by female chickens living in giant warehouse farms. Putting the ethical issues around that aside for the time, take a second and think about all those hundreds of millions of female chickens, all those little chicken vaginas squeezing out our eggs. Where did all the boy chickens go?

They’re killed.

The two more popular ways of culling male chicks are gassing and mastication. Gassing involved putting them in a little room and pumping inert gas in to drive out the oxygen. The chicks suffocate, sucky- but on the scale of things one of the less painful ways to go, at least compared to the other popular method of mastication which involves throwing the chicks into a big set of metal grinders where they are mashed up and sold as cattle feed. How would you like to have THAT job?

In this video, controversial British TV chef Jamie Olivers has the balls to confront the ugly truth about eating eggs- you have to do a lot of killing to get ‘em. Watch him gas some chicks.

Jamie Olivers is the same guy who slaughtered a baby lamb on his show. We need more of this. Vegetarians should love this guy- by flipping the hazy screen off that’s been blocking the hard truth behind eating meat, he’ll drive scads of people into the warm embrace of tofu, seiten, and TVP. If you’re going to eat meat you should at least see how it’s done- watch your animal of choice flop around as it bleeds out.

Or in the case of eating eggs- watch the little yellow peepers gasp as they suffocate to death.

Peep.

Photo credit: Flickr user [Royalty-free]

Next thing you know ol’ Jed’s a Billionaire- Todays Oil Prices Make Clampetts Billionaires

Jed Clampett, the lovable old patriarch of the Clampett family who struck black gold one day while shootin for some food, would be an incredibly rich Hillbilly had that fortunate hunting accident happened today. You could say he’d be happier than a tornado at a trailer park.

Had Jed discovered that bubblin crude these days instead of 1962 he’d be worth a cool billion dollars. Back in ‘62 when Jed stuck oil in Bugtussel, the price per barrel was around $2.85. Kin folk told Jed move away from there, so The Clampetts loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly (Hill’s that is) with $25,000,000 in Mr. Drysdale’s bank.

Which means, if we do the math …that Jed uncovered around 8.7 million barrels of oil. At any price above $115.55/barrel Jed’s north of 10 figures (a Billionaire). A quick stop to Bloomberg Energy shows crude oil futures currently going for ~$118/barrel.

Wee Doggies!, imagine the party Jed, Granny, Jethro, Elly May, and Duke could throw with that kind of cash- the fancy vittles, moonshine and dancing out by the cee-ment pond. Which would make them all happier than cats a fish fry. Yeehaw.

Gather ‘Round the Festivus Pole, George Costanza’s Getting on the Green Team!

Holy crap! George Costanza is going green!

Ecorazzi told me about jason Alexander’s post over at Daily Green detailing how he and his family are trying to live a little more eco-aware.

Sorry, but I grew up on Seinfeld and the idea of George Costanza doing anything that makes the planet a better place makes me bust out laughing.

Serenity now!!!

Here’s a snip from Jason’s post, head over to Daily Green and read the whole thing.

This planet was never intended to support the number of human beings we currently have residing on it. As a result, natural lands and animal populations are disappearing — and rapidly. If we do not start to really understand this harsh reality and reverse it, our planet will not survive. At least not with a quality of life that anyone would wish for.

So our family talks about responsibility in family planning. We talk about replacing ourselves on this globe, rather than doubling or tripling our numbers. It is not an easy conversation. Life and families and babies are all joyous gifts. But if we do not begin to truly account for our numbers, we will surely create an ecological crisis that will only lead to anguish and despair.

We also talk about small acts of conservation in terms that make them impact in a more realized way. Leaving on lights unnecessarily isn’t just ‘wasteful’ or ‘costly.’ We talk about how the waste of that energy affects arctic refuges.

Link [Daily Green] via [Ecorazzi]

Watch Your Favorite Green Eps of South Park Online- Trey and Matt Set SP Free

I am an unabashed hardcore fan of the show South Park. I’ve seen every episode thanks to the magic of file sharing and YouTube and was happy to hear last year that Matt and Trey were planning on setting the show free on the net. They’ve always encouraged their fans to share episodes online and worked out a deal with Comedy Central to stream them all on SouthParkStudios.com. The site went live last week.

South Park has always ridden the edge when it comes to political and social issues and they haven’t shied away from writing about the environment. Here are a few that touch on green and eco issues. Enjoy!

Rainforest Schmainforest- The kids take a school field trip to the rain forest and discover that it actually kind of sucks.

Fun with Veal- The South Park boys bring out their inner animal rights activist and battle to save a bunch of baby cows from being killed for veal.

Die Hippie, Die- South Park is taken over by hippies who converge on the town for a massive hippie rock show. Sure, it’s not really all that environmental but it’s about hippies and we all know hippies love the earth.

Two Days Before the Day After Tomorrow- A giant beaver dam breaks and the town figures out that Global Warming is to blame. Naturally, they panic to hilarious effect.

Smug Alert- The Brovlovski Family gets a hybrid car and become smug jerks about it. They move to San Francisco and are saved by Cartment from a giant Smug storm that takes out the city.

ManbearPig- This is my favorite one. Al Gore comes to town to warn the citizens about the dangers of Manbearpig- half man, half bear, half pig.

Link [South Park Studios]

Britney Spears Does a Turn for The Environment: Auctioning Waredrobe for the Natural Resources Defense Council

Jobby McGillicuddy is a Writer, Winemaker, Adventurer, Ninja Master, Maple Sugarer, and Bookkeeper who splits his time between his home in Springfield and tree house in the forests outside Dillon, Texas. 

This is an odd nexus of Britney Spears and the Environment- she’s auctioning off the clothes she wore while filming a guest spot on How I Met Your Mother and giving the proceeds to the Natural Resources Defense Council. PopCrunch has it:

CBS and 20th Century Fox TV are sponsoring the online auction, which will take place immediately after her appearance on How I Met Your Mother. Items up for bid include a Nanette Lepore dress and cardigan and a dress designed by Juicy Couture.

Link [PopCrunch]

BBC Puts Reality TV Show Stars Out With the Trash- Literally

Talk about trash TV - Tune into BBC America this Sunday and you might just happen upon a gaggle of lost and forlorn Brits, rummaging through mounds and mounds of their own waste. No, not THAT kind of waste… get your filthy minds out of the sewer. We’re talking garbage here, folks. Sweet-smelling and abundant, beautiful and glorious: TRASH!

For a three week period, 11 landfill-rumaging dwellers made their ways through a dump, accepting challenges along the way that involved making the most out of the one thing that they had tons and tons of: crap. Dumped, a four part BBC series, means to draw attention to the dreadful UK landfill situation and airs until the end of March.

Compared to other European nations, the UK ranks low when it comes to recycling. It is estimated that each UK resident throws away 1/2 ton of trash each year, something that this whacked-out reality show is trying to make a stink about…

Links [Green Daily] & [BBC Dumped]

Watch Five Hours of Cable News, Get One Minute of Environmental or Science Coverage

We’re pleased to welcome new writer Anders Porter, a blogger, journalist, and Swedish/English translator from California currently living in Sweden. He blogs on his person website at Anders Porter dot com. This is his first post, so feel free to verbally haze his noob ass.

When I think of cable news, I think of broad, fair, and unbiased reporting. (Insert Fox News joke here.)

I take comfort in knowing that when I flip over to my MSNBC or my CNN, that the talking heads are going to take care of me, that they will dish out what I need, spoon feed me with my news food groups, if you know what I mean.

Well, according to the analysis of cable TV news coverage as reported in the 2008 Annual Report on American Journalism, the cable news networks are definitely living up to their promise of feeding their peeps. That is, of course, if you’re the kind of peep that munches on nothing nothing but politics, foreign policy debate and crime. If you’re looking for a little lettuce and tomato, that’s right - coverage of education, science and, oh yeah - THE ENVIRONMENT - then you gonna be sitting in front of that box for a long, long, long, long time. Uh-huh. Long time.

Turns out that during a five hour non-stop cable news marathon, it is likely that you will see 35 minutes about campaigns and elections and 1 minute and 25 seconds about the environment.

Sweeeeet. Nice to know we have our priorities worked out.

Link [2008 Anual Report on American Journalism] Via Framing Science

Eco-Fail! HGTV’s Green Home Giveaway and The Yukon Hybrid

Huh?

How did the people behind the Green Home Giveaway promotion for HGTV choose a Yukon Hybrid to put in the driveway? Someone screwed uuuuuuupp. That thing is a monster of a truck pulling a whopping 21/22 MPG (the regular Yukon gets 14/20).

Weeeeeak. Haven’t they heard of the Prius?
Link [Ecorazzi]