Earth Hour reminder

Just a reminder (although you may be sick of me talking about it at this point), today is Earth Hour.  8:30 p.m. tonight is the beginning -- turn off all non-essential lights for one hour.  That should be pretty easy to do.  

Read a book by candlelight for an hour!

Eco-friendly clothing

As I've written about before, it can be difficult to find eco-friendly clothing for men--but I haven't given up yet. As always, I'm on the lookout for organic cotton/bamboo products, or other types of clothing lines with an eco-friendly focus. I recently discovered two new sites that I'd like to pass on:

Tees For Change [Sustainable Tees on a Misson] boasts, "you buy a tee, we plant a tree." They sell 100% organic cotton and 70% bamboo/30% organic cotton t-shirts, and just as their slogan says, for every shirt you buy, Tees for Change plants a tree! They've partnered with a company called Trees for the Future that plants trees in different areas around the world. I wish they had more styles for men, but there are some great choices for women, babies, and toddlers.

I also got a kick out of the Revenge Is line of clothing. Now this is a cool concept: t-shirts made out of recycled plastic bottles. They offer several different shirts that play off the theme, "the best revenge is living well." No plastic packaging, soy-based inks, 10& of profits given to charity... oh, and did I mention shirts made of plastic bottles yet? It's a unique idea, and I wish them the best of luck.

I haven't tried either brand of shirt yet, so I cannot attest to their quality, but if I can get my hands on any of the clothing, I'll report back.

Happy Friday!

You have to wonder sometimes, don't you?

Check out this piece of genuis that a friend sent me from the Huffington Post. Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele turned in a rather entertaining spot as the guest host of William Bennett's talk radio program a couple of weeks ago.

I'd like to say he made a lot of gaffes, but that's not exactly true. He was in fact just plain stupid. Steele criticized Republicans, compared Obama to Nixon, and referenced everyone's favorite Italian dictator, "Roberto" Mussolini. Oh, if only that were the bottom of the barrel! Enjoy this little rant, which simply has to be quoted in its entirety to be appreciated properly:

And when a listener scoffed at the notion of global warming, Steele eagerly ran with the baton.

"Thank you, thank you," he said. "We are cooling. We are not warming. The warming you see out there, the supposed warming, and I am using my finger quotation marks here, is part of the cooling process. Greenland, which is now covered in ice, it was once called Greenland for a reason, right? Iceland, which is now green. Oh I love this. Like we know what this planet is all about. How long have we been here? How long? No very long."

Greenland, for the record, likely had forestation some 450,000 to 800,000 years ago. But its name was derived, as is most commonly believed, from Erik the Red, who wanted to trick people into going to that island as opposed to the more hospitable Iceland.

Was I the only one who learned about Erik the Red's clever Greenland/Iceland trick in 6th grade? Again, this person is the chairman of the RNC. How about "warming is part of the cooling process"? How do you even argue that line of reasoning?

This isn't even anti-intellectualism--that's giving Steele too much credit. It's just good old-fashioned stupid.

Vegetable Garden... no, really...

Yesterday I found an article on the NY Times website that had been reprinted from 1991. I was excited to read the editorial, written by a favorite author of mine, Michael Pollan. It's about planting a vegetable garden on the White House lawn, and I enjoyed it so much that I decided to post it on the blog with no delay. I wanted to share what I thought was an interesting piece, and did so without any further research. Because of I was so anxious to write about it, I ended up with a post that laughed at the idea of an actual garden appearing on the White House lawn.

Woops.

The reason the article was unearthed from the NY Times archives should have been clear to me without too much research or active thought. Maybe it was the early Sunday morning air, or perhaps I have a gas leak in my living room -- whatever the reason, I completely missed the story that this past Friday, work began on the brand new White House vegetable garden.

Aided by students from a local elementary school, "first lady Michelle Obama [hosted] a groundbreaking for a White House kitchen garden on the South Lawn... The 1,100-square-foot garden will include 55 kinds of vegetables, including peppers, spinach and, yes, arugula. (The selection is a wish list put together by White House chefs.) There will also be berries, herbs and two hives for honey that will be tended by a White House carpenter who is also a beekeeper. The chefs will use the produce to feed the first family, as well as for state dinners and other official events."

I probably should have realized that the Times doesn't just pull up random articles from its archives without a purpose. Now the Pollan article is even more interesting -- it may have taken close to 20 years, but the garden is now becoming a reality.

So is this a symbolic moment? Will a vegetable garden in the South Lawn of the White House bring attention to the organic and locally-grown food movements? Let's hope so.

How far have we come?

Does it seem as though we are more environmentally conscious than ever? There is more information and public consciousness of environmental issues now than ever before. But is this just a trend? Have we really turned a corner?

Take a look at this 1991 NY Times editorial from Michael Pollan (If you haven't heard of Pollan, I also highly recommend his book In Defense of Food, which I've written about before).  This article was written in the third year of the presidency of Bush I, who had at one point actually expressed the hope that he'd be one day remembered as the "environmental President."

Pollan's suggestion is quite simple: rip up the White House lawn and plant a vegetable garden.  Yes, it was a call for a symbolic gesture, but a powerful one nonetheless.  Of course, tearing up the White House lawn in 1991 was certainly not going to happen.  

Have we made any progress in 2009?  I still don't think the White House lawn is in any danger--President Obama has too many other battles to fight.  But I enjoyed reading this Pollan article and thinking about how little things have changed in the last 20 years.  Sure, we're far more aware of environmental issues, but are we ready for something like tomato plants instead of manicured grass in the front yard of America's most recognizable home?