I’m often incredulous at the gall shown by corporations attempting to green their image. (And yes, I do sometimes answer to the name “Pollyanna”.)
And, in The Virtuous Consumer, I included a feature dubbed “What they hell were they thinking?” to highlight the stupidity shown by some companies in an effort to dupe consumers. And have a giggle or two at their expense.
But the examples here take greenwashing to the max. Read them…and weep.

The climate change science was in in 1988…and climate concern was at its height. Then a calculated campaign by fossil fuel industry and the auto industry worked to convince people it was “junk science”. Consider this: According to Mother Jones magazines roundup of the Dirty Dozen deniers, ExxonMobil unleashed the power of $8 billion into think tanks and media to debunk climate science. And, of course, there have been others spreading their demon seeds of discontent.

What’s astonishing is that those who believe in the unanimous conclusions by the world’s top climate scientists – that would be the conclusion that climate change is indeed happening…and that we’re largely to blame – is hovering around 51%.

Al Gore was recently on CBC radio, sounding calm and mildly amused by all this insanity with the climate deniers. He pointed out that 15% or Americans believe the moon landing was staged on a set in the desert. Yet we don’t read articles in mainstream newspapers or have news reporters giving them much air time. What is it about climate change that inspires such dismissal?

I don’t have the answer, but speculate that it’s fear. Who wants to believe that climate change is real? That our lifestyles are unsustainable and that we either make drastic changes now or endure Mother Nature’s drastic changes later? Frankly, I’d love to discover that James Hansen and Bill McKibben, Al Gore and David Suzuki concocted some conspiracy to get us all to…seal our drafty windows or, ummmm, insulate our water heaters. But I can’t.

Instead, I accept the peer-reviewed science that tells me we’re teetering on a precipice and that Copenhagen had better produce some global plan of action.

Ah yes, the holidays. Time to celebrate, revel in the season…and put your relaxation exercises to the test in the form of annoying relatives who might share your grandma but not your dogma.
What to do? Well, besides drinking too much and resorting to name-calling, you could actually take it upon yourself to educate the skeptics among you. No, really.

I have family members (identifying names and characteristics will be conveniently left out in order to avoid spending holidays alone with the punch bowl and reruns of It’s a Wonderful Life) who insist that climate change is simply the “natural cycle” and that living green is, therefore, unnecessary and…well…inconvenient.

And though I’ve inundated said family members with enough peer-reviewed climate research to earn me an honorary PhD (or at least a hand-written ‘thank-you’ from Al Gore and David Suzuki), they remain firm in their conviction that I’m – ahem – woefully misinformed at best and brainwashed at worst.

Sierra Club recognizes my pain. And has kindly come up with the Holiday Survival Guide. Within you will find appropriate answers and easy talking points to not only educate but entertain. What’s more, your blood pressure will remain in check because you won’t allow yourself to become emotionally engaged in verbal sparring with anyone who’s IQ seems inversely proportional to the rising temperatures. Oops! See how hard it is not to fall into ad hominem attacks?

Better luck to you, dear readers, in your attempts to not only inform your relatives of the crisis of climate change, but actually enjoy a family get-together. No easy task…

What holds people back from making smarter (read “better for themselves and for the planet”) purchasing choices? It’s a question that plagues me. I’ve always assumed people adopt a “when I know better, I do better” mantra. However, a recent e-mail blast from marketing mastermind Seth Godin has shone some light on the issue:
The challenge for people trying to…highlight long-term side effects of various consumer choices is that it’s much easier to spread a story about exploding cars or hair falling out than it is to spread a story of ‘nothing bad happens’ or ‘no one got the swine flu and died’ or ‘three years from now, this section of ocean will be dead.’ We prefer the vivid anecdote to the dry and statistically useful fact, which in a complex world, is to our detriment.
I’ve been fascinated by media’s and the public’s fascination with the swine flu vaccination. And, in the midst of the maelstrom, I confess Godin’s theory struck me as likely. People are afraid of what could happen RIGHT NOW. What might or even likely will happen in the future just isn’t enough to motivate us to change.
Godin’s right. It is to our (and our children’s!) detriment.

For me, it’s The Currant Organic General Store, a great store that always has funky, eco-cool stuff and is owned by a funky eco-cool woman, Angie; For my husband, it’s Cityview, a mom-and-pop greasy spoon that looks as old as it is. My kids love Attic Books, a second-hand bookstore on our city’s main street that holds untold treasures…priced for kid-sized allowances.
Most of us have our favorite local spots, where the owner knows us, or where he’ll order in what we want even though he won’t make a profit on it. You know the places I mean.
An organization is urging us to put our money where our memories are. The 3/50 Project offers up this simple formula: Pick three establishments we would hate to lose in our lives. Then commit to supporting each of them, to the tune of $50/month. You can finesse it to suit your budget. But check out all the reasons why it’s good business to support local businesses at the350project.net

For years, I’ve been preaching the gospel of green. Buy less, buy better, or don’t buy at all when you’re being sold a bushel of nonsense.
When I started my crusade, green was about as appealing as a bikini wax. But in the five short years since I began – and in the three years since my book, The Virtuous Consumer came out – green has become the new black. It’s cool. It’s hip. It’s…now.
Which, of course, means that much of it is…phony.
If there’s money to be made, the shysters will follow. Take, for example, the rush to provide bamboo clothes. Except for the fact that it’s not necessarily bamboo but rayon masquerading as it.
I hate greenwashing…and it’s rampant, says TerraChoice. In a 2008 study of greenwashing (making a product seem more eco-friendly than it really is), TerraChoice revealed that “of the 1,018 products examined, all but one made claims that are demonstrably false or that risk misleading intended audiences.
But for the past month or so – October being the official month of supporting breast cancer research – we’re being urged to buy “pink”. From lipstick to cars, t-shirts to toasters, companies have stocked the shelves with pink – promising us that a portion of the price we pay for our pink products will support various initiatives associated with breast cancer.
Which is all well and good, except. Except that we’re increasingly learning that many cancers, including breast cancer, can be linked to the products we use. Take lipstick, for example. Many lipsticks include ingredients that are known carcinogens, main among them are parabens, which mimic estrogen and which have been found in breast tumor samples. It seems disingenuous at best to sell me a potentially harmful lipstick, then donate a few cents from my purchase to support breast cancer charities. How about not exposing me unnecessarily to carcinogens in the first place?
I’m all for corporations sharing their profits with solid charities. But not when the products they’re selling are implicated in the problem itself.
Greenwashing? So last year. Pinkwashing is the new green.

Just in case we think that taking our reusable bags to the grocery store has made much difference…check out the UN’s most recent climate report.
We must get our governments to act now to at least mitigate the worst possible scenario. The economy and health care are all tied to the state of our planet’s health – and right now, we’re heading into the pooper.
Bill McKibbon who’s valiantly tackling climate change by imprinting the number 350 on everyone’s brains insists that there’s no time to waste. The number 350 signifies the level of greenhouse gases in parts per million that the atmosphere can absorb without dramatically altering ecosystems. Right now, we’re closing in on 390. The world, he says, is simply not doing enough.
What are you doing to create change – at a personal level? At a political level?

Today, as I sit down to write this, is September 21, World Day of Peace. My six-year-old and I took a bouquet of flowers to a local war memorial and laid it beneath a sign that read: “In honor of those who died in war and conflict.”
It seemed fitting. A little girl who has never known war nonetheless struggling to understand its absence in her life…and understand her mother’s gratitude for that.
Other mothers, of course, aren’t so lucky. They scrape together a life in the midst of conflict, or watch as their sons and daughters enlist. In worst case scenarios, they learn of their children’s disappearance, knowing without a doubt that their children have been seized to be trained as soldiers.
Canada recently altered its foreign policy to change the term “child soldier” to “children in armed conflict”. According to news reports, Harper’s Conservative government has been quietly altering many foreign policy terms – some that were hard-won – including removing the word “humanitarian” from references to “international humanitarian law”.
It’s worrying to me that Canada is losing its formerly firm grip on social justice issues. While we haven’t always done the right thing (First Nations issues remain this country’s great shame), I believe social justice has routinely been fought for.
On this World Day of Peace, I remain proud of what our soldiers are doing around the world, particularly in Afghanistan, but dream of a day when such measures are unnecessary.
However, my pride doesn’t extend to the government officials who, with the swipe of their pens, have made mockery of our foreign policy and, indeed, democracy as a whole.

With close to seven billion people jockeying for space on this planet, you might think I’m joking with my headline. I’m not.
When my now-eight-year-old son, whose matter-of-factness startles me at times, was five, he asked his kindergarten teacher “when people would become extinct.” Not if…but when.
There are currently 585 endangered species in Canada. A number that grows daily. Many scientists believe that the rate of die-off is greater now than at any time in history. Others point to a warming global climate that will kill millions and create millions more environmental refugees.
What will it take to convince people that the time to act is now? Not tomorrow. Not when the economy is better. Not when the last polar bear is only in a zoo or we realize that maybe we needed bees to pollinate our crops.
Sure, overpopulation is a problem right now. But not for long…

There’s an incredible (bizarrely hopeful, if you can wade through all the depressing stuff) debate being waged in the U.K. press right now between George Monbiot and Paul Kingsnorth about whether we should simply wave our white flag and brace ourselves for civilization’s collapse (Kingsnorth and his Dark Mountain Project) or give saving the planet (or at least mitigating the damage) the ol’ college try (Monbiot).
Here’s an awesome quote by Monbiot:

Join up, protest, propose, create. It’s messy, endless and uncertain of success. Perhaps you see yourself as above this futility, but it’s all we’ve got and all we’ve ever had. And sometimes it works.

Click to read the whole thing.