With the annual Earth Day celebrations set for next week, environmental consciousness seems to be all the rage . Personally though, there are few things that provoke such utter ambivalence in me than environmentalism and its status as a growing force in the global zeitgeist. It’s not that I don’t agree that something needs to be done. I think anyone with any shred of common sense realizes that the current model of “modern living” does not pencil out in the long run when you factor in the finite nature of not just our resources but also with the space in which we are working. However, acknowledging that “inconvenient truth” is one thing, but actually coming up with a solution, not to mention implementing it, is entirely another. Some people say the solution is to start “living green,” which is definitely a nice little slogan. And at face value, it has some merit. But in practice, it’s basically become nothing more than another way to do the same shit and feel better about it. It’s sort of like Christianity: It was founded upon a noble enough principle, but once the idea started to become the institution, shit started to get all fucked up. I mean, how many years did it take after Jesus supposedly taught everyone to love everyone else before dudes were killing people in his name? How many years has it been since the idea of “living green” came about before Wal-Mart changed their logo from blue to green, or Clorox started making Organic Bleach?
Another trait common amongst organized religions definitely shared by the Church of Green is the penchant for those who “believe” to merely select the parts of the church doctrine that they can most easily adhere to and blatantly ignore the rest, all while maintaining an air of piousness. It’s like the militant bike rider, railing against SUVs and cars as greenhouse gas-belching pollution machines, who doesn’t bat an eye about flying home three times a year to see the folks, spewing pollution directly into the upper atmosphere. Or how about the eco-conscious housewife, who makes sure to turn off the lights when she leaves a room to conserve energy and bought herself a Civic hybrid to cut back on emissions, but then serves her family burgers for dinner, the production of which released more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than three hours of driving, and used up more energy than leaving a light on for 20 straight days, not to mention that disproportional amount of localized pollution created by large-scale meat farms and the role of overuse of antibiotics in the beef industry in creating antibiotic-resistant bacteria. I guess it’s the thought that counts, right?
I guess the moral of the story is, however popular the green meme has become, its actual utility is questionable at best. For now, living green will continue to be something you can buy at the store, use in your marketing campaign or learn as a college internship: an ideal. Carbon neutrality will continue to be something you buy on a Web site, like a Christian indulgence. It’s gonna take a lot more to kick mankind’s addiction to consumption than a few melted ice caps, killer hurricanes and deadly droughts. We need to hit rock bottom, man. I’m talking Old Testament style shit. People are too lazy and stupid to do what they actually know is right until they literally have no other choice. We’ll just keep building malls and damming rivers and jacking up our pickup trucks until our eyes are melting out of our fucking skulls and even then, we’ll just invent some better sunglasses, made from 25 percent post-consumer recycled plastic!

Here’s a link to a super uplifting post on io9.com called 12 Ways To Prepare For The Next Great Depression. I’m going to start stockpiling coffee and dried meats.

Get out of your mortgage before the housing market collapses any further. As this site says, if you paid $300,000 for your house and it sells for $200,000, you could end up not owning your house and owing the bank $100,000.

Buy some cheap land in a rural area. Build a house, or just get a used RV. Either way, make sure you own your home free and clear, so you can live rent-free and mortgage-free for as long as you need to.

Go off the grid. Get your own power generator — or, better yet, some of those solar helium balloons. Or some wind turbines. Don’t be dependent on the power company to keep all your necessities running.

Cultivate some skills that will always be in demand. Become a decent electrician, handy-person, carpenter or cook. There may not be much need for someone who understands content management systems during a total economic shutdown, but someone who can build a house will always have a place to crash.

Go read the rest and start saving that canned food.

SXSW is without question both the busiest and best week of the year. We arrived late afternoon today (Tuesday) ready to start drinking Lone Stars, eating BBQ and working our collective asses off getting tons of content and meeting virtually everyone there is to meet.

SXSW 2008 looks to be better than 2007 (not that SXSW 2007 sucked or anything) since Red Bull is back this year with the Red Bull Moontower (at SXSW 2006 the Red Bull House stole the entire show). Now we really don’t know what’s going to be going down over there (we’ll let you know after we find out) but we are certain of one thing - the Red Bull Moontower will be the place to be for SXSW 2008. What we do know is this:

Anchored by the Red Bull Energy Station, the Alamo Draft House Rolling Road Show and a solar stage, the Red Bull Moon Tower will be a mix of a musician compound and a high-end party where anything can happen.

More on all that throughout the next few days especially since I know we’ll be there until the 4am mark nightly for the next four nights. The first thing we had to do after a drink at the hotel bar was hit up Ironworks BBQ for a completely amazing dinner. I think I want to move into that place and just spend my day eating, at the least I think I need to eat there at least once a day for the next week.

Some 143 million pounds of ground beef (that’s a lot of meat balls) has been recalled by Westland/Hallmark Meat Company out of Chino, CA. The move is probably more out of a need to save face in the realm of public opinion than out of a genuine health concern, however.

On Jan. 30, the Humane Society of the United States distributed a video that exposed the company’s cruel practices in its raising and slaughtering of cattle. It is believed that much of the meat has already been consumed, but the risk of the meat being tainted by pathogens such as mad cow disease is very low.

Agriculture officials said there was little health risk from the recalled meat because the animals had already passed pre-slaughter inspection and much of the meat had already been eaten. In addition, the officials noted that while mad cow disease was extremely rare, the brains and spinal cords from the animals — the area most likely to harbor the disease — would not have entered the human food chain.

The video not only illustrated the company’s inhumane practices, but also raised questions of the meat’s safety since cows that are unable to walk run a high risk of contracting mad cow disease. The video features Westland/Hallmark employees “kicking sick cows and using forklifts to force them to walk.” In a statement released on the Westland/Hallmark Web site, president Steve Mendell wrote:

Words cannot accurately express how shocked and horrified I was at the depictions contained on the video that was taken by an individual who worked at our facility from October 3 thru November 14, 2007. We have taken swift action regarding the two employees identified on the video and have already implemented aggressive measures to ensure all employees follow our humane handling policies and procedures. We are also cooperating with the USDA investigators on the allegations of inhumane handling treatment which is a serious breech of our company’s policies and training.

The recall was called voluntarily, and the Department of Agriculture has temporarily suspended Westland/Hallmark as a supplier to federal nutrition programs. Also, charges of felony animal cruelty have been filed against Westland/Hallmark employee Daniel Agarte Navarro and misdemeanor charges have been issued to Luis Sanchez.

DJ Souljah and Smif N Wessun killin it. I don’t claim to know jack shit about hip-hop, I only know what makes me rock. This track is ill, dig.

For about the last 10 years, essentially since leaving my parents’ meatloving kitchen and striking out on my own, I’ve been a somewhat reluctant, on-again off-again vegetarian, mainly because neither of the traditional two reasons for going vegetarian, the moral reason - food animals suffer unjust treatment, animals have feelings, etc - nor the health reason - a meat-free diet will presumably be lower in fat, and will include more fruits and vegetables - really ever had me convinced. However, there is quickly emerging a third reason for going veg that should, and will, make anyone with an eco-conscious outlook reconsider eating meat: the environmental impact that the meat industry has on our country and the world. From a recent New York Times article (via Reality Sandwich) titled “Rethinking the Meat Guzzler”:

Growing meat (it’s hard to use the word “raising” when applied to animals in factory farms) uses so many resources that it’s a challenge to enumerate them all. But consider: an estimated 30 percent of the earth’s ice-free land is directly or indirectly involved in livestock production, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which also estimates that livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases — more than transportation.

To put the energy-using demand of meat production into easy-to-understand terms, Gidon Eshel, a geophysicist at the Bard Center, and Pamela A. Martin, an assistant professor of geophysics at the University of Chicago, calculated that if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius. Similarly, a study last year by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan estimated that 2.2 pounds of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.

So essentially, you can bike to work all you want, but if you eat a burger for lunch, you might as well be driving a Hummer. Food for thought…