It’s painful to watch this, but if you really want to see a giant green marketing Weeble take centre stage at a presentation by a racing team that, by its own admission, will “dabble in just about anything that has wheels”, then feel free. It gets really silly about 5 minutes in.

But first is the email exchange between myself and Megan Palmer who works for a PR company, promoting a product that – and it gets a bit complicated here – has a part to play in the thing that they actually mention, as opposed to the thing they don’t mention which is the product they are supposed to be promoting! You’ll see what I mean if you keep reading…

From: Megan Palmer
Sent: Friday, February 05, 2010 1:09 AM
To: Megan Palmer
Subject: FW: Rick Ware Racing Video Press Conference Tomorrow at 3pm EST To Announce Green Sponsor

Hi,

I wanted to introduce myself and invite you to participate in Rick Ware Racing’s Video Press Conference where they will announce our green client as their multi-year sponsor for NASCAR, right before Daytona 500 next week tomorrow during a live video press conference. I will be contacting you in the near future regarding this exciting green product.

The press conference is tomorrow at 3pm EST http://www.ustream.tv/channel/rick-ware-racing or follow them on twitter for more @rickwareracing

Hope you can tune in and I look forward to working with you soon!

Megan

Megan Palmer
Executive Account Manager
Public Relations & Events

megan@amgwagency.com

ph: 305.856.8004 x: 304
fax: 305.856.8650
bb pin: 30FDCD98

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/meganpalmeramg

900 SW 8th Street C-2
Miami, Fl 33130

From: “Keith Farnish”
Date: Fri, 5 Feb 2010 09:25:10 -0000
To: Megan Palme
Cc: Keith Farnish
Subject: Re: Rick Ware Racing Video Press Conference Tomorrow at 3pm EST To Announce Green Sponsor

WHAT! How can a “green” client be a sponsor of a motor racing team?!

Please respond as this is astonishing.

Keith

From: megan@amgwagency.com
Sent: Friday, February 05, 2010 11:28 AM
To: Keith Farnish
Subject: Re: Rick Ware Racing Video Press Conference Tomorrow at 3pm EST To Announce Green Sponsor

Good morning, maybe its better phrased as ‘eco friendly’. hope you can tune in.

Sent on the Now Network� from my Sprint® BlackBerry

On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 6:33 AM, Keith Farnish wrote:

That still doesn’t make sense, Megan. What part of motor racing is “eco friendly”?

Keith

From: Megan Palmer
Sent: Friday, February 05, 2010 11:54 AM
To: Keith Farnish
Subject: Re: Rick Ware Racing Video Press Conference Tomorrow at 3pm EST To Announce Green Sponsor

The product is “eco-friendly” but that’s only one component. It’s an automotive product, which is why they’re taking part in the motor racing sport. I can’t say too much more before the video conference. As I look further at your website maybe it’s not a fit for your type of “green” coverage. Sorry for wasting your time. Have a good weekend

My type of “green” coverage. As opposed to what? I assume Megan meant really gullible “green” coverage that dumbly reproduces anything that purports to be green in order to pack out its RSS feed.

[On a sidenote, one reason The Unsuitablog doesn't have 10000 subscribers is precisely because it doesn't dumbly reproduce every bit of cack sent to it in order to have 5 or 10 posts per day. I would like to think the people who read this actually care about the subject matter...]

So, much later on I watched a recorded version of the Rick Ware Press Conferenc because, for some strange reason, I didn’t feel like watching it live. It turns out that Megan’s client is (I assume) the makers of Fuel Doctor, the product represented by the Weeble. I popped over to their site and had a read.

Apparently, simply by plugging this little gizmo into the cigarette lighter port of a car, your mileage can improve by 25%. This is mightily impressive considering all it is is an electrical filter, much like the ones you can put between a power supply and an amplifier to (theoretically) improve the sound quality of a hi-fi. Which makes me rather concerned that hundreds of millions of people are driving around at any one time in highly complex pieces of machinery that are so badly made that a simple line filter can fundamentally alter the ability of an engine to process gasoline.

So it’s a good thing that it’s a complete load of bollocks.

The so-called “certified lab tests” show, in shattered English, between 0.055% and 0.5% fewer carbon dioxide emissions. Yes, this incredible “green” technology has the equivalent emissions improvements to cleaning a bit of dirt off the windscreen.

Now, I know the CO2 test is right, because it uses a standard piece of kit, used around the globe to a recognised level of accuracy. But in the test that produced 0.055% less carbon dioxide, the car used 16% less fuel! They have somehow contrived to create something that uses up to 25% less fuel, yet emits virtually the same amount of carbon dioxide. According to a link on their web site:

It should be noted that the majority of the Carbon (99%) coming out of an engine is in the form of CO2. This means that improvements in fuel economy result in reduced CO2 emissions.

How did they measure the fuel use? Well, nowhere does it actually say, except on one of the tests we see some rulers next to some measuring jugs containing alarmingly orange liquid. Anyway, as the man said, emissions should match fuel economy, and they don’t, so nothing on the Fuel Doctor site has any credence whatsoever.

And neither does sending out a press release claiming that something to do with a motor racing team is “green”

This is classic greenwash. Vintage greenwash, in fact.

Tesco, the British supermarket giant headed by Sir Terry Leahy (knighted for services to corporate power), has announced that one of their 2,360 stores is to become carbon neutral. I assume, obviously, that this carbon neutrality includes the things they sell in the store, rather than just the operational carbon, otherwise you could be excused for thinking that – heaven forbid – this is a PR stunt.

The story is taken up by Julia Finch in The Guardian, who opens with a cracking statistic…

Supermarket group Tesco, which pumps out some four million tonnes of carbon a year, today opened its first zero carbon store as part of its bid to be a carbon ­neutral company by 2050.

The shop, in Ramsey, Cambridgeshire, is timber-framed rather than steel, and uses skylights and sun pipes to cut lighting costs. It also has a combined heat and power plant powered by renewable bio-fuels, exporting extra electricity back to the national grid. In addition the refrigerators – one of the biggest blackspots for food retailers trumpeting their green credentials – have doors to save energy and harmful HFC refrigerant gases have been replaced.

Tesco chief executive Sir Terry Leahy said: “It shows that you can dramatically alter how much carbon you use and life can go on”.

The new store, he said, “cost 30% more to build, but it uses 50% less energy, and with oil at $70 a barrel it is a business case in itself”.

To coincide with the Ramsey opening, the supermarket chain said it intended to spend more than £100m with green technology companies, although Leahy was unsure of the level of supermarket’s current spend on this.

Tesco has been at the forefront of the grocers’ race to be green. The UK’s biggest supermarket has provided £25m of funding for the University of Manchester to set up a sustainable consumption institute, and has a 10-point community plan, with pledges to increase local sourcing and to consult local communities in an attempt to be viewed as a good neighbour.

Apart from the obvious dissonance between Tesco’s 2,360 stores that rip the heart out of communities wherever they are located – and, believe me, they are not located in order to develop a harmonic relationship with any community – there is the small matter of what Tesco sells.

In 2009, Tesco had a turnover – essentially a measure of how much stuff they sell – of £59.4 billion, an increase of 15.1% on the previous year. Of that vast amount, £41.5 billion is from UK sales, with the remaining £18 billion accounted for by supermarkets in Thailand (614 stores), China (50 “hypermarkets”), Ireland (117), South Korea (280), Japan (137), Turkey (100), Poland (313) and the USA (113).

As the “green” store is in the UK, we should focus on Tesco’s activities there: so we see £28.5 billion coming from food retailing – what is considered the Core Business – and the bulk of the remainder from non-food retail (clothes, electrical goods, homeware etc).

If you live in the UK, I want you to go into a Tesco store and pick ten items at random, both food and non-food, then try and find out where the items were manufactured, grown or otherwise produced. You’re going to have an interesting time with food because, like most food in supermarkets, the items contain a huge variety of different ingredients emanating from all across the globe: simplicity is not in the nature of mass food retailing. Fruit, vegetables and other single-source items will invariable be a mix of local (ish) and from much further away; but you can be assured that even “local” items will have been moved from one end of the country to the other a couple of times for warehousing and distribution before reaching the store.

Non-food items are made, basically, in China.

Tesco’s Carbon Disclosure (via http://www.cdproject.net) is interesting, to say the least, and it’s well worth repeating here:

8.1. Please indicate the category that describes the company, entities, or group for which Scope 1 and Scope 2 GHG emissions are reported.

Companies over which operational control is exercised.

8.2. Please state whether any parts of your business or sources of GHG emissions are excluded from your reporting boundary.

Production of goods, supplier transport, international freight, asset sites, waste recycling and disposal, employee commuting, customer transport, consumption and disposal of goods.

So while they are honest about their “direct” emissions, they completely ignore the thing that accounts for the bulk of Tesco’s emissions: the production and transportation of the things they sell.

The aforementioned four million tonnes of carbon dioxide is, large as it seems, only the tip of Terry’s toxic iceberg.

Why should this be a problem, given that the companies that make and transport the stuff should be disclosing and accounting for their emissions? Because Tesco is a huge company, and for the most part, if they did not exist to sell people overprocessed, long-haul, extraneous and unnecessary things that people would not buy were they not marketed by Tesco’s gigantic marketing machine, the emissions simply would not be produced. But, hey! They have a carbon neutral store, so that’s ok, isn’t it?

Tesco: every lie helps.

(http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,52260545001_1947480,00.html)

Alerted to this video by a correspondant, who commented:

In what might be the greatest example of dystopian irony ever imagined, entrepreneurs in Greenland are seeking to use water taken from chunks of melting glaciers and bottling it in plastic for sale. Never mind that single-use plastics are one of the reasons that CO2 levels continue to rise.

To which I would add, that the whole operation stinks of yet another creeping tendril from the industrial machine desperately grabbing whatever “resources” it can take in order to siphon off the last few dollars (or Krone) from a dying empire. This is with the full backing of the Greenlandic government. The quotation from the video that really makes my blood boil is this one:

“Nature’s own knife has sliced this historic product and sent it crashing into the ocean. Creating enormous icebergs that float elegantly into the open sea: a resource possessing fantastic potential.”

The website marketing these monstrous products refer to the water as having been “reborn after 180,000 years.” No matter that with this “rebirth” comes so many deaths. No matter that the Greenland Ice Cap has the potential to raise the world’s oceans by 7m.

No matter. That’s business.

A few days ago I was watching the TV trying to see which companies were plying their seasonal wares to small children. It was the usual plastic crap which I don’t need to explain in detail, but one thing caught my eye: the Playmobile Recycling Truck, with an awful voice over saying, “Do your bit for the environment” to which I mentally appended, “by purchasing this chunk of unrecycled plastic.” Browsing this morning for similar products — and to give Playmobile their due, they don’t actually say anything more on their web site except that its a Recycling Truck toy — and I inevitably came across the Fisher Price range of toys.

Fisher Price are big, and getting bigger. Part of the behemoth toy corporation, Mattel since 1993, they are now worth over $2 billion, over a third of Mattel’s earnings. Not surprisingly they have a huge range of products, but two of them struck me as being particularly interesting: the Rainforest Range and the Precious Planet range. In the UK, these are given top billing on the “Baby Gear” page, as you can see here.

It’s a bit difficult to get too stroppy about the Rainforest range, even though they say in their Infant section:

Bring the natural beauty of a rainforest to your baby’s nursery … with lush greenery, playful animal friends, serene backgrounds, even calming motion and sounds. The Fisher-Price Rainforest toys and accessories line: designed to soothe and entertain your very special baby in very special ways.

They don’t make any claims about preservation, and it’s not as though rainforest means anything special when it comes to toys except monkeys and trees.

On the other hand, Precious Planet is altogether more pointed: if you saw a range of toys called “Precious Planet”, what would you think? Three cute animals smiling at the shopper, with a bird appearing to walk across a blue and green globe, partially masked by the bubbly blue writing. You can’t honestly say that Fisher Price are not trying to make some Eco-point here, can you?

So I called the UK office up, ready to ask questions about the chemicals in the toys, where they are made and whether they contained any renewable or recycled materials. What I didn’t expect was what I was told at 4′ 44″…

Fisher Price UK Recording – Precious Planet

Sorry about the bad quality, but you can clearly hear the words: “but it’s not environmentally friendly”

So why the hell is it called Precious Planet?! As I said in the call, there is no information, just the heavily suggestive range name along with an equally suggestive graphic: people are going to believe the products are environmentally friendly, when they may just be the least environmentally and socially (Mattel have a terrible record on sweatshop labour) ethical products you can buy for your child.

Actually, there is a link, which has grabbed Fisher Price by the balls, and isn’t going to let go. At the bottom of the page is the logo of the Wildlife Conservation Society. It only appears at the bottom of the Precious Planet pages for both Baby and Infant, so they are clearly trying to greenwash the public about their environmental credentials, by virtue of presentation: just because it doesn’t explicitly claim to be ethical doesn’t mean it isn’t saying so.

Go to the WCS web site, and you find that Fisher Price are one of their key corporate sponsors, and have their logo all over the place should you happen to visit the Bronz Zoo Animal Prison. What is particularly interesting is the company that Fisher Price keep in this roll-call of elite greenwashers:

ConEdison — Energy supplier to New York City, using oil, coal and gas
Bank Of America — Financial giant who will invest in just about anything that makes money
Delta Airlines — Yes, an airline, how very sustainable
Hess — A major oil company working everywhere, including Borneo
PepsiCo — Junk food behemoth, getting their logo everywhere they can

Quite where that leaves the reputation of the Wildlife Conservation Society depends on whether you think wildlife conservation mixes happily with coal, oil, airlines, global finance and junk food. I would say it’s in tatters, which is pretty well the state of Fisher Price’s greenwashing reputation as well. They deserve each other.

Do you have a beautiful Tuscan mansion? And another in New York, southern England, the Caribbean and probably all sorts of other places? And do you fly on a regular basis between them, and anywhere else that takes your fancy…in private jets…and helicoptors? And do you have personal chefs, masseurs, lifestyle advisors, gardeners and houshold maids? And have you had a Hilarious.Run.In with a Guardian journalist that more people need to see, just for the entertainment value? And do you promote healthy, sustainable living and tell people to save the rainforest?

Hi Trudie!

Love the moves…

Now, one video alone is never enough to move the contents of your stomach upwards, forcefully opposing the laws of gravity to emerge in a chunky stream of meal remainders. What we need is a proper emetic, in the form of this press release from Marissa at Trudie’s PR agency, Krupp:

GAIAM AND TRUDIE STYLER CREATE DVDS IN TUSCANY

Trudie Styler and Celebrity Trainer James D’Silva to Star in

Series of Mind Body Fitness DVDs

NEW YORK, NY – Gaiam, Inc., the leading distributor of lifestyle media and fitness accessories, today announced that it will produce a series of mind body fitness DVDs with Trudie Styler, the actress, producer, and environmental campaigner.

She will be joined in DVD workouts that combine elements of yoga, Pilates and ballet with traditional exercises by celebrity fitness trainer James D’Silva, who trained as a ballet dancer in his native Goa. He specializes in workout regimes to increase flexibility, strengthen and tone muscles, and improve posture.

The programs are filmed on location at Il Palagio, the Tuscan villa Styler shares with her husband Sting, and will feature music from Sting’s #1 classical album of 2006, “Songs From the Labyrinth,” plus extensive bonus material.

The first two DVDs will launch in October 2009, the third in December 2009, and two more DVDs and Myofascial Release kit in 2010. Each DVD will reflect elements of Styler and Sting’s philosophy on eco-friendly living.

“Trudie Styler embodies Gaiam’s lifestyle message of good health, wellness, and sustainability,” said Lynn Powers, CEO of Gaiam, Inc. “Her dedication to a personal lifestyle that focuses on health, the environment and social responsibility serves as an example for all.”

Trudie Styler said, “I have enjoyed yoga, Pilates and dance over the years and I certainly feel I have benefited from the integrated mind body experience they offer. It’s exciting that through Gaiam, James D’Silva and I are able to introduce these routines to others. I hope they will derive as much pleasure and benefit from them as I have done.”

The DVDs will feature Styler and D’Silva performing various mind body fitness routines, in the setting of the Il Palagio estate in Tuscany. They will also contain interviews with Styler, Sting and D’Silva covering thoughts on the environment, music and several of Sting’s songs.

“These new DVDs will combine fitness, aesthetics, and artistry designed to enhance the spirit of the workouts,” said Gaiam President of Entertainment and World Wide Distribution, William S. Sondheim. “Additional bonus segments will give viewers a glimpse at how Trudie and Sting have personally dedicated themselves to inspirational practices and green living.”

Bonus material will include a tour of Il Palagio’s kitchen and gardens. More than 70% of the food at Il Palagio comes from the estate itself, including products that are sold to the public such as honey, olive oil, fruit, vegetables, Tuscan salami and, coming in 2010, wine. Additionally, there is a behind-the-scenes look at how Il Palagio uses the surrounding land to create a self-sustaining and eco-friendly house that runs on bio fuels. And lastly, a lifestyle piece about organic wine production, the conversion of estate lands into biodynamic vineyards, and the story behind Sister Moon, the couple’s organic wine label.

You want them, don’t you? All of them.

Strangely, my reaction to this slightly misdirected press release was not over-effusive, sycophantic congratulations and a promise to promote the DVDs all over my blogs. I thought this would be more appropriate:

Hi [name withheld to protect the innocent]

To be honest I would rather eat my own hand than watch flying-addict Trudie, she of the 4 or 5 homes (I lose count), tell everyone how to live in a sustainable way on only $10m per year, while delightfully pirouetting to Sting’s self-obsessed ballads.

Thanks for asking, though.

Keith

To give her some credit, she is probably just as pissed off with sending this banal crap out as I am with receiving it. Her response was perfect:

So you’re passing? Just kidding. Thanks for letting me know and have an awesome weekend

An innocuous little email was sent to me the other day, and had it come from a small company that only makes light bulbs then I might have let it pass. But it didn’t come from a small company that only sells light bulbs; it came from the 12th largest company in the world, the fifth largest in the USA — General Electric.

GE, as they have generally always been known, are pushing compact fluorescent light bulbs as the answer to the world’s energy problems; as the email makes clear:

There’s no question that GE Energy Smart® bulbs give consumers the energy-saving benefits they want and the high-quality lighting they expect. With a complete family of different shapes and sizes, consumers have energy-friendly lighting options for nearly every room in their homes – including decorative fixtures.

If every household in the U.S. replaced ONE light bulb with an ENERGY STAR® qualified GE Energy Smart® bulb, consumers would save:


a.. A combined national total of $600 million a year in energy costs.
b.. Enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year and prevent greenhouse gasses equivalent to the emission of more than 800,000 cars.

Change the World, Start with ENERGY STAR® is a national campaign encouraging all Americans to join with millions of others and take small individual steps, like changing a light bulb, that make a big difference in the fight against climate change. ENERGY STAR is a joint program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy helping us all save money and protect the environment through energy efficient products and practices. Take the Pledge.

Apart from the bile-inducing statement, “There’s no question that GE Energy Smart® bulbs give consumers the energy-saving benefits they want”, which takes assumption to the whole new level (although, as I don’t consider myself to be a “consumer”, then maybe in a strange way, they are right…); is the statistical blunderbuss approach to this press release. For one, changing a single light bulb will reduce power consumption by a paltry 45 watts at most, which is about 15% of the power consumption of a plasma TV screen, and utterly trivial compared to the amount of energy consumed by a vacuum cleaner or oven. Second, it also waves around the “x million homes / people / cars” statistic, which always sounds impressive (yes, I was guilty of this once) but falls down as soon as you realise that they are only talking about the lighting for those 3 million homes, which also comprise only around 2% of US homes.

Then there is the “doing your bit” myth: the idea that we can all save the world by doing bugger all, like changing one lightbulb. You would imaging that GE would want to sell lots and lots of lightbulbs, but don’t forget — and here’s where it starts to get interesting — they are also an energy generation and transmission company, which makes big bucks out of providing electricity to millions of homes. If each home cut its electricity consumption by, say 50%, then it would be a financial catastrophe for the generation and transmission arm of GE.

What GE are creating is a “win-win-win” for themselves: (1) they look like a “green” company, (2) they ensure that they remain financially viable as an individual corporation and (3) they perpetuate the “doing your bit” myth which is essential to the continuation of the brainwashed consumer society.

It’s quite remarkable that I haven’t covered GE here already, but it has been excellently covered by DeSmogBlog, who paid particular attention to GE’s “clean coal” adverts:

Forget “clean coal.” Energy giant General Electric thinks coal is downright sexy.

This “coal-is-so-clean-its-sexy ad” was pulled by General Electric a while back, but it goes to show just how far some will go to sell clean coal.

Strange choice of music for the ad – “Sixteen Tons” by Merle Travis is a song about the misery of coal mining.

Why not spend a few moments reflecting on this, while you also ponder GE’s magical light bulbs…

Given that EVERY – WEB – SITE in the General Electric armoury appears to have “the environment” at the very top of its agenda — yes, that really does include coal, aviation and oil — I think we might be seeing more of this brutal monolithic corporation on The Unsuitablog pretty soon.

If you are a fan of American Football or have an interest in animal rights, you may well have heard about the former (and soon to be “rehabilitated”) star of the NFL, Michael Vick. This was a guy who, in common with an increasing number of inner-city gang members, took part in dog fights: or rather, the poor animals he baited, drugged and caged, took part in dog fights; the humans involved stood at the side and eagerly watched two hounds rip each other to shreds…repeatedly.

Not the kind of guy you would invite to meet your mother, I would think, and certainly not the kind of guy you would ask to front an animal rights campaign. But then we all know how screwed up the world is, and particularly what lengths some organisations will go to ensure they have a steady stream of income with which to continue their work (yes, PETA, I’m talking about you and your consistently sexist campaign images).

To this list — which also includes Greenpeace, buddying up with Kimberly-Clark; WWF, having a love-in with any company who submits the cash; and the Nature Conservancy, who have never left their corporate love-nest — we must add the Humane Society of the United States, for one of the most misdirected and stupid decisions by a non-environmental NGO I have seen for a long time.

There is now a web site called Boycott the Humane Society of the United States. The images aren’t pretty, but then dog fighting isn’t either. This is their take on the whole Michael Vick–HSUS debacle:

It is with great sadness that we are compelled to call for this boycott against the Humane Society. They have facilitated Michael Vick being able to return to the NFL and football which puts forth a horrible example for young children everywhere to believe they can kill and torture dogs, and live a criminal life, and still be a great football star and a spokeperson for HSUS. No, Michael Vick will not be going around the country and teaching children what to do with violent dogs. This is preposterous. Michael Vick may be the rule rather than the exception for the NFL bad boyz with their glamour and fame privilege. But we do expect more from the Humane Society.

The Humane Society didn’t need Michael Vick to do a campaign against dog fighting. They could have pointed him out from a distance as an example of what not to do and that is exactly what they would have done had he been some poor hick in the south fighting roosters. They would have never highlighted it in this way.

The difference here is a super sophisticated public relations effort to clear Vick’s name and reputation so he can make them all some money. And indeed this deal is all about money–big money. So much money that not a week, or even a moment, can be lost in rehabilitating Michael Vick’s reputation enough to get him out on the field for those big money making games which brings in lots of blood money for all of them, including unfortunately the Humane Society.

The Humane Society, The NFL and their sponsors and this sadist Michael Vick all depend on you having a short attention span and getting used to what they have done. I don’t know about you who are reading this page, but I have a very long attention span. Hope you will speak out about this in every avenue you can and apply pressure on everyone you can think of until Michael Vick is told in no uncertain terms that he has no business teaching anything to anybody, any more than OJ needs to be snatched up by battered womens centers to teach men how not to beat and kill their wives. If Michael Vick is not euthanized like the dogs he tortured, sexually abused and murdered then the only other thing that needs to happen is he needs to shut the fuck up, listen and learn and do his best to transform himself into a human being over the next decade or so and then we might be interested in what he has to say but even then certainly not as a representative of the Humane Society or the NFL.

There is also a Facebook Group for the boycott — if you feel strongly about this, then that is the place to start.

It’s not just greenwash that gets me angry, anything that makes unqualified claims that could end up harming people or the wider environment deserves to be targeted: in this case it is a company I have already challenged on The Unsuitablog, Holland and Barrett. Not content with lying through their teeth about the pathetic efforts they are making to green themselves up, they are now claiming to be able to reduce the risk of Swine Flu.

Now bear in mind that Swine Flu may or may not become a global pandemic of monumental proportions, that an awful lot of people are scared about it (and I believe they should be to a certain extent). Also, bear in mind that H1N1 Swine Flu is the direct result of the hyper-consumer economy and the desire to produce food as cheaply as possible for the most profit. Any backlash should be directed squarely at the commercial world but, of course, not content with creating the conditions for a global catastrophe, the system that created the problem is now seeking to benefit as much as possible from it: such as Tamiflu distribution being the de facto response to any outbreaks; as opposed to the far more logical move of stopping the mass movement of workers, holidaymakers and schoolchildren to and from their respective locations. One of these measures benefits the industrial machine — one of them does not.

Guess which the world’s richest nations have chosen.

On the back of this are the various bloodsucking companies that are trying to make a fast buck from people’s perfectly rational fears of global pandemic. When I see a poster in the window of my local Holland and Barrett saying:

SWINE FLU WATCH!

SPECIAL OFFERS ON SWINE FLU PREVENTION IN STORE

NOW!

I have to wonder whether they are selling anti-viral masks, sensible transmission prevention advice, or perhaps something less than effective from their existing range of “remedies”.

Something like this:

The little I know about Echinacea could be written on the back of my hand, but I do know that it has most definitely not been shown in any objective scientic study whatsoever, to prevent Swine Flu, or any other kind of influenza, for that matter (it may help prevent the common cold, but that’s another thing entirely). But, that’s what the people in my local shop have been told to push as an influenza prevention treatment.

But it’s not just Echinacea, they also appear to be pushing Manuka Honey as a prevention remedy: again, Manuka Honey may well have certain beneficial effects for certain conditions, but as to being a way of preventing Swine Flu…no.

Now, I have no problem with non conventional remedies — I use nettle draught for hayfever and plantain for stings and bites, but when they are pushed for commercial purposes, especially by a company as large and ambitious as Holland and Barrett (owned by, not surprisingly, a giant producer of vitamins and supplements), then I see nothing but bad things on the horizon.

Are you a budding journalist who really cares about the planet?

Do you want to make a splash, while at the same time let people know how badly we are treating the Earth?

Are you a hypocrite?

Then you need to enter the Earth Journalism Awards.

Send us your Best Climate Change Reports!

Print, radio, TV and online journalists, photojournalists, bloggers from around the world are invited to participate in the Earth Journalism Awards.

Send us your best stories on climate change before September 7 2009 (12.00 pm, Paris-time, GMT+2) and win a trip to cover the Copenhagen Climate Summit!

Internews’ Earth Journalism Awards encourage high-quality local climate change coverage leading up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference, December 7-18 2009 in Copenhagen (COP15).

A total of 14 awards are now open for entry:

Seven Regional Awards on current affairs and news reporting on climate change: Eurasia, South Asia, East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East & North Africa, Latin America & the Caribbean, and North America, Europe & Australia.

Six Thematic Awards: The Negotiations Award, The Human Voices Award, The Energy Award, The Forests Award, The Climate Change and Nature Award, and The Climate Change Adaptation Award.

The 14th award – the Global Public Award – will be chosen by the public, which will be invited to vote online for the best story drawn from the winning regional and thematic awards through a social networking campaign on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

Look out for the 7th thematic award – The MTV Positive Change Award. It will be open for entry from June 22 2009 to creative youth between 18 and 28.

Winners will be flown to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen this December, where they will cover these pivotal negotiations and be honoured at a high-profile awards ceremony.

People who care about more than just winning a fancy, polluting prize, need not apply.

In case anyone wants to accuse me of laziness, for using the text from other peoples’ emails and for banging on about Earth Day again (not for no good reason, I hasten to add), I would like to say in my defence that I have to trawl through, read and delete all this damn stuff which comes squeezing its way through my internet pipe every day like lots of little green goo-soaked monsters.

So, given this effort, and how I still don’t seem to have got through to the inane fools sending me so much pseudo-green trivia and corporate PR-puff, here’s my Top 3 Crap Earth Day Emails, in approximate order of hypocrisy:

3. Coupon Sherpa : for uber-trivia – as though coupons are actually a major issue, the promotion of coupons that encourage people to buy more stuff, and iPhones, which are made by a near-slave workforce with virtually no environmental regulation

As Earth Day nears, Coupon Sherpa’s new iPhone application demonstrates how mobile coupons can reduce waste

[Fort Collins, CO] – Envision all the printed coupons you receive via newspapers, magazines and direct mail. Millions upon millions of Americans are bombarded by piles of paper coupons every week. Coupon Sherpa offers an alternative that is friendly to the environment, convenient for consumers and beneficial for retailers.

Introduced in early April, Coupon Sherpa is an iPhone application that allows shoppers to access in-store coupons on their iPhone or iPod Touch. Approved by Apple, Coupon Sherpa (www.couponsherpa.com) is available at the iPhone App Store. There are coupons to over 100 merchants on Coupon Sherpa including Finish Line, Zales Jewelers, Coldwater Creek and Jackson-Hewitt. The coupon categories include clothing, restaurants, pet supplies, sporting goods, home & garden and entertainment.

The debut of Coupon Sherpa is timely, especially since Earth Day will be celebrated on April 22. The waste created by paper coupons is substantial. According to a report by the nonprofit group ForestEthics, “mail advertisements create 51.5 million metric tons of greenhouse gases each year.” [Ed: Mail adverts do not equate to coupons, you moron!] That number is equivalent to the emissions produced by heating about 13 million houses or mowing more than 20 billion lawns.

“We know that paper coupons will not be completely replaced, but providing consumers and retailers with an outlet for mobile coupons is a positive start towards reducing the waste created by the mountains of mail we all receive,” said Luke Knowles, who created Coupon Sherpa with his brother Jesse Knowles. “In the future, an increasing amount of coupons will be presented on mobile devices, and that will be great for the environment.”

2. Kelly Ripa and Electrolux : for being an incredible mix of greenwash and hypocrisy. This is like punching someone in the face and then saying “sorry” in a really sarcastic way.

Kelly Ripa Launches Virtual Campaign To Benefit Global Green

How Green Is This! Talk show host and eco-Mom [Ed: Eco what?! More like Hyper-Consuming Mom], Kelly Ripa launched Electrolux’s newest eco-friendly washer & dryer in limited edition “Kelly Green” just in time for Earth Day and kicked off an online campaign to encourage people to renew their commitment to living green by planting a virtual flower for a friend. For every virtual flower planted at electroluxappliances.com , Electrolux will donate $1 to Global Green USA to support their healthy green schools initiatives across America.

Pass me the sick bag!

1. Lexus and Alicia Keys : for leaving me open-mouthed with astonishment at the sheer level of environmental hypocrisy, coupled with a brilliantly conceived splash of student brainwashing; all for less than the cost of a single car.

To kick off Earth Month, Lexus, the top-selling luxury automaker, and multi Grammy award-winning recording artist, Alicia Keys, will honor Los Angeles’ Thomas Jefferson High School with a $10,000 Grand Prize for its environmental achievements through the “Lexus Keys to Innovation” program. The “Lexus Keys to Innovation” program is a unique way for Lexus and Alicia Keys to recognize and reward students who have successfully implemented innovative environmental programs in their schools and communities.

Through “Lexus Keys to Innovation,” Lexus and Alicia Keys presented ten schools across the country with a $2,000 donation to support existing environmental programs. Thomas Jefferson High School’s “action plan” proposed that the $10,000 Grand Prize be used to create a native “green” space on campus for the students and faculty to utilize as an interactive educational tool.

The mission of the program is to better this South LA high school and community by bringing a much needed green space to the area which is currently dominated by [huge amounts of greenhouse gases generated by vehicles such as those produced by Lexus,] concrete, meat packing plants and factories. Additionally, the space will help to improve the air quality around the campus, and will allow students at Thomas Jefferson High School and nearby Harmony Elementary School to use the Green Space as an outdoor science lab.

The Environmental club at Thomas Jefferson High School will make this project a community effort by partnering with the local Harmony Elementary School to teach the younger members of their community the importance of taking an active role to better the environment.

During a school-wide assembly [and marketing opportunity] on April 2nd, Lexus’ vice president of marketing, Dave Nordstrom, will present the Grand Prize as well as commemorative, native Californian sapling to plant in the “green” space to Thomas Jefferson High School. As an added “thank you” to the students of Thomas Jefferson, Alicia Keys has videotaped a special message that will be played at the assembly, prior to Dave’s commemorative.

Now, will you all join me in sticking two fingers up at the winners – including our special celebrities. May they all be washed away when the tide turns…