After traveling over 1800 miles across this country I came to a bit of a realization:  it aint easy being green. This country is designed for waste, especially rest stops.  It’s like convenience has replaced common sense. For example, rather than have a clean and cool filtered water fountain/dispenser where I could fill my water up each rest stop I went to had at least two vending machines whose sole purpose was to vend petroleum covered water.  

As far as green selections for food, you can forget about it.  I didn’t pass one exit or rest stop that had fresh local produce.  Despite the fact that lots of them were right next to giant farms.  

And of course, if you want to drive cross country, you’ve got to use gas.  

To summarize, there were plenty of options to eat crappy, use oil, and consume things that would be thrown out in under an hour.  Basically, tons of options to hurt your body and your environment and none to do the opposite.  As far as being green is concerned, you’re set up to fail!  It just got me to thinking how far we all really need to go to change.

So, there’s this thing called Earthrace, a New Zealand based not-for-profit run by a guy named Peter Bethune.  It’s a boat team and boat (pictured above if you haven’t guessed) that are attempting to break the world speed record for circling the globe.  The catch is that this vessel runs exclusively on biofuels and was built using hemp, ice cream containers, and other reused or recycled materials and will result in a net-zero carbon footprint.  But wait, there’s more!  Most of the biofuel comes from plant matter but a tiny fraction of it, about 100 milliliters, came from Peter Bethune’s own love handles!  That’s right he got a plastic surgeon to suck out some fat around his midsection to fuel this thing.  Now that’s dedication to a cause, or pure insanity, or both.  

But how green can a speedboat really be?  Earthrace is purchasing carbon points to offset any CO2 given off by the boat.  But how effective are carbon points? Can we really just throw money at our waste?  I do not know the answers to these questions, but something seems fishy to me.  Buying carbon points seems a bit odd, like a baby seal clubber purchasing mean points.  How does this offset the harm done?  The whole CO2 thing isn’t my biggest gripe with these guys.  It’s the fact that they’re raising awareness for biofuels.  Which will in no way or in any capacity replace fossil fuels.  Numerous studies from various universities have shown the environmental dangers of biofuels.  End result is more starving people and more oil put into the production of biofuels, than the oil we get out.  

Here’s the breakdown:  I’ll give these guys points for raising awareness, but I think they lose major points for it being in biofuels and for putting millions of dollars into a freaking boat instead of giving it to an organization that directly effects to good of people.  How many families could have been fed with the money it took to make this boat or maybe we could have just put a couple of dudes in an apartment this winter.  

But, I suppose if you’re going to spend money on the fastest boat in the world it might as well be as green as it can be.  And after all, it is still one cool looking boat.

Many of you may have already guessed it, being on the self-proclaimed Greenest Site Ever that gNoob (pronounced geeNoob) stands for green noob or green newbie (be wary though for if you use the term newbie instead of noob you are showing your own noobness but this is another matter entirely). Anyways, I have struggled with the actual definition of the gNoob.  I’m like the supreme court and porn.  I can’t define it but I know what it is when I see it:

gNoob Party

You’ll notice if you click to enlarge the picture that the arrows are pointing to all of those people that are driving with only one person in the vehicle.  I didn’t just single out the big trucks because, hey maybe they have some important building to do, I really don’t know.  All I know is not all of these gNoobs need to be driving where they’re going and sure as hell not all of them need to be riding solo, anyone heard of telecommuting?  Perhaps some of them are on their way to a wonderful meal at a fine dining institution:

Meal of the gNoob

This guy’s meal choice is definitely a gNoob move.  Fast food is pretty crappy for everyone involved.  But I’m not just picking on this guy because he’s chubby, I’m a little chubby too.  These people, although svelte and young are maybe even bigger gNoobs: 

I’d vote that these clowns are bigger gNoobs than the guy above because although they may not eat it, it looks like they’re totally amped at selling you their crap food.  Thanks for the insincere smiles gNoobs.  Why don’t you cash your sell out checks at the Bank of the Devil.  

Okay, so maybe I’m being a little harsh on all of these people.  I mean, I know I like me some Burger King and McDonald’s when the mood is right and I sure as hell like to drive alone with my awful music blasting and if the money was right I think I would advertise a baby goat killing washing machine.  So, I suppose that I’m really a gNoob too.  I think the important thing is to recognize when you’re being a gNoob, ask yourself if there’s another way and then do it!  

Seeing as though I clearly don’t have a clue what a gNoob is, why don’t you tell me?

 

 

The words “green” and “sustainability” have been thrown around a lot recently The major television networks hosted a series of green weeks in which they changed their logos to a green hue and gave various energy saving tips; Chevrolet and Ford each have their own green ad campaigns touting their latest hybrids and energy saving concept cars; and even BP, the worlds third largest private oil company changed their acronym from British Petroleum to Beyond Petroleum along with a slew of television, radio, and print advertisements touting their funding of alternative energy and more efficient oil extraction.

But what exactly does this all mean and more importantly what does all of this really do? Most people and organizations really have no clue what being green or sustainable means; these two words have been manipulated into nothing more than public relation buzzwords that feign caring, awareness, and concern but in reality do little more than sell compact fluorescent light bulbs and single ply toilet paper. Making your logo green does not mean that your company is actually living up to that idea. Bragging about cars that get 30 miles to the gallon does not alleviate the strain that petroleum-based engines put on the environment and the economy.

The problem rests with one fundamental assumption about sustainability and green living: Americans want to have their cheeseburgers, and they want them to be green too. I am not saying you cannot have a great grass-fed organic all beef patty topped with organic cheese in-between a lightly toasted organic seven-grain bun—you can, and should, they are delicious. What I am saying is that this delectable organic burger is most likely not sustainable. Did the beef, cheese, and bun come from a massive organic meat and produce factory 300 miles away or a local farmers market or butcher? How did you get to the store to purchase these, drive, walk, or bike? What did you use to carry these ingredients home, in what containers are they stored? Even in the best of circumstances I know that I personally fail in at least one of those categories with almost every meal I consume and for many Americans, its not even possible for them to consume a sustainable meal because they either do not know how, or care, or don’t have any other options but to purchase food from a grocery store that’s fifteen miles away.

I recently was speaking with a gentleman who had come back from building homes in rural Egypt for half a decade. He was baffled by the fact that one could become a “sustainability expert.” He quipped that he worked with sustainable experts for the past five years who couldn’t read or write; each of these experts used locally abundant building materials, left little to no waste after construction, and the houses they built required no fossil fuels to heat, cool or light them. He was, of course, referring to the mud brick homes surrounding the outskirts of Cairo and Alexandria.

What he said made me take pause and helped me come to this realization: Sustainability by itself is not particularly difficult to achieve, mankind has hundreds of thousands of years experience doing it. The challenge is making modern comforts and systems sustainable. It is taking a seemingly endless amount of linear systems of production, services, and industry and making them cyclical. Instead of creating waste, they feed the system. Americans want to keep the trappings of our society within the context of something that is attainable and easily done.  They want their green cheeseburger but they want it cheap and they want it now.  These Americans should keep something in mind:  It’s not the planet they should be trying to save with their green cheeseburger it’s themselves.  The planet doesn’t need our help it will be spinning for the next billion years.  Humanity however, will be lucky to last for the next hundred if it doesn’t start implementing sustainable systems now.  I can see no greater challenge for our species and I wish to dedicate my life to it.