If I weren’t on vacation, I wouldn’t have read Oprah magazine. No really. But then I would have missed a piece of misinformation gratuitously foisted on her readers.
For her legion upon legion upon legion of fans, the big news is the O has recently been losing her battle with weight (one legion does not do her empire justice. Turns out a Roman legion isn’t that big—just a few thousand fighters. Who knew? In any case, Oprah is now bigger than ancient Rome. No, I don’t mean physically—give her a break, it’s only 40 pounds, and she’s under a lot of stress and has a thryoid problem to boot. But I digress). Even legions have their limits in certain fights.
But for clean energy advocates, it is a single sentence buried deep in the magazine that should be a source of distress:
Environmentalists live for the day we will discover a fuel source that is naturally replenished.
Sigh.
It’s bad enough such nonsense gets peddled by fossil-fuel companies and conservatives, but by Oprah?
Of course environmentalists, unlike the editors of O, know that we already have a bunch of fuel sources that are naturally replenished, like wind, solar PV, solar thermal baseload, geothermal, and efficiency (see “An introduction to the core climate solutions”). They were discovered many, many centuries ago and then turned into modern technology decades ago and have become cost competitive in recent years, even without a price for carbon dioxide that reflects its harm to humans.
What is especially annoying is that the misinformation is completely gratuitous, part of a page on “five out-of-the-box approaches to change a habit, a mindset, or the way you think about change”:
The Green Light
Environmentalists live for the day we will discover a fuel source that is naturally replenished. In a personal way, each of us is literally standing on our own wellspring of renewable energy-our feet. All we need to do is get them moving. According to research, regular exercise not only alleviates fatigue but is invigorating. So dreading the effort you’ll expend at the gym or sweating to exhaustion is misguided; instead, look forward to the renewed energy you’ll gain. If you’re a die-hard exercise hater, try just walking 30 minutes three times a week, suggests Woodson Merrell, MD, chairman of the department of integrative medicine at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York and author of The Source. “It’s like plugging into a power grid.”
Now that is the most unintentionally funny mixed metaphor of the month. Walking is like plugging into the grid! No, Dr. Woodson Merrell, chairman of the department of integrative medicine at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York and author of The Source, walking is the exact opposite of plugging into the grid. It is like going off the damn grid, and, oh, I don’t know, walking somewhere!
My wife says that complaining about the obviously unintentionally uninformed first sentence in this O piece will make me seem like a curmudgeon. Seem? I told her she needs to read my blog more. Oh, snap!
Still, I like the magazine’s main headline. It should be a very common one in the not too distant future if we don’t stop catastrophic warming: “How did I let this happen?”
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
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Comments
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christophersj Posted 4:01 pm
29 Dec 2008
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Pangolin Posted 7:22 pm
29 Dec 2008
I imagine any of the custom longtail bike builders would be more than willing to make her a sweet cruiser capable of carrying a few bags of groceries from her favorite market. Heck we'll even allow her an electric stoker motor for the hill climbs.
Heck, six months stoking a Bakfiets to Whole Foods and she might look as good as these Copenhagen girls on bikes.(work safe) Now if she really wants some inspiration to get on the bike she should check out the Riding Pretty blog. Locally, the summer heat makes college girls biking in bikinis a common sight. Sorry, no pictures.
Put the Carbon Back
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kmp Posted 3:18 am
30 Dec 2008
Thanks a lot, Joe... anyone have a good idea for cleaning coffee out of my keyboard? :)
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2wheeler Posted 7:07 am
30 Dec 2008
Ditto to Pango's biking endorsement. Biking is so good on so many levels. It brightens your day far better than some minutes on a treadmill ever could. And frees the spirit as well as the body to experience the natural environment of the moment and its weather, birds, and the community. Bonus: good for the planet and one's personal carbon footprint.
Seriously, getting "out of the box" as the article's editors were aspiring, requires 1.) recognizing the box or cage that one is in, and 2.) releasing the catches thereon.
Then just turn the pedal cranks, and roll... [Grin]
Moving toward sustainability with hopefulness, one revolution at a time.
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stopgreenpath Posted 5:32 am
01 Jan 2009
after all, the truth is quite a mouthful. better to go with the disingenuous soundbytes about how "renewable" a power plant, hundreds of miles away, that permanently destroys thousands of acres of highly effective carbon sink, emits TONS of GHGs, slaughters all the wildlife in the region and completely depletes groundwater sources, while often burning natural gas is, eh? i mean what's not "renewable" about that? it's genius, alright, but greenwasher-marketing genius, not "clean energy" genius.
truth hurts, folks. if we don't close the gap between consumption and generation on location, then we will just be continuing to careen down the slippery slope where all the costs of our power consumption are externalized onto ratepayers, taxpayers and especially the planet (both in GHG increases and ecosystem decimation), while Big Energy pockets the profits. this is the model that made the Fossil Fuel Robber Barons so rich, and Industrial Wind and Solar are trying to do the same thing.
so will we behave like enlightened citizens or like Stockholm Syndrome patients, opening another vein for Big Energy?
the greenest energy is that which you needn't ever produce.
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