5.06.2007

Global Warming: Post Shark Jump

More evidence from the New York Times that in the marketplace of ideas climate change hysteria is increasingly being put in the half-price bin:

I was running errands the other day when a pleasant young woman with a
clipboard tried to stop me. “Do you have a moment for the environment, sir?” she
asked.“No,” I barked as I evaded her, “I don’t!” I felt guilty, but also
vindicated. I mean, of course I have a moment for the environment. Saying you’re
not for the environment right now is like saying you’re not for education,
children, world peace, Africa or a cure for cancer. These days you would have to
be a fool or a lobbyist to dismiss global warming and natural resource issues.
But is it possible that all this marketing is cheapening the cause?Must every
hotel, restaurant, shampoo, detergent and beverage that is environmentally
responsible talk so much about it? Yuban “sustainable development” coffee. Paul
Mitchell “protecting our planet for generations to come.” Levi’s Eco jeans.How
much green-standing can we stand? It’s enough hot air to melt Antarctica. In no
time, an inconvenient truth has become an obnoxious one. But from what I can
see, there’s as much selling as thinking going on. The other night I attended a
magazine party in a photography studio that had been turned into an elaborate
garden with 10-foot-high privet hedges fashioned from shrubbery trucked up from
the South. After the party, the walls of greens went into a chipper for
recycling.“It’s giving back to the environment in a good way,” the decorator
told me.