Greenwashing the Planet One Website at a Time

Seattlest loves the planet with a lusty and soulful passion. Just wanted to say that up front. But the Green stuff is getting to be too much. Maybe we should say "greenwashing" as, of course, we have no problem with actual, beneficial efforts to protect the Earth. You want to read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, compost in your kitchen and load your groceries into your little burlap sack, fine. It's gonna take you a hell of a lot of trips to QFC to make a dent, but you're trying, and we're not going to say that you're greenwashing yourself by doing those things. What you should do is pedal your ass back home and get cracking on that perpetual motion machine, because what it's going to take at this point is an actual energy revolution, but we understand you're trying and we love you for it.

And we appreciate the fact that businesses are trying to make some green from the Green. Capitalism has solved many problems--perhaps climate change will be the next. Maybe they can profit themselves into sustainability instead of us legislating them there, who knows. At the very least a perpetual motion machine created by BP R&D probably has a better chance at saving the planet than the Rube Goldbergian device taking up space in Seattlest's home office. Businesses partaking in the Greenwashing, though, are getting out of hand. Did you watch football Sunday night? They were doing some Green thing where they sat around in the dark in the studio. Yeah, that's the image of environmentalism you want to instill in the football-watching Dorito-munchers: sitting around in the dark. Saving the Earth is a sacrifice, see, but it's also zany fun! We're on the set in the dark talking about football! Tee hee!

That was the pinnacle of greenwash, though, right? From now on the lip-service wave-riding for profit is done and we get back to the real work of reversing climate change?

Actually, we're probably just getting started. Last night we found, sigh, Green dot MSN dot com.