Green Daily

I'm sure a few of you will agree with me that the Eco/Green Movement can be a bit lacking in the sense of humor department. But two men -- two Yes Men -- have made it their mission to remedy both corporate wrong doings, and the dearth of laughs in the discussion.

Mike Bonnano and Andy Bichlbaum are the Yes Men -- or at least, those are their stage names. The two activists/performers/pranksters/identity thieves -- although they call it "identity correction" -- star in the new documentary "The Yes Men Fix the World," which showcases some of the big "Borat"-style hoaxes they've played on corporate world, all in the name of drawing attention to the way things should be.

The film opens with Andy Bichlbaum preparing to appear on the BBC as "Jude Finisterra", a representative of Dow Chemical. He is endearingly, and understandably, nervous, because he's about to tell a whopper of lie to the entire world: that Dow accepts all responsibility for the Bhopal chemical accident and ragedy, and plan to sell off subsidiary Union Carbide to finance $12 billion in reparations.

Back in the 70s, I remember nuclear energy being discussed in the same breath as geothermal and solar power. But then the partial core meltdown happened at Three Mile Island in 1979, giving the American public a huge scare about the safety of nuclear reactors.

It didn't help matters when the film "Silkwood", starring Meryl Streep, came out in 1983, showing how workers who were exposed to plutonium had to be literally scrubbed raw -- those decontamination showers are burned into the brains of a generation!

But the climate crisis has created the urgent need for a power source that doesn't produce CO2. There are already several nuclear power-plants online in the U.S. In 31 states there are 104 reactors, which provide about 20% of our energy -- and 70% of our emission-free energy.

Some people put away money for a rainy day. Other people bank a different kind of green to save for the future. They collect seeds!

Seed banks are a way to preserve seeds and plants (despite the name, many seed banks collect plants and grow the seeds, too) in the event of a disaster, like a war or some kind of climate catastrophe. The idea is to protect biodiversity, as well as food sources, so that we don't accidentally completely wipe out a really useful plant by over-harvesting it, or destroying the habitat where it grows.

The Millennium Seed Bank, which is associated with 250-year-old Kew Gardens, announced last week that they have samples of 10 percent of the world's seeds in their vault. Their goal is to collect 25 percent of the world's seeds by 2020!

Today is "Blog Action Day", an annual event held every October 15th, where blogs around the world all talk about the same topic. This year the topic is Climate Change, and can I just say, I'm so excited to see everyone writing about this!

Sometimes I feel like I'm harping on this topic again and again and again, but hey, it's real, important and relevant to every single one of us. From the way the weather is changing around the world, to the causes of these changes, to the things you can do right now to reduce your carbon footprint and slow down the changes, all of us need to have a voice in the climate change discussion.

Since I've already written a lot of posts on the topic, today I'd like to go back and share my 10 favorite posts I've written on climate change:

Remember earlier this year when baby elephant Mosha got a prosthetic leg thanks to Friends of the Asian Elephants, in Thailand? Well, those kind folks have provided another elephant, 48 year old Motola, with an artificial leg, to replace the one that she lost to a land mine 10 years ago.

Motola has been "practicing" with a temporary limb for three years, in order to get the muscles and tendons ready for her permanent leg. Even though she was a bit tentative putting weight on her new limb, she seemed pretty happy, spraying dirt to express her excitement.

Elephants used to be the primary form of transportation in Thailand, but they've been replaced by cars and trucks. Today one of the few roles left for elephants is providing rides to tourists, but that's still a rough life.

You've probably seen references to the United Nations Copenhagen Climate Conference that is being held this December in Denmark. The goal of the gathering, which will include (almost literally) every country in the world, is to create a new global protocol to address climate change, and that will succeed the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012.

I have to admit that news about this conference had become a sort of "cap/emissions/2 degrees warmer and we're all dead!" white noise to me. Climate change is another one of those topics that can be so overwhelmingly scary and negative that, like most people, after a while I tune it out.

An interview with UN climate chief Yvo de Boer simplified the goals of the conference for me, and made it seem more practical and less dire. It turns out they just have to answer four questions

Rumbling trucks may be cock-blocking city frogs! In ponds across Australia, it seems that frogs can't "attract the ladies" because of loud noise from nearby highways, according to a new report by Melbourne University ecologist Kirsten Parris.

Parris has been studying the lives of frogs in urban Australia since 2000. During this time period, the number of frogs has declined. She hypothesizes that male frogs, who attract a mate by having the most appealing "croak", are having a hard time being heard over the sound of city traffic. The result? Fewer mates, and fewer offspring.

Why do we care? Because animals having sex is fascinating! Have you seen Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno on the Sundance Channel? Besides being artistically clever, totally hilarious and starring the divine Ms. Rossellini, the 60 second clips are riveting because they're about s-e-x.

Advocacy Group Decries PETA's Inhumane Treatment Of Women

It's about time someone took on the woman-haters of PETA. I speak of course of The Onion's exposé of the extreme animal rights group's misogynistic attitudes and practices. In the video above, a spokeswoman for "Women Deserve Better" talks about PETA's cruel practices like making them hold live animals against their naked bodies or putting them in shackels and sticking them in cages.

It does sound bad when it put it like that!

In addition to these ugly acts, PETA also makes them sit through long photo shoots and feeds them nut dogs. High crimes indeed. "Women Deserve Better" hope to rescue these "hundreds" of women, and take them to a farm where they can live out their lives in peace. Presumably away from vegetarian protesters.

(Photo by Getty Images)

Yesterday saw a lot of outrage and disbelief that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell conditionally reinstated convicted dog abuser Michael Vick. This means he can practice through the pre-season with teams, and even play by the sixth game of the season, although (so far) no one has extended an invitation to him. It's also being perceived as a subtle and public act of forgiveness for something that most of us find unforgivable. And that's pretty upsetting.

In addition to financing the Bad Newz Kennels dogfighting ring, Vick was also sickeningly -- and personally -- cruel to the animals in his care. He served two years in prison, lost all of his endorsement deals, and was suspended indefinitely from the NFL.

Vick is a gifted athlete, but for most of us, participating in dogfighting is a deal-breaker. It automatically and forever makes you a sicko, and trying to make money off of it makes you a sociopath. It's not a sport, and there is absolutely no way to put a good spin on it.

If you've been wanting to visit the zoo, now is the time. All the babies that were born in the spring are now big enough to be part of the exhibits, and, apparently, more are being born!

It's been a busy week at the Smithsonian National Zoo's Conservation & Research Center in Front Royal, Virginia, where they welcomed a clouded leopard cub, a Przewalski's foal, and five (so far) Red Panda cubs.

In addition to the feel good news about baby pretty much anything, these births are something to celebrate because all three species are seriously threatened.

(Photo by Getty Images)

Today Walmart is holding what they're calling a Sustainability Milestone Meeting at their corporate headquarters (aka "The Mothership") in Bentonville, Arkansas. Word on the street is that will use the conference to unveil their new "sustainability index" which they will use to rate the environmental impact of all merchandise -- yes, literally everything -- sold in the stores.

The index will take into account several factors, including manufacturing, waste management and how the product is used. Some presumably brilliant faculty members from University of California at Berkeley, Harvard, Stanford and the University of Michigan helped create the index, so in theory it should be all based on data and facts and fair things like that.

Walmart has been grinding the "how can we be evil if we're so green and sustainability-driven?" axe for a while. And yeah, you have to admit that they make a good gesture of using the power of their bulk for good -- if they demand that a supplier change their practices to reduce the carbon footprint of their production facilities, or engage in fair trade practices, then what choice does the supplier have? The result is what we should care about, in theory, although the bully methods are cringe-worthy.

(Photo by Target)

Okay, so I get that we shouldn't use leather, because it's (theoretically) cruel to kill animals for fashion, and the tanning and dying process is (definitely) an environmental nightmare that produces evil, poisonous sludge.

A fashionable girl can still turn to fun (and bonus: inexpensive) vinyl options from trendy bargain retailers like Target and H&M. No animals hurt here! Except, wait, the production of vinyl is sort of nasty. But did I mention, no animals hurt? Vegan? Please, can't I at least have a leather looking bag?

Apparently the answer is "No." A news alert from the Center for Environmental Health just released results from a study that found vinyl bags bought in the Bay Area have high -- dangerously high -- levels of lead in them. Great! That's where I live, and I'm carrying a fabulous H&M vinyl bag right now. Except I just dropped it like a radiation-hot potato.

Scientists and agriculturalists and beekeepers continue to struggle to find an explanation -- and a solution -- for the worldwide disappearance of honey bees.

Maybe disappearance is the wrong word -- one in three bee colonies is actually dying. This phenomenon is known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), and has been linked to cell phones, climate change, parasites, and even UFOs. As in, aliens are coming to Earth, landing in fields, collecting our bees, and flying away.

In other words, we just don't know why it's happening!

One of the biggest benefits of having bees around is that farmers depend on them to pollinate crops, including one third of the produce grown in the U.S. So when you don't have any bees ... no pollination ... and no produce.

Last week was the one year anniversary of the devastating earthquake on May 12, 2008, that destroyed the Wolong Panda sanctuary in the Sichuan province of China. The surviving pandas were sent to other sanctuaries around the country, and eight of the pandas had an extended stay at the Beijing zoo over the summer.

Most have now moved to their new luxurious sanctuary in Bi Feng Xia. Jennifer Keating from the San Diego zoo took a trip to China and reports that the dedicated keepers and adorable animals are all recovering nicely and adapting well to their new location.

While reading about the status, I stumbled across news of a movie that was being filmed at Wolong when the 8.0 earthquake struck. The Disney film is the story of an orphan boy who finds a lost panda cub, and helps the cub find his mother. The surprising thing is that they used real pandas -- not animated -- to tell the story.

The big environmental news over the weekend was an announcement that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar would not overturn an 11th hour Bush rule that limits Endangered Species Act protection for polar bears.

Environmentalists, activists and scientists have been lobbying to get the rule reversed since it went into effect in December. And it was a shock to most Democrats that Salazar didn't use his special authority to undo the Bush damage.

Salazar's explanation was that the Endangered Species Act is the wrong way to pursue corporate green house gas emitters, and he left open the possibility that he would enact other laws to strengthen environmental protection for polar bears and other animals whose habitat is threatened by climate change.

This actually sound sort of logical to me, and hints that the Obama administration might even have some other, bigger environmental changes in the works. But it was not good enough at all for environmental activists like Greenpeace. They're foaming at the mouth!

As soon as they heard the news, Greenpeace did a "direct communication" action outside of Salazar's office: Two activists ("solemnly") walked into the pond in front of the Department of the Interior building and dropped off a symbolic drowned polar bear.

Yeah, they sacrificed a big, white stuffed animal in a corporate water feature. How very PETA of them.

Actually, let me take that back. If PETA had been running that protest, the activists would have been topless, pregnant women, wearing polar bear masks. With duct tape over the mouths. In cages.

Maybe next time!