23 March 2007

It's Not Easy Being Green (Or Cheap) . . .

NO IMPACT MAN, has gotten a great deal of attention lately due to a NYT article.

Althouse has at him (appropriately tagged under 'lameness'), though not with nearly the same venom as Gawker does (not once, but twice).

Regardless of what you think about global warming (sorry GLOBAL WARMING!!!, I mean), this guy clearly is an ass (and a poorly wiped one, at that).

But his blog is fascinating in a totally unselfaware sort of way. I don't think this guy understands the impact his descriptions of his life have on those not within his orbit, or sympathetic to his cause (thus his confusion about his bathroom habits having a bigger 'impact than any of the other manifestations of his 'commitment').

One of his earliest posts on his blog was about getting rid of all the distractions 'aka' electrical devices. Makes sense from a 'not part of the solution, then part of the problem' extremist position, I suppose, but that's not what's remarkable about the post. Not even the thinly veiled intimation that what he was really after was some more nooky from his wife (he's after more non-electric distractions, if you catch my drift). The most interesting part of the post wasn't even in the post, but in the comment section. Someone sympathetic with his cause was curious about how he 'disposed' of the various eeeevil electical devices, and when it came to his 52 inch TV, here's what NO IMPACT MAN had to say,




The TV was moved out by two large men and taken to the house of our child-minder's assistant as a gift.




Let that sink in a bit. Isn't that wonderful. Not only do two working writers who presumably could set their own hours and do something radical like raise their only child themselves, but besides having a 'child-minder', said 'child-minder' has an assistant.

So let me get this straight, one 2 year old has at least 4 adults (2 parents, 1 'child-minder', 1 'child-minder's assistant') involved in her care.

My mind boggles.

He's begging for funding for a film (scheduled for a 2009 release to coincide with the book's release), I say give him all the money he wants or needs, this film will do more to make the environmental nuts look like the nuts they are to the general public than any project that the most eeeevil oil company executive could ever dream up. So if Exxon is smart, they'll funnel some money his way through some third party to hide their involvement.

I'm getting the sense from this fella, that he's just a pommy git who married some Upper Eastside money, but I could be wrong.

I suspect that the film that gets made won't be the film he expects. If only Terry Zwigoff were involved, then it'd be a masterpiece about a quirkily obsessed freak who doesn't understand the depths of his freakitude. But I'm sure there will be plenty 'Scenes from a Chilly Marriage' included (yes, I'm dropping in a Bergman in a post where I call attention to the pretensions and elitism of an enviro-nut, what of it? He's alive, maybe he'll take over as director . . . ), and maybe it will be cut into a cautionary tale on how too much zealotry, regardless of the cause, is a dangerous thing.

A Super Size Me (a stupid stunt, stupid conclusions, and stupidly successful, but undeniably entertaining) study about seeking an exaggerated lifestyle of maximum impact might be more fun, and instructive. That could show the little things people can do to cut back much more effectively than a 'greener than thou' documentation of one zealots attempt at green purification and green mortification. By courting 5th Ave. asceticism, he loses any hope of communicating to anybody outside of that Upper Eastside bubble.

First the Gaiaists brought back indulgences (a la Carbon Offsets), now they promote a green take on mortification.

Given the Gaiaists seem so intent on imitating pre-reformation (and early post reformation) Catholic dogma and practice, can a Gaiaist Green Inquisition be far behind?

(You know Al Gore would make a great Torquemada Verde)

(did you expect an Inquisition reference in this post?)

(I know, nobody ever expects the Spanish Inquisiton)




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(given the title of this post, you probably were expecting the following video)

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