There’s nothing like the big screen to bring home the message of green, namely that our home is in peril. Or, as Michael Ruppert forecasts in Collapse (2009), on the brink of total ruin.

Then again, even the small screen can make a dent with viewers if the message is as compelling as the gruesome one in the extraordinary documentary, The Cove. All eyes were on activist Ric O’ Barry as he strapped a monitor on his chest and barged into an IWC convention playing horrific footage of the dolphin slaughter in Japan. Shocking stuff, yes. That’s ecotainment!

Screen and green go together like popcorn and Junior Mints, and that is why several films in the running for the most coveted prize in Hollywood appeal to our sense of survival as a species – one that sprang from a simple and pure beginning before industrialization began eroding what we treasure the most.

Take Avatar, James Cameron’s 3D odyssey which is among 10 best picture nominees vying for Oscar at the March 7 Academy Awards. It follows the saga of a vicious military machine from an ecologically-destroyed earth setting its sights on the distant planet, Pandora, which possesses a desirable mineral that can provide an alternative energy source. The story mirrors the shameful Native American experience of decimation by conquering imperialists with 10 times the modern weaponry of bows and arrows, thirsty for land acquisition at any human cost. How many times have we seen the same plot relived on the global stage?

The astounding production shot by Cameron with virtual cameras was so far-reaching, it even moved Palestinian protesters in Jerusalem to dress up like the fictional blue Na’vi aliens to combat Israel’s separation barrier. No matter where you stand politically, this film resonates with the historic experience of the displacement of indigenous populations.

Among the other environmental message films getting the nod at the 82nd annual Academy Awards:

Up, an Disney Pixar animated adventure that takes off when a 78-year-old balloon salesman and a chubby 8-year-old boyscout ride a balloon-powered bucket to the South American jungle, navigated with the tools of  little Russell’s “Wilderness Explore GPS” and the old man’s good common sense. They end up outwitting the villain who is trying to harm a flightless mother bird the boy names Kevin, and in the end they return the bird to her chicks and save the species from extinction.

Two eco exposes, Food Inc. and The Cove, are up for best documentary. Both are raw, daring endeavors on the part of the film makers who went to great lengths to reveal foul cover-ups in food production.

Food, Inc., the product of a growing food justice movement in the United States, explains why we are “hungry for change.” It is considered one of the most talked about films of the year, a painful chronicle of the inhumane agriculture industry and a strong case for sustainable, ethically raised beef and farm food versus ignorance and greed.

The Cove reminds us that in “the Greek era it was punishable by death to kill a dolphin,” and begs the question, “What is going on here?” Here, is Taiji, Japan, where an annual bloodbath involving the spear hacking of 23,000 adult dolphins and their young is covered up by a government protecting the fishing industry and the $150,000 made on “show dolphins.” Fishermen trapping and killing schools of dolphins are told they are eradicating “pests” who are eating up the fish supply. Meantime, the Japanese public is duped into believing the mercury-laced protein is actually “safe” whale meat.

In seeking to inform the public about these appalling realities (most Japanese consumers don’t even know about the dolphin slaughter), the makers of The Cove tell us, “By destroying anything in nature we are taking away from ourselves, and we are losing it all at a horrifying rate.”

Will Oscar-winning films slow down that rate? At least, they probe deeper than the usual screen fodder – gratuitous sex and violence – by opening our eyes to our own culpability in allowing downer meat, dolphin murder, deforestation and displacement of indigenous peoples. Sometimes the subject matter is so engrossing, you are motivated to take action once the screen goes dark by writing a letter to your senator, the USDA or Prime Minster of Japan.

My own 10-year-old ran to her room after viewing The Cove and made a poster saying, “Save the dolphins, we want blue water, not red!” It gives a whole new meaning to the term moving pictures.

Imges: Oscars, Luanne Bradley

Well, not so much.

PETA Steals First Lady When She’s Not Looking (January 2010)

Want to be endorsed by a celebrity? Now you can, with the all-new PETA marketing technique “Shameless Theft (TM)”. If your work is in a good cause and you like the idea of, say, First Lady Michelle Obama giving it the thumbs-up, simply steal her image and slap it wherever you please. When a fuss arises, clarify that you’re “honoring” your target by featuring their image (while furthering your own aims without prior permission). Oh, and when you finally back down in a show of “good faith,” be sure to point the finger at someone else. It’s the adult thing to do.

Incidentally, this entire post is personally endorsed by those huge blue aliens in James Cameron’s Avatar. No, really.

KFC vs. PETA: Flaming Silly to Monumentally Daft (January 2010)

As we’ve noted before, there’s nothing that PETA enjoys more than the smell of roasting Kentucky Fried Chicken – the company, that is. Their latest attempts to haul this fast food corporation over the coals? Firstly, PETA wants Indianapolis fire trucks to sign an advertising deal, the same way the fire department has with the finger-lickin’ folk – and secondly, a 5.5 foot tall statue of a gory chicken on crutches, artfully monikered “KFC Cripples Chickens”.

In both cases, local officials denied the requests, citing inappropriate context and legislation and, in the former case, the fact that “advertising on a fire truck could even lead motorists to believe a truck heading for an emergency was just performing a stunt.” Quite.

Lydia Guevara Picks Up Carrot And Keeps On Shooting (June 2009)

Did you know Che Guevara’s granddaughter is vegetarian? Before mid-2009, neither did PETA, but once they twigged they wasted no time in divesting her of most of her clothes, daubing her with camouflage paint and hanging a bandolier of carrots round her neck. “Join the vegetarian revolution” ran the accompanying tagline. Self-proclaimed nonviolent PETA associating itself with bloody Cuban guerrilla warfare? In the fight for animal rights, it seems the first casualty is your own core principles.

Sorry Old Boy, A Machine Could Do Your Job (November 2009)

Poor old Uga VII. The latest in the line of beloved bulldog mascots of the University of Georgia (Athens, Georgia) recently passed away, leaving his post temporarily open – and PETA leapt in with the suggestion of a robotic substitute. It’s a fact that bulldogs (originally bred to fight) are so famous for their health problems that the Kennel Club recently voted to change the pedigree standards to breed out its congenital ailments.

That’s PETA’s reasoning for the switcheroo (and we’re sure virtual pet makers Nintendo and Bandai are cheering them on). But why not encourage the University to seek a mascot from America’s brimming animal rescue shelters, guys? Our tails aren’t wagging.

PETA’s Unhappiest Side: Children Yet Again Considered Fair Game (August 2009)

Oh, PETA. However endearingly barmy your antics sometimes are…sometimes you’re just plain frightening. If the image of a throat-cut clown hung upside-down wasn’t graphic enough, PETA members have also been handing out “Unhappy Meals” to visitors of a McDonald’s in Albany, New York, comprising of a t-shirt (”McCruelty”) inside an imitation burger box spattered with fake blood. All this, to children.

Don’t Toy With Your Food: Flinging Fishmongers Catch It From PETA  (June 2009)

Wander through Seattle Pike Place Market at the right time, and you’ll see flying fish. The market’s fishmongers are famous for their sure-handed fish flinging skills, and are consequently much in demand as a dazzling spectacle for hire. When the American Veterinary Medical Association employed them for a motivational conference demonstration, PETA ticked them off in a letter that raged “it’s cruel enough to eat fish, but it literally adds insult to injury to use them as toys for silly stunts.” (Except they didn’t really mean “fish” there).

PETA are fed up to the gills with dead creatures being gruesomely displayed in public. So hey, what about living ones?

Your Name – It’s A Sin (April 2009)

British electronic music duo Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, better known as the Pet Shop Boys, are currently enjoying a revival of their iconic ’80s sounds. But what’s this? “Pet Shop”? Yes, you guessed it: PETA want them to relabel themselves the Rescue Shelter Boys.

If this attempt had been successful, perhaps rock legend Meat Loaf would now be called “Vegetable Terrine” – but thankfully Tennant and Lowe turned PETA down while graciously agreeing that the request “raises an issue worth thinking about” (and we tend to agree).

By no means are all of PETA’s actions founded on shock tactics, infringements on human dignity and general negativity. We like a lot of what PETA stands for – yet we wish it would grow up a little, because what it could do is surely too important to be ruined by what it actually does. That’s our view. What’s yours?

Images: sabianmaggy, ccharmon, mikebaird, sqeakymarmot, Mrs Logic, EatMeDaily, JasonDeRusha,

In 1985, Mary Porter and Alan Isaacs (below) launched a dating service to connect progressive-minded singles in the environmental, vegetarian and animal rights communities. GreenSingles boasts it has matched thousands of globally-conscious members who share  common values and interests.

“Relationships are hard enough, but they are made easier if you share common interests and values, when you ’speak the same language,’ and when you are moving in the same direction,” Isaacs tells me.

Now, 25 years after the singles network was hatched, it’s not just lonely hearts reaching out  for a green connection, but eco minded beings everywhere, through the expedient vehicles of social and ecopolitical networking. They are seeking  knowledge, friendship,  support and action to make a difference.

The Copenhagen Climate Summit showed us setting limits to protect our quality of life on the planet rests in our own hands, not in the hands of the man. Indeed, if the post-Woodstock generation has learned anything it is that real change comes through bucking the corporate stronghold through revolution. It appears a green one is afoot, even if it’s a communication revolution, bonding eco friendly cells one link at a time.

“The connecting and the collaboration can be fueled online but it is only essential if people disconnect from their computer and cell phone screens and take our cause to their neighbors, the streets and city halls,” says Marnie Glickman, founder of Green Change, an online organization building the green movement for peace, justice and democracy.

Glickman doesn’t believe virtual lawn signs make a big difference for the green revolution, and argues she must prioritize her online organizing to effect the kind of change that can save the world.

“One thing we are doing is getting people to consider running for office or to identify good leaders in their communities,” she explains. “We call those who are identified, meet with them and tell them one way we can stop global warming is to replace the bozos who aren’t doing much work themselves.”

Is online green collaborating making inroads for saving the planet’s resources?

“Networking between grassroots organizations, I think, has made them far more effective in sharing best practices and lobbying for change,” observes Keith Gilless, Dean of the College of Natural Resources at the University of California, Berkeley. “Clearly, if people weren’t getting something out of it, they wouldn’t be putting so much into it. The hard part is the same with any search engine; how do you not drown?”

It’s a provocative question, considering the seemingly endless number of entities residing in the great, green abyss. They include social services like Twitter, Myspace , LinkedIn and Facebook as well as political action sites such as World Coolers and Make it Right.

You can befriend and follow any and every green address registered online, an enormous and often exhaustive investment of time for those truly committed to the cause.

Domains like Cooltribe allow for the exchange of ideas, while emerging eco media, such as our own EcoSalon, cover news and trends in areas from wellness to the three R’s of reducing, reusing and recycling. There is a wealth of home improvement industry links, grassroots water and animal protection groups, fair trade vendors, college campus activists, regional farmers markets, green moms, fashionistas, biodiesel fuel resources, hippies sharing winter solstice rituals – even celebs like Brad Pitt, Daryl Hannah and Adrian Grenier.

Gilless, who has seen the College of Natural Resources triple in size at Berkeley since he first started there 26 years ago, admittedly went kicking and screaming into cyberspace, but now like many of his generation, finds it to be indispensable in educating the school’s 1900 environmental studies undergrads and 400 graduate students.

“We make extensive use of the web in teaching now, if only because it is so much cheaper than photocopying, and from the standpoint of the environment, a lot better than photocopying,” says the dean, who set up a site for connecting students, faculty and alumni this year and watched it spread like wildfire. “In terms of delivering materials and accessing scientific literature, it is very important. ”

But as with most movements, a green revolution comes down to relationship building, something the prophetic founders of Green Singles sensed back in ‘85 with the idealized notion that love is the answer. Find a mate who cares as much as you do and team up for action.

“There is strength in numbers,” says matchmaker Isaacs. “We need to show a united front in order to save the planet.”

As someone who lives and breathes food politics, agricultural sustainability and food justice on a daily basis, even I was surprised by some of the things I saw in this film. Food Inc. explosively details exactly how the food system serves the profit motives of just a few mega corporations, while failing to serve eaters, our health, the environment and the animals and workers trapped in the system.

In interviews, the filmmaker has said that he didn’t set out to make such a one-sided film but that the industries he profiled – Tyson, Monsanto, Smithfield, et al – wouldn’t agree to be interviewed or shown in the film. I don’t blame them. The information gathered from hidden cameras and interviews with brave individuals who don’t have a whole lot left to lose presents facts so damning and so incredible, it’s impossible to dispute them.

Anyone who agreed to talk on camera for this movie risked being sued. The mother who lost her young son to E. coli cannot say what she herself eats due to the risk of being sued for libel under the “veggie libel laws.”

Of all the food documentaries I’ve seen and food system exposés I’ve read, this film did a wonderful job of showing the human side of the injustices in our food system. Not just the environmental degradation or the lack of food safety, but the grinding human (and animal) oppression inherent in the system.

I was quite literally sick at the rampant and systemic injustices unleashed on farmers, farmworkers, animals, the environment and eaters as just a routine part of business-as-usual in the food industry.

If enough people see this film it could have the same impact that Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle had on the meat packing industry in the early part of the 20th century. I think there should be a campaign encouraging everyone who cares about food to take at least one person who doesn’t care about food to see this film: co-workers, mothers, fathers, friends and lovers…because if everyone sees it, nobody will stand for business-as-usual any longer.

In addition to the mother who lost her son due to tainted ground beef, the film profiles a variety of people, like ordinary working class citizens who would like to eat better than fast food, but cannot afford to; poultry house workers who toil under horrifying conditions and are utterly powerless (the industry recruits and buses workers from within Mexico); and farmers under contract to large corporations who have no say in how they run their businesses or treat their animals and who don’t even make a living wage.

A Tyson chicken farmer agreed to go on camera. She had her contract pulled because she refused to upgrade her chicken houses according to company specifications that would have prevented any light or air from getting into her already crowded, fetid and utterly nightmarish chicken houses. Chicken farmers make an average of only $18,000 a year as contract farmers for Tyson Corporation. If the chickens and the farmers are treated so poorly, can you imagine what the mostly undocumented immigrant processors are subjected to?

Then there’s the man who runs a seed cleaning business (which used to be common practice back when farmers saved seeds). Monsanto sued him. His crime? By cleaning seeds, he’s “encouraging farmers to violate Monsanto patents”.

Nevermind that these farmers are the last holdouts not using Monsanto’s seeds, and should have every right to clean and save the seeds they use. Scaring the hell out of any last resisters is this company’s way of ensuring complete and total ownership of the seed market. When the seed cleaner was sued, he lost most of his customers because they became fearful of being sued themselves. The man had only three acres of land to his name. He finally settled with Monsanto, rather than fight and risk losing what little he had.

There are many more stories like this, as well as enough examples of a different way of doing things, that you will leave the theater thinking more carefully about what you are actually buying when you buy food and inspired to support some of the mavericks out there who are doing it right.

At the end of the film, one farmer says that if the people start demanding better food, the farmers will step up and provide it. In fact, farmers would love to do so. Without the consumer’s support, the risk to farmers for switching to a healthier paradigm is too great. If farmers know they can make a living doing the right thing, they will. This is the one essentially hopeful fact about this film. We do have the power to change the system. It’s as simple as refusing to buy what the system is selling. Don’t know how? The film offers several easy ways to start as the credits roll. They’re also linked here.

Image: Senor Codo

Citizen journalism, open government, status updates, community building, information sharing, crowdsourcing, and the election of a President.

Our children will inherit a world profoundly changed by the combination of technology and humanity that is social media. They’ll take for granted that their voices can be heard and that a social movement can be launched from their laptop. They’ll take for granted that they are connected and interconnected with hundreds of millions of people at any given moment. And they’ll take for granted that a black man is or was President of the United States.

What’s most profound is that these represent parts of a greater whole. They represent a shift in power from centralized institutions and organizations to the People they represent. It is the evolution of democracy by way of technology, and we are all better for it.

For most of us, social media has changed our lives in some meaningful way. Collectively it is changing the world for good. Given the pace of innovation and adoption, change has become a constant. Every so often we find the need to stop and reflect on its most recent and noteworthy developments, hence the following list.

Please note this is not a top-10 list, nor are these listed in any particular order. It’s also incomplete. So we ask that you add to this conversation in the comments. If you’d like to Retweet this post or take the conversation to Twitter or FriendFeed, please use the hashtag #10Ways.

1. Take Social Actions: The nonprofit organization Social Actions aggregates “opportunities to make a difference from over 50 online platforms“ through its unique API. It recently held the Change the Web Challenge contest in order to inspire the most innovative applications for that API. The Social Actions Interactive Map won the $5,000 first prize. The result is a virtual tour of the world through the lens of social action. “People are volunteering, donating, signing petitions, making loans and doing other social actions as we speak “” all over the world. To capture the context of the where, this project uses sophisticated techniques to extract location information from full text paragraphs.” You can also join the Social Actions Community, which is powered by Ning“¦which now boasts more than one million individual social networks.

2. Twitter with a Purpose: This list could be exclusive to Twitter. The micro-blogging sensation was featured on our first two lists (a three-tweet), and it’s certain to be a fixture. From Tweetsgiving, the virtual Thanksgiving feast, to the Twestival, which organized 202 off-line events around the world to benefit charity: water, it’s become the de facto tool for organizing and taking action. Tweet Congress won the SXSW activism award, and celebrity Tweeps Ashton Kutcher and Kevin Rose Tweeted their two million followers about ending malaria. Max Gladwell recently initiated the #EcoMonday follow meme as a way to connect and organize the Green Twittersphere.

3. Visit White House 2.0: Inside of its first 100 days, the Obama administration has managed to set the historic benchmark for government transparency and accountability. The President’s virtual town hall meeting used WhiteHouse.gov to crowdsource questions from his 300 million constituents, complete with voting to determine the ones he’d have to answer. All told, 97,937 people submitted 103,978 questions and cast 1,782,650 votes. The White House continues to raise the bar with its official Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter channels. In so doing President Obama is not just setting the standard for state and local government in the U.S. He’s establishing the world standard. The Obama administration is spreading democracy not by force but through example. Because you don’t have to be an American citizen to be a friend or follower of White House 2.0.

4. Claim your Zumbox: What happens when all mail can be sent and delivered online to any street address in a paperless form? That’s the big question for Zumbox, which has created an online mail system with a digital mailbox for every U.S. street address. And while the answer to that question remains to be seen, it promises to be as liberating as it is disruptive. A key quality for Zumbox is that it’s closed system much like that of Facebook, only instead of true identity it’s true address. This will enable people to better connect with their communities including their neighbors, local businesses, and the mayor’s office. The primary agent of change, though, might not be that this uses street addresses but that it enables direct and potentially viral feedback, which is a virtue that e-mail and the USPS do not offer. The first methods are to request exclusive paperless delivery and to block a sender, but others are certain to evolve such as real-time commenting and ways to share mail with friends, family, and colleagues. Welcome to Mail 2.0. (Disclosure: Zumbox is a client of Rob Reed, the founder of Max Gladwell.)

5. Host a Social Media Event: This is the year of the social media event. No meaningful gathering of people is complete without an interactive online audience, especially when it’s so easy and cost effective to pull off. Essential tools include a broadband connection, laptop, video camera, projector, and screen. Add people and a purpose, such as entrepreneurship. Promote it through social media channels, and you have a social media event. A recent example in the green world is the Evolution of Green, which was hosted by Creative Citizen, a green wiki community. It celebrated the launch of a new Web property, EcoMatters, while also establishing a new Twitter tag. By posing the question, “How can we go from green hype to green habit?” and including the #GreenQ hashtag, it sparked a conversation between attendees and the Twittersphere in real time. Thus was born a new mechanism for getting answers to green questions via Twitter.

6. Travel the World: More than anyone else, Tim O’Reilly knows the potential for social media to change the world. In his opening keynote at this year’s Web 2.0 Expo, he called for a new ethic in which we do more with less and create more value than we capture. This provided the context for SalaamGarage founder Amanda Koster, whose presentation followed O’Reilly’s. The idea is that social media has enabled each of us to have an audience. Whether through Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, or a personal blog, each of us can have influence and reach. What’s more, it can be used for good. SalaamGarage coordinates trips for citizen journalists (that means you) to places like India and Vietnam in conjunction with non-government organizations like Seattle-based Peace Trees. The destination is the story, as these humanitarian journalists report on the people they meet and discoveries they make. Their words, images, and video are posted to the social web to gain exposure and because these stories just need to be told.

7. Build It on Drupal: You may not have noticed, but the open-source Drupal content management system (CMS) has quickly become the dominant player on the social web. While we still prefer WordPress as a strict blogging application, Drupal has emerged as the go-to platform for building scalable, community-driven Web sites. It powers Recovery.gov, a key part of President Obama’s commitment to transparency and accountability. PopRule uses it as a social news platform for politics. And Drupal will soon become the platform for Causecast, a site where “media, philanthropy, social networking, entertainment and education converge to serve a greater purpose.” This is especially significant because Causecast CEO Ryan Scott is transitioning the site off of Ruby on Rails because Drupal has proved more efficient, user friendly, and cost effective. (Disclosure: Max Gladwell founder Rob Reed is co-founder of PopRule.)

8. Green Your iPhone: Looking for an organic diner within biking distance that has a three-star green rating? There’s a app for that. It’s called 3rd Whale, and you can download it for free. (Except that the star rating is actually a whale rating.) Complete with Facebook Connect, this iPhone app locates green products and businesses in 30 major North American cities. It uses the iPhone’s dial function to select a category (food), sub-category (restaurants), and distance (walking, biking, or driving). In Santa Monica, this might give you Swingers diner for its selection of veggie and vegan fare. You could then get directions from your current location using the iPhone’s built-in Google map, rate your experience on the three-whale scale, and write up a quick review. 3rd Whale recently released a new feature that integrates green-living tips, which can show how much energy or waste you’ll save by taking a given action.

9. Unite the World Through Video: Matt’s dancing around the world video inspired many to tears. Today, more than 20 million people have viewed his YouTube masterpiece, where he performs a kooky dance with the citizens of planet earth. The most recent example of this approach is Playing for Change, which connects the world through song. The project started in Santa Monica with a street performance of the classic Stand By Me and expanded to New Orleans, New Mexico, France, Brazil, Italy, Venezuela, South Africa, Spain, and The Netherlands. The project was superbly executed via social media, complete with a YouTube channel, MySpace, Facebook, and Blog. It’s received tremendous mainstream media exposure and also benefits a foundation of the same name.

10. Rate a Company: The conversation about corporate social responsibility (CSR) takes place across the social web on blogs, Twitter, and YouTube, but a central hub for this information and opinion is still to be determined. SocialYell seeks to address this by building an online community around the CSR conversation, where users can submit reviews of companies together with nonprofit organizations and even public figures like Michelle Obama. The major topics are the Environment, Health, Social Equity, Consumer Advocacy, and Charity. The reviews are voted and commented on by the community in a Reddit-like fashion with both up (Yell) and down (shhh) voting. The site is relatively new and still gaining traction, but there’s no question that a resource like this is needed to shine a bright light on CSR and and other related issues.

11. Publish a collective, simultaneous blog post on a universal topic: As Nigel Tufnel might say, this list goes to eleven. Let the #10Ways conversation begin”¦

Final note: This is Max Gladwell’s third list of “10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media.” The first was posted a year ago today on Sustainablog.org, and the sequel followed five months later. If a single headline can capture the Max Gladwell raison d’etre, this is it.

Celestial Seasonings has been blending healthy teas with environmental consciousness since 1969. Now, they are expanding their environmental consciousness to the planting of trees in developing countries.

They’ve teamed up with Trees for the Future (a non-profit organization that has planted more 70 million trees in Central America, Africa, and Asia in the past 20 years) and aim to sponsor the planting of one million trees. They’re nearly there, but how about a little love from EcoSalon readers?

Every box of Celestial Seasonings tea bought between January 1 and March 31, 2009 will ensure the planting of a tree. But you don’t have to be a tea drinker to participate. Anyone can stop by their online website and plant a tree in the virtual forest until the end of April. For each online tree planted, Celestial Seasonings will sponsor the planting of one real tree in a developing country.  Their interactive program that turns “virtual trees” into reality also provides information about why trees are good not only for the environmental but also the economies of the developing nations where they are being planted.

Poor Alice has been getting beaten up regularly these days, particularly after her recent appearance on 60 minutes. On the show, she came off as quite out of touch with how normal people live. In essence, she said that she chooses to spend more money on good food and, well, why shouldn’t other people?

She even made an unfortunate comment about how some people prioritize buying two pairs of Nike sneakers. After mulling over the show, reading the many opinion pieces all over the web, and thinking about what she has accomplished, I still don’t really know where I stand on the issue, so I thought I’d put it to you readers.

Without at doubt, Waters lives in her own rarefied world. Berkeley has a year-round temperate climate and an abundance of farmers’ markets. She has a lovely house with a gorgeous kitchen, complete with open hearth. I’m sure she worked hard over the years to get where she is, but now she has personal assistants and staff to take care of the boring little details of life, so she may not have a very good grasp on the struggles of us everyday plebes who have to get to work on time, keep the house clean, pay bills, answer our own emails and feed our kids, while also making sure they get back and forth to all their school activities. And I’m pretty sure she regrets having made that comment about Nike sneakers.

In a recent piece in the New York Times, her insistence on serving only local, organic food in our nation’s truly abysmal school cafeterias is a little nuts considering how far they have to come. I think she probably truly does believe everyone deserves good, wholesome, organic food, but this piece read rather disingenuous, like it was a response to the criticism she’s been getting.

On the other hand, we have Waters to thank for things like locally-grown baby salad greens, the joy of knowing where our food comes from, the pleasure of enjoying the best ingredients cooked as simply as possible and most recently, the fact that the Obamas are planting a vegetable garden at the White House (she has lobbied for this since the Clintons lived there). For people who care about food, she is a hero.

The Edible Schoolyard she founded in Berkeley is a triumph, and she had a big hand in the fact that 85,000 people showed up to Slow Food Nation last summer in San Francisco. The fact that 60 Minutes is covering local, organic food is a huge step forward.

I think we need many changes in this country in the way we eat: in schools, in hospitals, in grocery stores, and convenience stores, and our own kitchens. We need individuals to jump on board and we need different government policies around food.

But every individual working on these changes needs to do it from where they are. Alice is simply making changes where she lives. Maybe other communities less blessed cannot replicate her Edible Schoolyard, but if she inspires some teachers and parents to work with kids to plant a few seeds, perhaps that’s better on balance. Or is she so out of touch she alienates the very people she’d like to inspire?

Image: San Francisco Chronicle / Carlos J. Ortiz

Fluff and Nonsense: PETA Denies Fish Exist (October 2008)

Because much of the natural world is generally eww gross and lacking in cuteness, PETA are eager to helpfully rename the birds and the beasts so they’re more appealing. First to get a makeover? Fish. They’re now called Sea Kittens, and the official website plasters on the sentiment with a trowel, featuring a storybook containing heavily anthropomorphic fish suffering at the hands of evil humans. There are some good points here – such as how fish are generally a lot smarter than we give them credit for – but as usual, they’re buried in fathoms of uncompromising bluster. PETA wants to stop all fishing immediately, or ideally yesterday. But what would our cute, meowing “Land Fish” eat for their dinner?

It’s all so ripe for ridicule. So here’s some. Fin.

Breeding Trouble: A Canine Klan Clanger (February 2009)

The End Justifies The Means, right? During their protest at the recent Westminster Dog Show, PETA members dressed up in Klu Klux Klan garb while they handed out leaflets, equating dog-breeders to the infamous militant white supremacists and claiming that selective breeding exacerbates pet overpopulation problem. (PETA’s opponents have already labeled them hypocrites on this issue).

So how did the public react when it was approached by people dressed as hooded racists?

“Most passers-by seemed more puzzled than offended, though those who didn’t stop walked away thinking they really had seen the KKK.”

- AP, quoted in the Los Angeles Times.

Oh well. Any reaction is a good reaction, right? Best foot forward, PETA.

Shock PETA Advert Featuring Women Wearing Clothes (January 2009)

Sex sells. And in this case, it sells vegetables – or it would do, if NBC had agreed to air PETA’s sleazefest of a Superbowl advert. In it, young women don skimpy outfits and gyrate ecstatically around groceries, accompanied with the tagline “Studies Show Vegetarians Have Better Sex” (because they’re generally slimmer and healthier, the “logic” goes).

So how did it get onto Youtube and the like? Because getting it rejected was the plan all along, of course, and as soon as NBC gave it a thumbs-down, the PETA marketing machine sprung into action. Sexist? You bet - but it’s all in a good cause (and it’s not as if they were naked, because that would be grossly demeaning. Ah, right). Meanwhile, women across the world find themselves too embarrassed to be seen shopping for vegetables in public, and send the men out instead. Thanks a bunch, PETA.

Michael Vick Fails To Score: PETA’s Version of Redemption (January 2009)

For former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, it’s not been a good couple of years. In 2007 he was convicted of running a dog-fighting ring on his property in Surrey County, Virginia – and he’s currently serving a 23-month federal prison sentence. In 2008 Vick filed for bankruptcy (just two years earlier, he was amongst the top ten richest athletes in America), and his former employers recently washed their hands of him, scuppering his chances of continuing his career when he’s released.

Cue PETA. They offered Vick the chance to feature in an advert condemning dog-fighting – on condition he filled out an animal empathy test, marked out of 100. Vick agreed…and scored 73.5%. And we know this because PETA not only released the score, but published a pdf of Vick’s answers on their website. Sorry, Michael, you’ve been taken for a ride. It’s a stunt to further sully your reputation (if that’s possible). Meanwhile, we suspect PETA would rate poorly on our Contrite Human Being Empathy Test.

Cooking Mama Knows Best While PETA Skips A Key Ingredient (November 2008)

If you can’t get through to the adults, target the kids. There’s a game on the Nintendo DS handheld gaming console called “Cooking Mama” (Majesco Entertainment), in which the elements of meal-preparation (vegetable chopping & peeling, food preparation and so on) are turned into mini-games played against the clock. PETA’s beef (so to speak) is with the use of meat in the game – so they released their own blood-soaked, thoroughly disturbing version aimed at…er, well, we don’t know who it’s aimed at. Meat eaters will love it, that’s for sure. Majesco recently responded thus:

“{Mama says:] Like any accomplished cook, I create my recipes to appeal to a broad range of tastes and preferences…while Mama is not a vegetarian, she fully supports the humane treatment of animals.”

In other words, Mama advocates tolerance. Now there’s a message for our kids. Unfortunately, these five stunts are only the latest in a long history of ridiculous pranks from PETA.

Additional: By no means all of PETA’s actions are founded on shock tactics, infringements on human dignity and general negativity. (If they were, the stunts listed above wouldn’t be so frustrating.) Their recent positive action to buy up stock in traditionally meat-heavy fast food industries is something we’ll be following with interest, since anything that directly turns the American diet around gets our vote. More like this, please.

Images: jon hanson / -=RoBeE=- / zenera / nineball2727 / MoonSoleil.

On the high seas around Antarctica, things are getting ugly.

For the crew of the “Steve Irwin”, belonging to the anti-whaling activists Sea Shepherd, this is old news. They’re there to prevent the slaughter of hundreds of minke whales by Japanese sailors on three vessels including the factory ship Nisshin Maru – technically a research vessel, but also involved in whalemeat processing that ends up on Japanese dinner tables. The whales are being hunted legally thanks to a loophole in in the International Whaling Commission’s 1986 moratorium, allowing a percentage of whales to be collected for “research” purposes – and in 2007 this represented 900 minke that international law turned a blind eye to. While most of the world condemns the use of whalemeat for food, in Japan, whalemeat is on sale to the public (some of it supplied by other countries, but some from the animals allegedly killed for scientific reasons).

Sea Shepherd see this as monstrous. Every year its staff take to the seas to harry the whaling fleet, hoping to disrupt their activities enough to prevent the killing. It’s a fraught but essentially peaceful protest – until now. The protesters are reporting that this year they’ve been met with a water cannon, airborne balls of solid lead or brass, and most insidiously…

“The factory ship the Nisshin Maru and the two harpoon vessels in the fleet are equipped with long-range acoustical devices. This is a military grade weapon system that sends out mid to high frequency sound waves designed to disorient and possibly incapacitate personnel.”

- Sea Shepherd

The response from the Institute of Cetacean Research (a private organisation backed by the Japanese government) replied thus:

“We can neither confirm nor deny the strategies employed by the Japanese research vessels to protect themselves from the criminal actions committed by the Dutch vessel. We can say, however, that all legal means available will be used to ensure these pirates do not board Japanese ships or threaten the lives of the crews or the safety of the vessels.”

The question is what actions constitute “legal means”. Is the use of non-lethal sonic weaponry legal, even if it isn’t ethical or the slightest bit safe? And might such devices affect the whales themselves? (If they’re driven away by the sound, this may turn out to be an unexpected bonus for Sea Shepherd). Without a clear legal challenge – either the changing of international law or the infringement of it – Japanese whalehunting seems sure to continue.

For now, the duel on the high seas continues in front of the world media – but just how ugly is it going to get?

Image: René Ehrhardt