No! Not my Orange Juice!!!

I love OJ. Not the acquitted former football player (or was it baseball?), but the juice that comes out of orange-colored oranges. For me, OJ is the perfect restorative drink; I love having a good quart of it after rugby practice or just to quench my thirst. I feel quite good after a good long gulping session.

The UK Observer Magazine is reporting (via TreeHugger) that Oranges and their juice aren’t that good on the environment.

Making a litre of fresh orange juice requires 958 litres of water for irrigation and 2 litres of tractor fuel. Then there are the pesticides. Orange production uses more than any other food crop.

Boo! Hiss!!! One of the commenters on this post makes a good point: until they find an alternative that is as tasty (and nutritious!), it’s going to be tough to get people to stop buying OJ. Unfortunately, now that I’m on this Eco-friendly/Green trend, I may have to seriously curtail my consumption of OJ.

What do you think, my friends? Is this stretching the whole Eco-argument too far?

What would you do with $108,219.178.08 per day?

ExxonMobil announced their profits yesterday, and they made $39.5 billion in profits, and AutoBlogGreen had a breakdown of just how much that is:

$39.5 billion profit in one year = $39,500,000,000.00 = $759,615,384.62/week = $108,219,178.08/day = $4,509,132.42/hour = $75,152.21/minute = $1,252.54/second

The article goes on to say that ExxonMobil has only spent 0.1% of its annual capital investment on renewable/sustainable technologies.

I don’t know about you, but with that much money in my lifetime, I could probably afford all these brand new hybrids/PEVs … for everyone I know!

I wonder if I would be carbon-neutral at that point or if nearly $110 million would be enough?

It’s no wonder they aren’t interested in cleaning up their act! So, everyone, STOP BUYING FROM EXXON MOBIL! 🙂

Super Bowl Carbon Negative? **gasp** and **swoon**

I’ve been casually reading Treehugger ever since watching “An Inconvenient Truth“, not because I’ve become a Eco-Fascist or anything like that, but just because they tend to have some really down-to-earth (har-har) and day-to-day sorts of things that I can do (and you can do!) to become more eco-friendly.

In addition, they spread the good word about larger and further-reaching eco-stories that provide inspiration (or desperation, depending on the story). Like this one:

Super Bowl XLI to Go Carbon Neutral

Now Boyfriend and I can sit on the couch come Game Day and feel just a tiny bit better about participating in what this article calls “a symbol of excess and over consumption”.

Can Casa de Guamaniac be far behind? Stay tuned.

An Inconvenient Truth

I watched “An Inconvenient Truth“ tonight with the Boyfriend’s Clan … you know that documentary of Al Gore’s presentation on the effects of global warming?

My brother-in-law asked for it for Christmas, so lo and behold, Santa delivered!  The first thing I noticed was that it was packaged differently.  It wasn’t in the normal 1/2-inch thick black plastic case that we’re all familiar with, but rather a cardboard-backing wrapped in a very thin sheet of plastic.

Odd, except when you realize that it makes sense when the movie is about saving the environment … use fewer materials to begin with!  Ostensibly, it’s more enviro-friendly.

It reminded me of some of Michael Moore’s work, “Bowling for Columbine” and “Fahrenheit 911″, except not nearly as biting and controversial.  The former Veep stops just shy of really calling out the current and recent past U.S. government leaders for ignoring and/or compounding the Global Warming crisis.

It is almost understandable … the problem has to be treated both as a Grassroots Action and a national political agenda item.  It seems Mr. Gore is attempting to steer a ship with a tiller the size of the lower-48-states!  As a (former?) professional politician, it seems he might have to temper his message so that it has a broad, far-reaching appeal.

While I might not have been categorically impressed, I was, indeed, motivated to action.  Here’s what I’m going to do:

1. Talk to Boyfriend about getting a hybrid vehicle (he has more stringent requirements in his vehicles than I do)
2. Switch to a Green/Renewable energy source for my Electricity at home.
3. Evangelize about this movie and the real Climate Crisis in my personal and professional lives.
4. Continue to research how to affect and correct this crisis.

Am I missing anything?  How are you helping to stop and reverse Global Warming?