Bogus Gold

Kim Carlson is the Star Tribune's resident "green lifestyle" enthusiast. As such she fervently believes that making lifestyle changes in a direction called "green living" are not only a good idea, but constitute moral activity of the highest order. A few quick examples:

Kim spends time rating people on a scale from brown (i.e. despoilers of the planet) to deep green (i.e. the virtuous and pure). She's not an absolutist though. She allows that "brown" people can get "greener" over time. She's just fine with that... provided you are making an effort to move in a greener direction. Her world view is flexible like that.

She's also known for hectoring people about lawncare. You used chemical fertilizer on your lawn? She used fish guts and corn gluten. Simple lifestyle choice? Oh heck no. Remember, she's saving the planet. But what exactly does that make people who continue to fertilize their lawns the chemical way? Here's a hint... She characterizes her fish entrail strewn lawn compared to your lawn like this:

"[G]iven the choice, we would rather have a safe lawn than a painted green toxic lawn of perfection."

She probably has to wipe layers smug off the inside of her windows after driving down most suburban streets these days, with all those "painted green toxic and (sneer) perfect" lawns. Amazing what fish guts and plant waste can do for a greeniac's sense of self importance.

Oh but she's not done with your lawn. The grill in your backyard provides ample opportunity to engreen yourself as well. She wonders...

... is grilling still “ok” or is the environmental impact and carbon footprint of burning charcoal with a toxic liquid starter the equivalent of flying one person in a Airbus A380 to Paris -- an unforgivable eco-sin?

But relax, good reader. Saint Kim has concluded in our favor here, with a caveat of two...

Yes, you can, in fact, grill greenly if you pay attention to a few do’s and don’t’s:

After that come a few rules indicating that, among other things, you shouldn't use charcoal, or use charring or blackening on your meat, and also don't eat much meat in the first place. Have a great cookout... cooked over propane, without any char lines, and mostly meatless. Just a variation on a persistent theme in the green lifestyle - wringing the joy out of things you love.

Anyway, all that is a long set up so you know who Kim Carslon is and where she's coming from. It gives you a little context for understanding Kim's latest:

A couple of weeks ago it was a polar bear story that created an online uprising with cruel and biting comments about bear rugs and worse. Today, the story that climate change is killing people and causing billions of dollars in damage is causing another onslaught of anti everything green comments and even some bleeped out language from readers. ...

As for the seemingly out of proportion concern about bear rugs, please realize in Kim's world polar bears look like this:



But that's not really important. What's important is how Kim thinks through the groundbreakingly new issue of commenters disagreeing with her on a public discussion forum.

She, who's whole schtick consists of lecturing about how her own "greenness" makes her better than other people, tries to understand why people could possibly become hostile from one teensy reference to their benighted "brown" ways... "killing people and causing billions of dollars in damage." I mean really. She told you about putting fish guts on your yard, didn't she?! She told you to serve crappier food from your backyard grill, didn't she?! She can only assume if you didn't do it you wanted to cause death and destruction. If that's your lifestyle choice, why is it such a big deal when she points it out?

Luckily, Kim has a quick explanation for it... you're afraid of change. And not the sensible kind of fear about change - like fearing climate change. Lord knows Kim wants you to remain terrified of that particular change. No no, you're afraid because you hardly know anyone anymore who doesn't live their life according to Kim's green gospel. Her kind are inheriting the earth, while there's only like a dozen of you "brown"people left. As a result, you're lonely and scared and lashing out at polar bears.

As God and the Star Tribune website are my witnesses, I am not making this up...

I believe that the root of these negative sentiments is that some people can’t cope with change. Our world is changing and some simply can’t deal with it. They are part of a dwindling group of people who are on the brown end of the green behavior spectrum and they are very vocal because they have to be. They are dwindling in numbers and have lost support as people have been waking up to the serious environmental pickle that we have gotten ourselves in. The fact that the planet’s population is moving towards sustainability culturally, economically, and spiritually is threatening to them. The blog comments are the only way that they can make their voices heard. It almost makes me feel bad for them… but for pete's sake, leave the polar bears alone!

It doesn't even cross Kim's mind that there might be some more immediate source of reader hostility toward her new Green piety, with it's special combination of preening smuggery, uncritical acceptance and repetition of any news item castigating the modern American lifestyle, and cult-like refusal to consider alternatives to their emotion-heavy, fact-light view of the natural world. Actually amend that. It's not that she hasn't considered it. It's just that... gosh almost everyone she can think of believes in all that stuff already. It's only a couple dozen old cranks so set in their ways they probably don't adjust their clocks for daylight savings time who could even conceive of another perspective.

Of course, outside the happy green confines of Kim's worldview there is a real world slightly at odds with this perspective. The real world is not as neat and happily green as Kim imagines it to be. And you can tell this because in the real world, polar bears look like this:



And they also make great rugs.