Eco-Nazis at it again.

This is going to be a comment about an article I read in the newspaper, they basically took 35 of the 175 ways to be 'greener' as proposed by Gill Deacon in her book; 175 Simple Eco-Ideas For Every Day.

I have to say, that some of those make sense, shutting off the water while you brush your teeth for instance makes at least some sense as does her idea to repair leaky faucets. Although in consideration that most if not all major cities, have their own water leaks in the underground water system, you might be inclined to think your own faucet makes little difference.

But as I read on, some of them made little or no sense at all, and some of them, although could be a quick way to save energy, on the long run and when looking at the bigger picture, make no sense at all and might actually be worse than just doing 'it' the old fashioned way.

For instance:

Her idea that eating less cow could somehow lower the cattle's methane emissions is absolutely frivolous. I, for one will not lower my cow intake. In fact, wherever I go, they better damn have cow for it's not only nutritious, but tasty. That's not to mention that the thought occurs, if we all ate less cow, wouldn't there be MORE of them? Gill, this makes absolutely no sense. And Gill, have you considered that cows are not only used for meat but they also produce that delicious white milky goodness known as milk? Would you have us deny milk to our children?

Do you realize, that natural herds of -say arbitrarily- buffaloes also manufacture quite a bit of methane out of their asses?

You remember buffaloes, yes?

They are part of the animal herds you eco-nazis are so willing to defend and protect. Why defend them and deny us our cow?

Also, her concept about eating fresh, locally grown fruits and vegetables would be fine and dandy if we didn't live in an area of the world where it snows for six fucking months out of a year.

Eating snow is not very nutritious, in fact, the yellow snow will make you sick. Gill, please name JUST ONE vegetable or fruit that grows outdoors, without needing to use energy for heating and light, in January, in Canada. In the article they show you a picture similar to this one;


I'd like to know what kind of fucking bell peppers I can grow in my backyard next winter Gill...

Yeah, I thought not...

Another gem is the idea that using bamboo or cork as a flooring material is going to be ecological.

How exactly will that make any impact on anything and what's wrong with ceramic and marble?

In fact as far as I remember bamboo has to be imported from East Asia and most of the cork is actually made in Portugal. How green is that, considering the aforementioned tip to only consume fresh locally grown produce?

And then she continues with the weird notion that using ceiling and vertical fans will somehow save energy over using something like a heat-pump or air conditioner. Newsflash Gill; All of them use electricity but a heat pump is a few times more efficient at cooling a house than any ceiling fan ever. This actually comes across as a pretty naive idea.

She also seems to like hybrid cars. This goes to show that she knows very little about cars and has given very little thought to the subject, and that it was poorly researched.

Or maybe she only looked at the data she wanted to see.

In Ontario, near Sudbury, lies the factory that makes the battery systems for the Toyota Prius. If you ever drive along in that area, you'll notice an appalling disappearance of the natural forest around the factory. This is because of the acid rain that the factory causes.

Now, she continues on cars stating that if you don't like hybrids you should at least be driving a manual transmission car because according to her they use less gasoline. Er, Gill, this may have been true back when automatics all had three gears. Today's newer cars, and even a lot of the older ones dating back to the 1990's actually have four, five or even more automatic gears.

And some of the cars with CVTs (You may not know the term Gill so I'll post a link to an explanation about what a CVT is.) are more fuel efficient than the manual version of the same car.

Furthemore, most cars that have a manual transmission, will be geared for performance, not fuel economy.

Her final thoughts on cars is about how if you have the car washed in a car wash it will use less water and energy.

I'd like to see what poppycock study came up with that idea.

Gill, the car wash is electric, it uses quite a bit of electricity to run the air-compressor it uses, and that's not to mention all the pollutants that they use in the manufacturing of an automatic car wash, and I'm not even going to start arguing about how it will on the long run destroy your car's paint job and force you to get a new car or at least to have it repainted.

Some other luminous ideas include using -I kid you not- glass sex toys instead of plastic ones.

What if they were made from recycled plastic? Would it be more acceptable then? Also, what happens when some poor guy has a glass prop break in half right in his rectum?

All in all Gill, although some of your ideas are fine, they're far from extraordinary or innovative, in fact, someone should sue you for plagiarism because frankly, your book, from what I've seen is simply the same old list of eco-nazi self indulgent ideas repacked in a flea-market stint to make money.

Now please, don't get me wrong, I turn off the lights whenever I leave the room and I have a programmable thermostat at home, a home which is well insulated and where I don't tolerate any leaky faucets whatsoever. I don't drive hugely overpowered vehicles in fact, both my cars are considered laughably underpowered and quite efficient for the service they provide. So, no, I'm definitely not saying that it's OK to get out there and pollute.

But I'll be damned if I slow down my cow consumption unless my doctor tells me to. And being 6'/100lbs, that shouldn't be anytime soon. Also, in January, I'll buy any damn vegetables I please.