the european union compares our current crisis to a flooded basement in letter to obama - clever…

what i’m going to say next may shock you, but i am putting it out there on the interwebs and will deal with the consequences at a later time. so here goes…

i like europeans. that’s right. you heard me. i like them and i don’t understand why it is considered unamerican to like them. is it because they don’t get fat? i guess that’s a valid reason, but they still pwn us when it comes to the environment.

that being said, i submit for your approval a letter written by european union environment commissioner stavros dimas this week to president obama, asking us to adopt regulations on climate change.

courtesy of green inc.

now that we have a new leader, the whole world is looking at us to either step up to the challenge or run away in denial like we have in the past.

the letter has several noteworthy excerpts. one of them is a rather on-point analogy that alludes to those who say that we need to put environmental concerns on the backburner and focus on nursing our sick, sick financial system back to health:

“If someone’s basement floods and they lose their job on the same day it is certainly an unlucky day. But they would not wait until they found a new job before pumping the basement and fixing the leak. If they did, then not only would they be unemployed, but they would also have a house that is starting to fall apart. Common sense says that the longer you leave a problem unsolved the harder it becomes to find a solution. I am quite sure that even Joe the Plumber would agree with this. Climate change is similar. We know there is a
problem and it would be short-sighted foolishness to not address it immediately.”

right on! mr. dimas - you are like my brother from another mother. and you threw in that little thing about joe the plumber. bravo.

check out the rest of the letter here. a lot of the points that mr. dimas makes may seem like no-brainers, but it’ll be very interesting to see how president obama will respond.

clean coal ad makes coal look shady

peabody energy, the world’s largest coal company, just launched an ad campaign advocating ‘clean coal‘. although some people argue that the term ‘clean coal’ is an oxymoron and marketing scheme because there is no way that coal can be clean, others insist that the group of technologies that lie under the clean coal umbrella are a desirable way to reduce harmful byproducts associated with burning coal.

regardless of all that, LOOK AT THIS AD! what is going on here?!

while i certainly won’t purport to know whether or not clean coal is a complete sham as some environmentalists say it is, i can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that this ad is ridiculous. i mean, was the goal to portray yourselves as the marketing scammers that everyone is saying that you are? personifying the lump of coal is, possibly, the most out of touch with humanity strategy i have ever seen. was the focus group that tested this ad stonehenge? while thisisreality.org, where i first saw this ad, compares peabody’s coal lump person/dude/lump to joe camel, noting the propaganda behind both characters, at least joe camel was actually cool! he had a motorcycle, leather jacket and look here, he’s even wearing a tux. was he also riding a horse one time. wait, i don’t think camels ride horses, so scratch that.

just putting sunglasses on something does NOT make it cool. it just makes you look more suspicious!

wow. that really got me heated. am i alone here? does anyone else think that this is ridonkulous?

why is this a site?

swyyne has always been an experiment for me. with all of the other super eco sites out there, i've been feeling like i want to contribute something just a bit different. so for now, here are my random musings.