Greensmoke

I checked out a few minutes of the new Planet Green channel yesterday, and I saw:

1) Someone supposedly teaching a family about how to reduce their carbon footprint take TWO MOTORCYCLES "out for a ride" after informing him that his motorcycle gets much better mileage than his gigantic truck or SUV or whatever else he was driving. First, TWO people can fit on ONE MOTORCYCLE! Second, if you want to save fuel, DON'T JUST GO FOR A RIDE!

2) A dick-swinging contest between a gas (or maybe diesel, don't know) truck and a hybrid truck. The two categories I saw were a speed competition around a rocky and hilly track, and an on-ramp pickup competition. Which one would I buy? NEITHER! And I wouldn't care how fast it goes on a rocky course either, nor how fast I can go from 0-60.

c) A "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous"-esque blip about obscenely expensive handbags being available for rent. What?!

These people are just blowing green smoke up their asses. The remaining supplies of oil and gas need to be used to develop ways to make the energy industry sustainable, not "taking a ride" or "Look out! Big truck comin'" or making fashion statements. (For whatever reason, I can't find a video of that Ford ad. Maybe they removed all references to it. Or maybe it's a Chevy ad. But the customer says that line, and he's not a toddler.) How about a show where they teach us how to create a seasonal thermal store?

How about a steel plant that uses no fossil fuel? Or a glass plant that uses no fossil fuel? Apparently, the greenest glass making process still uses natural gas and oxygen to get the glass up to temperature. Without these plants, there will be no solar panel manufacturing process, and without that, all of the solar panels that will be installed over the next 20 years will eventually malfunction and stop producing electricity.

Speaking of unsustainable, our project to reduce the amount and cost of heating oil used is moving along. My wife sewed the first drape yesterday. A long, long way to go, but it's an encouraging start.