Going Green?

There was a fascinating episode of Boston Legal which brought to light some issues that I believe will be of interest to many at DP. An organization was suing Denny Crane (big surprise--ha!) for misrepresenting himself and his firm as being green. Here are the transcripts from the trial (provided by boston-legal.org).

Katie Lloyd: First of all I’m an enormous admirer of your organization, Green People. I think you’re all to be congratulated.
Walt Bonner: Well, thank you.
Katie Lloyd: I do notice, however, the beverage your counsel’s drinking. Do you know sir, that the bottled water industry uses more than one point five million barrels of crude oil to manufacture their plastic?
Walt Bonner: I know that we use oil to make products. I do live in this century.
Katie Lloyd: They happen to use a lot of oil. Enough to fuel a hundred thousand cars for a year. They also use vast amounts of fossil fuels to distribute their product. What’s worst is less than twenty-five percent of these bottles are actually recycled. The rest end up in land fills or the ocean. It’s not really green at all to be drinking bottled water.
Walt Bonner: I’m not about to ask people to go green at the expense of their own health.
Katie Lloyd: Oh, actually, it doesn’t serve their health. Scientists say that bottled water is no better for you than tap. In fact it could be worse. The EPA standards are looser, and in some cases the bacterial count is almost double.
Attorney Shelley Ford: This is not a referendum on water.
Katie Lloyd: I beg your pardon. Do you eat meat? I only ask because studies show eating meat contributes more to greenhouse gases than driving a car. Denny says you two often have rib-eyes together. Is that true?
Walt Bonner: First, I don’t believe that eating meat is worse for the environment than driving a car.
Katie Lloyd: It is. Contaminated runoff from slaughter houses is a major source of water pollution. Livestock itself contributes eighteen percent of greenhouse gases just from, pardon me, farting. That’s more than all the trains, planes and automobiles put together. Do you eat meat, sir?
Walt Bonner: I’m not sitting here saying people need to go vegan. But Denny Crane’s firm is assaulting the environment. I mean the man drives ah, an outrageous gas guzzling mon…
Katie Lloyd: What do you drive, may I ask?
Walt Bonner: I drive a hybrid.
Katie Lloyd: Oh dear.
Walt Bonner: Oh what. You’re telling me that’s bad too?
Katie Lloyd: Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but hybrid batteries contain nickel that is mined and smelted in a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. A plant that has caused so much environmental damage and acid rain that NASA uses the so-called dead-zone around the plant to test its moon rovers. I think a board member of Green People might know that. That nickel then has to be shipped off via massive containers to a refinery in Europe, then off to China to be made into nickel foam then to Japan to be manufactured, then finally all the way back to America! All that, just to put a single hybrid battery into a car. When you combine all the energy it takes to build and drive a hybrid it adds up to almost fifty percent more than it does to build and drive a Hummer.
Walt Bonner: They also save on fuel.
Katie Lloyd: In terms of money perhaps, but because they do studies show people are driving more. Hybrids might result in more fuel consumption than gas cars. I imagine you do know that? Walt doesn’t answer. No?

It's a confusing issue, and nobody's saying that we should just throw our hands up on it, either. Later in the show at the same trial, another lawyer had this to say in his closing statement.

Carl Sack: From his chair. It’s hard to know what the heck is good for the environment these days. He gets up. One minute we’re being told, "Eat farmed salmon to spare the wild stocks." While another study says, "That may be the worst thing we can do for the wild salmon." There’s a new study out that says people contribute more to greenhouse gas emissions by walking than by driving. Because the increased energy it takes to walk makes people eat more which causes the proliferation of slaughter houses. Ridiculous? It could be. Everyone talks about ethanol. Well, it turns out; to fill one SUV with pure ethanol would require four hundred and fifty pounds of corn. Or roughly the amount of calories to feed a person for a year. That’s just one tank full. We’ve heard how hybrid cars may not be all they’re cracked up to be. I mean, the information can sometimes become so contradictory it’s confusing. And as a consequence, it's easy to feel overwhelmed and an utter sense of futility. Especially when people are running around screaming, "The end is near!" One thing that really would be helpful is if all the Chicken Littles would just stop yelling, "Doom!" and calm down. And instead promote a little common sense.
We’re not gonna stop driving cars. People are not going to give up meat. Or Christmas. Now we can stop eating farmed salmon. We can recycle. We can drive less. We can use florescent light bulbs. Little things. Maybe if we get the message out that the little things really make a difference, we’ll all start doing them. But suing people for not doing enough. This is silly, isn’t it?