Friday 4 June 2010

Fabulous Friday: Soylent Green Anyone?, World Environment Day June 5th


After last weeks Friday faux pas, I have pulled out all the stops to make sure I do my Fabulous Friday on time.  This week I'm bedazzling my world in shades of green in honour of World Environment Day which is happening on June 5th.

I've always been a bit of a Greenie at heart.  It was inevitable really.  Green is my favourite colour, I'm a Taurean which is apparently and earthy sign, and I always had a thing for Kermit the Frog, the Hulk and the Green Lantern.

My first act of social activism was to join Greenpeace in my teens.  This was a great disappointment to my super conservative parents, who equated my membership to my joining a cult that sacrificed small furry animals in worship of Beelzebub.  I progressed to joining the World Wildlife Fund, spouting lectures at the dinner table about the environmental apocalypse that would occur if they damned the Franklin River in Tasmania, and dropping super cool environmental slogans like "You can't hug your kids with nuclear arms" at every opportunity.  Man, I was obnoxious.

I listened to Sting's, Dream of the Blue Turtles on loop (well I'd play it, flip the cassette, fast forward, flip again, and press play once more.  I loved my pirated copy with it's grey lead song titles and little picture of whales drawn on the lable).  I even have a battered cassette recording of me belting out Russians, backing song tapped from the radio (Casey Kasem, American Top 40, of course).  I had pictures of Brazilian rainforests tapped up next to my pictures of Johnny Depp and Don Johnson (yes I know that last one is now exceedingly sad, but I loved Miami Vice back in the day and I don't care what anyone thinks.  He had a pet alligator on his boat and drove a Ferrari Daytona Spyder 365 GTS/4, you didn't get cooler than that in the 80s).  I read everything I could get my hands on about the nuclear arms race, animal friendly beauty products, endangered wildlife and organic vegetables.  I still have my over-sized, "Reuse, Recycle, Refill" t-shirt from the Body Shop all those years ago.

I'm pretty sure my parents considered some sort of intervention during my teenage years.  Luckily their fear of public shaming, should anyone in our small town find out that they had birthed a lefty, pot-smoking (not that I ever did they just decided I was ganja girl), non-shaving, hemp-wearing, patchouli-smelling, incense-burning, flower-child, outweighed their desire to 'fix' me.  Though I do think there was some discussion about sealing me up in the attic, like the mad aunt that nobody ever talks about.  But that would have involved some sort of DIY, and luckily my Dad wouldn't know a hammer from a chain saw.  Instead we did the  dance of denial, of which my family are the current World Champions.  I was allowed to wear my hippie skirts and listen to Midnight Oil (sadly Peter Garrett sold his soul, and is now yet another ineffectual politician) and good old Sting, as long as I did these things at my friends' houses, and kept my mouth shut around their friends.

Now I'm older and my permanent state of 'meh' prevents me from any huge demonstrations of environmental activism.  I still have a desire to save the earth but I would prefer to do it from the comfort of my couch and preferably with a glass of vino in hand.  Now it's World Environment Day and I feel like I should pull my finger out, and do my bit for the planet.  As I've mentioned previously I do the "if it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown flush it down" water saving tip, recycled loo paper, environmentally friendly cleaning products, buy local, compost, drink tap water, and recycle and reuse, as much as I can.

Even my garden is a wildlife wonderland of overgrown bushes and un-mown lawns, fertilised generously and naturally, by two large dogs and numerous randy possums.   My dog also eats the cat poo, so technically she is recycling too (though when she is trying to give me a puppy kiss with a face covered in kitty litter I am not thinking environmentally friendly thoughts, well except for calculating how many of my plants I could fertilize with her gross poo-eating body).  I often wonder what more I can do for good old Mother Earth, and more importantly what more can I/we do with the least amount of effort?

So yesterday I spent an exhausting 5 mins on Google Search, researching exciting, cutting-edge environmental solutions.  And what did I find.  Poo.  Yep, that's right poo, nards, turds, what ever you want to call it (did you know someone has actually complied a poop thesaurus?), is the solution.

Basically, we all need to give a shit about the environment.

Here are a few of the great articles I found:

Scientists discovered that the bugs that eat poo create rocket fuel as a by-product.  Go bugs.

In Rwanda, an entire prison is powered by the gas given off from human waste. Now whilst this is a big YAY on the cutting back of wood consumption, and no poo going in the rivers, I really don't know if I'd fancy having my food cooked on a stove powered by farts.  Maybe, I could stomach my own farts, but I don't know about other people's farts, ick.  But still YAY Rwandan prison officials, making a shitty situation, well....shittier.

Even NASA has spent millions researching poo and come up with a solution.  They have estimated that a six man crew would create at least six tons of human waste products on a two-year trip to Mars.  Now there's a job to aspire to, poo mathematician. Their solution to a space poo problem, recycled drinking water, fertilizer and poo-generated electricity production.  Tang, velcro and a poo-powered battery.  Go NASA.

Poo.  Saving the environment one odifourous nard at a time.

Alternatively we could go with the Soylent Green (1973) solution.  Reading the synopsis, it just seems so appropriate:

"a dystopian future suffering from pollution, overpopulation, depleted resources, poverty, dying oceans and a hot climate due to the greenhouse effect".

Not only does it deal with the problem of over population, but also food shortages.  Perfect.  And I can think of a few people I'd like to mince, though not necessarily eat. 

(Oh Charleton, Moses, guns and cannibalism, you did it all.)

On that note, dear readers, I am off to grab my green sequins and ablute for Mother Earth.  What will you do for World Environment Day?

Cheers
Michelle :)

Beds are Burning, Midnight Oil (1987). We all need to dance like Peter Garrett at least once a day.

9 comments:

  1. Since you and I are around the same age, we seem to have gone through a lot of similar phases. :) Body shop slogan tees and thinking we're saving the world? Check. Like you, I now prefer to do my saving of the world by sitting on the couch, in my case, sipping a cold beer and eating a good sandwich and saying things like "Good God, what does HE look like!" and "Kids nowadays!" and sounding exactly like my mum did 20 years ago. Ha!

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  2. Veg - and don't forget, "what's that crap he's listening to", and "damn that musics loud". Why must we become our parents? Why? Mr Grumpy always calls me "Liz" (the mumster) when he wants to wind me up, bastard!

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  3. I just found your blog (via mine) and what a fabulous writer you are. Yes, I am also your age and was a huge body shop devotee too! One sniff of 'dewberry' instantly takes me back to year 10. It's hard to save the world but I did think about it when I opened my store, when choosing packaging, lighting etc. I had an interesting conversation with someone in the packaging industry who was outraged about those so called enviro bags that everyone uses these days. Apparently, they use worse chemicals in production and take longer to break down than plastic bags. I know they are designed to be re-used, but I know I have a million of them as do most of us . It's sad to think we are trying to do the right thing and unwittingly do the wrong thing. I ended up going with paper bags- it was all too confusing. sorry, this comment turned out to be way longer than I intended, I'll stop rambling now..Lizzie.

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  4. Right there with you! I remember throwing benefits for the rainforest because that is totally what Sting would want me to do. Now I just scold people when they don't bring their own shopping bags. I hope Sting can't see me now...

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  5. OMG! Dream of the Blue Turtles - I *Loved* that song. I haven't heard it in so long, but I bet it still sounds OK. I wish I still had my tape of that :)

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  6. Fanantique - Mmmmm dewberry, thanks for stopping by Lizzie and thanks for the info on the shopping bags. It is confusing. They need to put out a "Go Green for Dumbies" edition. And yay you for trying to find the right bags, that's half the battle. :)

    Elly Lou - I'm sure somewhere Sting's spidie (or is it Tantric) sense is telling him that a woman with a fondness for porcupines has just scolded an enemy of Mother Earth for her lack of shopping bags. So all is well with the world.

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  7. Emma - spot the 80s child, hehe. Dream of the Blue Turtles takes me right back. I have a dodgy copy on cassette if you want. I'm sure if I stick a pencil in one of the spools I can get all the tape back in :)

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  8. Being older than most I saw Soylent Green when it came out and loved it. I still have to watch it once in a while for a Charlston fix. At the time it came out I thought the future it showed was possible...still do.

    Jane

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  9. Jane - it's such a classic and a huge part of popular culture. It's one of my faves and I love that 2022 is considered the distant future. LOL The way we trash our world who knows what the future will hold, we are still such a disposable, materialistic society.

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