They tell us not to drive Hummers.
They tell us to disconnect our cell phone chargers, once our cell phones are juiced. They tell us to switch off our laptops, burn candles rather than electric light, and sail boats rather than fly planes.
But do they ever tell us to wean ourselves off the animals that we cynically use as substitutes for our failed relationships with other humans?
I only ask because an article from the New Scientist has wafted in front of my breakfast bowl and slapped me about my flappy jowls.
Quoting such luminous organizations as the Stockholm Environment Institute at York, UK, the article purports to suggest that our pets have all the eco-friendliness of that Northwest Airlines flight that forgot to land in Minneapolis and just kept on going to Wisconsin.
Please, I understand that dogs and cats are lovely beings that just want to love you and lick you as long as you feed them and wash them.
However, the SEI seems to believe that a cat has almost the same carbon footprint as a VW Golf.
Here is a sentence from the article that I know may make some of you rather unwell: "As well as guzzling resources, cats and dogs devastate wildlife populations, spread disease and add to pollution."
Yes, I know you thought it was only multinational corporations that do that. So please imagine that there is a book, written by Robert and Brenda Vale, called "Time to Eat the Dog?: The real guide to sustainable living."
Because you are more numerate than me, I will leave you to examine their figures in lascivious detail. However, the Vales estimate that a 4.6-liter Toyota Land Cruiser has an eco-footprint that is less than half that of a medium-size dog.
It is largely to do with the amount of meat and cereal that dogs chow, but this is surely a vale of tears for those who need their dogs in so many different ways: to get exercise, to get companionship and to become attractive to members of their target sex.
In case you are not quite thoroughly depressed by this estimation of our ultimate demise, might I offer you two further calculations from the Vales?
Well, should you own two hamsters, that is the eco-footprint equivalent of your plasma. And one goldfish? Well, it's the energy-sucking equivalent of two cell phones.
To continue this cheery mood for just a little longer, please hark these words the New Scientist quotes-- they were uttered by David Mackay, a physicist at the University of Cambridge: "If a lifestyle choice uses more than 1 per cent of your energy footprint, then it is worthwhile reflecting on that choice and seeing what you can do about it."
The average cat, he estimates, represents 2 percent of a human's footprint. And as for dogs, oh, it really doesn't bear thinking about.
It seems to me, therefore, that you have some harsh choices to make in order to save our world.
Your goldfish or your family plan? Your hamsters or, at the very least, the plasma in your bedroom? Your dog or your Audi?
Your animal companions or your technological ones? Life just doesn't get easier, does it?
He hasn't twittered it yet, but I am suddenly full of belief that Shaquille O'Neal is about to buy a Smart car.
What has driven me to this "yes, we can" moment? Why, the first-ever NBA Green Week.
Launched Thursday, this is the NBA's attempt to reduce its carbon footprint (size 45).
It's a footprint that is characterized by large, pimped-out SUVs, vast, flashing scoreboards, long flights in 757s to New York and Los Angeles, and, especially, the infinite noxious detritus from its Pistons--exemplified by the fumes regularly emitted by power forward (and technical foul king) Rasheed Wallace.
The NBA has gotten its teams together to launch Green Week with the National Resources Defense Council, a green organization that proudly whispers the tagline: "The Earth's Best Defense." (This might cause a few of the Boston Celtics to cough a little furiously.)
The NBA even persuaded renowned, um, power hitter, Robert Redford to introduce the week on YouTube.
And, should you be so inclined (though it might burn up quite some laptop power), there are seven NBA videos to encourage you to change your position on the environment from center to power forward.
You can see members of the Houston Rockets and the Atlanta Hawks planting trees. You can enjoy Louis Amundson of the Phoenix Suns riding his bike to work. And you can commune with the Suns' Steve Nash as he talks about getting solar panels on the arena roof in Phoenix and about his clever basketball shoes made from recyclable materials.
Nash is one player who, when it comes to preaching, would never utter Allen Iverson's famous complaint: "Practice?? We're talking about practice?"
Nash lives in New York during the off-season and doesn't even keep a car there. Yet as you read on the special NBA site about the Denver Nuggets, the Charlotte Bobcats and the Chicago Bulls all wearing uniforms and socks made from 45 percent organic cotton, you wonder where the greenery begins and the greenbacks end.
It's all very well for the Toronto Raptors to offer a 25 percent discount to anyone who shows up with a ticket from public transportation. And it's lovely that any Minnesota Timberwolves fan who arrives by bus, train or, who knows, balloon for the game on Sunday will get a free upper-level ticket.
But these are teams that drying paint refuses to watch.
Then there's the extra-special opportunity for fans to purchase 100 percent organic-cotton shooting shirts and recycled Spalding basketballs.
As any fan of the Golden State Warriors will tell you, something is better than nothing. But wouldn't it be the ultimate joy if LeBron James suddenly rolled up to a game in a Prius with recycled, personalized hubcaps?
I mean, the NBA is where amazing happens, right?
So what kind of car are you going to get next? Perhaps, I might tempt your credulity by asking you to consider a new eco-car called the LEKO.
A Toyota? No, an IKEA.
A strange Web site has appeared, roulez-leko.com, on which a very relaxed, modern, eco-friendly chap, allegedly the great car designer Christophe Grozs, stands next to an apparent car draped with the word LEKO and the tagline "la voiture selon IKEA."
Yes, the car according to IKEA.
The LEKO (L'eco, get it?), allegedly has the backing of the World Wildlife Fund in France. Which might mean the fund has put money into the creation or that the car will have plastic panda-skin seats.
It also will save you untold (because unspecified) amounts of money on your expenditure. And it is humongously eco-friendly.
This is an ad, right?
If IKEA made a car, the doors might not fit quite perfectly into the body. Then you'd really have to work hard to use those tiny screwdrivers to make sure the engine didn't wobble. And just imagine the number of screws it would take to put in the cup holder.
There's the name too. Real IKEA product names never make sense. They always seem to resemble a fair to middling Scrabble hand--for example, KLIPPAN or LYCKSELE. LEKO is far too meaningful.
... Read moreWhat would you do, in this age of green power and greener pastures, to improve the image of the nuclear power industry?
And what would you do if you happened to live in the country where the nuclear power industry brought you, um, Chernobyl?
Well, the Russians, traditionalists to the bitter end, have come up with a brainwave of a quite elevated frequency. Yes, an online beauty pageant.
Who, on this Thursday that seems surrounded only by woes, can resist logging on to this sumptuous contest to find the most beautiful woman working in the Russian nuclear power industry?
In the interests of nuclear objectivity, I have taken it upon myself to observe some of the contestants with an artist's eye and an espionage operative's concern.
In all, there are 200 contestants. And all have the ambition to effect world peace and work with small children.
However, it is hard, merely by looking at these images, to know exactly what services these women perform to benefit the nuclear cause.
All the same, I am expecting voting to rival that of an average week of "American Idol".
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