urth guy

Worried about further damage to America's fragile fossil fuel infrastructure from the rest of the hurricane season? Visions of oil-soaked ducks and homeless polar bears keeping you up at night while Sarah Palin drills her rhetoric into the public?

Take heart! Politicians are working overtime to make sure no more oil tankers will be hastily joined together with cardboard, or staffed by a minimum of one crew member. Way back in the early 1990s, Aussie duo John Clarke and Brian Dawe let us know that everything is copasetic on the high seas.

While the biting satire specifically referred to an unfortunate incident off Western Australia in 1991, the sad truth is that many disastrous oil spills have happened since the infamous Exxon Valdez of 1989. If we increase our drilling and shipping of oil, we've got even more chances for accidents in the future.

Thanks for the link dad!

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This new blog owes a hearty tip of the (upcycled) hat to Starre Vartan of Eco-Chick, Greenopia, and TDG (yes she's very busy); and Remy C. of Lu Magazine (sorry Rem, umlauts mess up too many browsers). Without them URTH Guy never would have been pushed through the heady birth canal known as the Hearst Digital Production Department.

I had heard Starre complain about the lame lack of an "Eco-Chick for guys" on the Intertubes so many times that I finally took the half-broken iPod bugs out of my ears long enough to do something about it. Hey, am I the only one worried about getting part of a headphone cover lodged in his ear? Star Trek II messed me up as a kid.

Anyway, some of you may be wondering why this blog will include such topics as the latest green fashions (for men, duh) and cool green gadgets, when the eco lot is often told that what we really need to do is buy less stuff. Very good sir, that is a great point. In fact it reminds me of a friend of mine, who frequently refers to a ball cap he picked up in Quebec, especially when we're strolling past the glittery windows of a tony boutique, or killing time flipping through a glossy magazine. The hat reads "fuck la mode."

But the truth is style, design and even fashion matter... much more than most people think. Just ask Steve Jobs, Marilyn Monroe or even Che. Green fashion doesn't have to be about buying more stuff you don't really want... but it can help you put your best sustainable foot forward, and maybe even impress a few cute eco-chicks (simple demographics are in our favor, after all).

So no this blog isn't just going to be about hemp manbags or organic cotton skinny jeans. It's also going to be about tech, the Internet, cool parties and hilarious youtube videos. But I figured I didn't have to sell you as hard on those other things. But most of all, please tell me what you want to see! (Besides exclusive photo shoots of Julia Butterfly Hill among the trees).

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From the good folk at WebUrbanist -- who brought you all things Banksy, guerrilla marketing and recycled art -- comes the new sister site WebEcoist.

WebEcoist is said to be "dedicated to the premise that the natural environment is not only fundamentally important to us in practical terms but is also amazingly intriguing in all kinds of ways many of us rarely consider." That means dynamic, hip coverage of green art, architecture and design, technology, pop science, travel and more, all "bringing a wide range of useful and interesting eco-info right to your web browser."

First posts include an easily digestible 7-Point Beginner’s Guide to Going Green, a Brief History of the Environmental Movement, and a "linkbait" piece on The Incredible Tree-Climbing Goats of Morocco.

We expect fun, green things from WebEcoist, and have just added the site to our bookmarks and RSS feeds. The green blogosphere keeps growing, and hopefully is poisted to help make a real difference.

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Although some might argue that they have jumped the shark, lolcats seem to be everywhere these days, having spread far beyond the imageboard 4chan in 2005. They appear regularly all over the Internet, from social news sites to chumby ads, and have been covered in Time. Some 61% of the Bible has now been translated into lolspeak.

Although lolcats are based on animals (and the form of expression evolved beyond cats long ago, notably to a certain elephant seal), the heavily anthropomorphized images rarely relate directly to the natural world, beyond basic needs (om nom noming, looking for things to om nom nom, and so on) -- until now.

The new website Global Warming Hates Kittens takes the Internet phenom to new levels, with the tagline "Kittens are very concerned about climate change." The site encourages users to submit their cat photos, then links a humorous caption to legit info about the very real threat posed by climate change. (Course some might argue that they aren't true lolcats, since they don't have the text superimposed on the image, true macro style. That's why I took the liberty to combine their images and text via icanhascheezburger.com).

As an example, Global Warming Hates Kittens shows a placid scene of a cat relaxing above a gorgeous Venetian canal. The caption "Venice kitten sez: Global warmingz takes mai home" links to information about the dangers of sea level rise. The site will only be as good as the community of users, but it seems like a good way to get more people engaged in thinking about climate change, while having some fun.

In honor of Global Warming Hates Kittens, here's my list of the best "green" lolcats from the Net:

http://icanhascheezburger.com

1. May I Present to You… The Ocean

All kidding aside, the world's oceans are in serious jeopardy, from growing dead zones, overfishing, oil spills, floating plastic and much more, not to mention widespread disruption from global warming. The Earth is largely an aquatic planet, and the health of the oceans effect the health of us all.

2. gudbai beachez

Global Warming Hates Kittens links this adorable little trooper to a WWF report about the potentially devastating effects of worldwide sea level rise, which is expected to be as much as 5 mm per year over the next 100 years. That means disappearing nations in the Pacific, loss of crucial wetlands and rising floodwaters.

http://icanhascheezburger.com

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