The Daily Green's Heartless "Awards"

The Daily Green's Heartless 'Award' is meant to call out those in our culture who have actively prevented the 'green is good' message from gaining more mainstream acceptance in the heart of the American people.

For a look at those who have helped green go mainstream, see The Daily Green's Heart of Green award winners.

First, give him credit for delivering perhaps the most memorable line about climate change ever delivered on the Senate floor: 'Global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.'

Then thank your lucky stars fewer and fewer people subscribe to his conspiracy theory.

As the senior senator from left field, James Inhofe, the Republican from the oil patch state of Oklahoma, has almost single-handedly kept the global warming denialist flame burning.

It was statements like his that kept reporters off-balance long after the scientific community had come to grips with global warming as a clear and present danger. The silver lining in that oil-drenched, climate-science-skeptic misinformation campaign is that it made scientists state more clearly to the public just how sure they are that Inhofe and his ilk are wrong.

The Earth Liberation Front puts the 'earth' in scorched earth tactics and 'nut' in eco-nut, neither of which is a good thing. They joined two words that should never have appeared together: 'eco' and 'terrorism.'

Recently implicated in the burning down of some big new mansions in the Pacific Northwest, the shadowy ELF has been torching The Man's machinery of ecological destruction for decades.

For driving a wedge between popular opinion and the green movement (not to mention for dancing on the ashes of folks' homes), the Earth Liberation Front shows how heartless it is.

Someone send the ELF a memo: Terrorism is never green. (Oh wait, the shadowy ELF doesn't have an office. Send smoke signals?) You can believe deforestation is not cool without letting it poison your heart. You can argue against suburban sprawl without watching the cul-de-sac go up in flames. Do not pass go. Go to jail.

The Daily Green HEARTLESS Award

Loser: Ohio Department of Agriculture

Everyone knows that consumers are asking more questions about their food than ever before. And one of the main questions they pose is: Why is rBST, the artificial growth hormone also known as rBGH, banned in otherwise normal places such as Canada, Japan and the EU but allowed here?

And so the wonderful American free market stepped in, and today, from sea to shining sea, moms, dads and other shoppers can find milk with a label that states, "This milk was made from cows not treated with rBST" on the carton for them to select if they want it. Easy to understand, right?

Except in Ohio.

The Buckeye State has still not come to a final ruling, but has recently updated its decision that any milk producer who puts a label on his carton stating the above must also include a disclaimer stating that the FDA has found no difference between the milk of treated and untreated cows. This ruling even applies to organic farmers, though forgoing the use of synthetic hormones is a practice inherent to the principles of organic production that they should be able to promote.

One of conservative talk radio host and author Rush Limbaugh's favorite on-air targets is those he calls 'wacko environmentalists.' At times he is indeed setting his sights on true extremists, like the Earth Liberation Front, but all too often he rolls in celebrated green warriors like Al Gore, UN officials, academics and climate scientists, as well as you, me and the other normal people.

A recent Environmental Defense report concluded, 'Though Limbaugh likes to frame the debate as a contest between him and the 'environmental wackos,' it is really Limbaugh's word against the overwhelming tide of scientific knowledge.' What has been the cigar-chomping pundit's word? Besides continually inflating the public's perception of scientific uncertainty about the reality of climate change, Limbaugh argued against protection of the ozone layer and boasted that the north woods were 'teeming' with spotted owls at a time when biologists estimated only about two thousand pairs remained.

At this point, with going green thoroughly in the mainstream, and embraced by the biggest businesses -- as well as many politicians and voters -- it's almost kind of cute that Limbaugh continues to lump everyone who cares about the future of our only home together as a 'wacko.' Keeping his, uh, demographic happily in denial might be good for his ratings, but its getting a little ridiculous at this point, though it is kind of comic relief for the rest of us, too.