Somewhere, Al Gore Is Gently Weeping

The whole point of Anya Hindmarch's "I'm Not a Plastic Bag" campaign was to save plastic bags from being used. Somewhere between 500 billion and 1 trillion of plastic bags go to landfills each year, and it's nice to think that someone might walk into Whole Foods, buy one of Ms. Hindmarch's bags for 15 bucks, and use it to carry his groceries home (shown, right), thereby saving a plastic bag.
Hindmarch's bags, as her Web site notes, have sold out in the United States. Is this because the U.S. is finally jumping on the Gore bandwagon and becoming a bastion of environmental responsibility?! Nope, no, of course not. It's because we love fashion!
I've seen many girls in New York carrying the sold out bag -- as a purse. No one is using it for groceries, no one is logging anything as much as a bottle of wine or a magazine in it.
Then, today, my co-worker reported that he actually saw a picture of irony walking down 23rd Street this morning: A girl wearing an "I'm Not a Plastic Bag" purse on her shoulder while carrying a plastic bag.
Was the offender too dumb to note the irony? I would have at least been smart enough to stash the plastic bag in my Anya Hindmarch bag, thereby escaping such uninvited scrutiny.

Me and Al Gore Totally Have So Much in Common

I rushed to pay a ConEd bill this morning before the bastards decided to stop by and turn my electricity off. They send me weekly shut-off bills, threatening to leave me in the dark. You can tell the difference between these and a regular bill because they have a thick red line across them with the crimson warning, "Important: Dated Notification."
It's not that I don't want to pay; it would be easy if the bill were $25 or $50 or even $100. I live in a small studio apartment. I barely cook, I often turn the heat off, and it's not as if the TV were on all day. So I can't figure out why, today, when I called to pay my bill, my previous balance of $477 is now more than $600. In a matter of two weeks. For a studio apartment.
But I felt not so alone when I read that none other than the Goracle is having trouble keeping his bills down, too. Al Gore, who was the belle of the ball at this year's Oscars and basked in the light of environmental do-goodery, is being criticized by a small research group who discovered that his Nashville home's energy consumption was twenty times the national average.
Well, he's rich. He has a large house. He's a busy guy. It kind of makes sense that his consumption would be greater than the average American's. Just because he got all Ed Begley Jr. on our asses doesn't mean we should expect him to sit around in the dark. Besides, a member of Gore's team explained:

All the energy used for the Nashville home came from a green power provider to the Tennessee Valley that draws its energy from solar, wind-powered and methane gas supplies, among other sources. The Gores were installing solar panels on the roof of their home, Ms. Kreider added, and making efforts to reduce their energy needs. Besides, Mr. Gore had adopted a "carbon neutral" life whereby any emissions for which he was personally responsible were offset by buying green credits such as parcels of forests.

Yes, he's clearly a hypocrite. A solar-loving, panel-installing, wind-powered hypocrite.

An Inconvenient Truth: Eco-Warrior Al Gore's Bloated Gas and Electricity Bills