So, an energy company advises their customers on how they can conserver energy and conservatives angrily ramp UP their energy usage in protest.

The discussion then turns to how best to appeal to conservatives.

Which is BS.

A couple thoughts here.

1. Teddy Roosevelt was a conservative AND a conservationism. He was also pretty progressive and helped build our national park system.

2. Republicans today only see national parks as a place to take their assault rifles.

3. The word “conservative” and “conservation” come from the same source. At least, in the traditional sense. You can’t say they mean the same thing today.

4. With their love of oil companies, and hate of the environment, and dismissal of things like “peak oil” and “climate change”, how the hell do you plan to appeal to folks that aren’t even reading the same book, much less the same page as the rest of us?

5. I imagine some of these conservatives are full-on Rapture Bunnies that think that if we destroy the Earth, we’ll MAKE God prepare the End Times. Or some crap like that.

In short, these aren’t rational people. Anyone who wants to run up a light bill as a political statement is an idiot. Anyone who thinks oil companies are their pals and isn’t a board member on one, is a fool.

I appreciate the view that everyone should conserve, but some folks are just too into their kool-aid cups to be spoken to on this issue. Trust me, it ain’t the marketing folk’s fault.

A look at what has transpired over the past couple months.

BP is getting away with the murder of our Gulf’s ecosystem.

Be it dolphins and whales:

Or endangered sea turtles.

They are also destroying our freedoms:

And apparently we’ve paid the setup fees that created the disaster in the first place.

Every time I see a BP ad I have two co-existing thoughts.

1. I wish they’d spend the ad money on paying some shrimper or local fish shack owner their screw up is running out of business.

2. Wouldn’t it be fun to vigorously and repeatedly kick Tony Hayward in the tailbone?

So yeah, BP’s ad campaign is failing in my eyes as well as others.

What *is* vastly entertaining is the parody BP Twitter account BPGlobalPR (check it out here).

More people follow them than the useless and not-quite-authentic-sounding official BP account. They’ve even been asked to declare they are not official.

Which, you know, is pretty sad that an obvious parody account is been taken as real. It says a hell a lot more at the mishandling of the situation AND the message than of the folks poking fun at you.

Linky.

Found here.

– Entry in a BP logo redesign contest

This BBC article answers: probably not enough.

That said, if I see that smug Tony Hayward anywhere near me, I’m kicking him in the junk.

I like all this grandstanding about not “punishing” gas station owners who happen to sell BP. Hell, they had a choice which vendor to go with. Sometimes you bet and lose.

Bob Cesca has done a lot of coverage on this. Apparently the GOP, particularly Mississippi’s Haley Barbour is in total denial that an oil spill actually exists. Typical Republicans.

Honestly, I kinda hope the South suffers for sucking up to Big Oil for decades. Not so much the individual families, but each and every state that kowtows to these bastards just lose billions in tourism. Think I’m being overly cruel? Governor Piyush Jindal wants MORE offshore drilling as Louisiana is losing clean coastline by the minute.

Maybe he wants more of this?

It gets worse.

Check this out and/or watch the following:

How, and where, to start kicking our dependency on oil.

You can get the following widget here. (Obviously, this is no longer tracking, nor is the technology usable anymore.)

Plus some quality reporting from Bob Herbert at the Times.

This is a really disturbing story of the potential costs of recycling some of our more dangerous devices.

We really need to better monitor where our stuff goes and who it goes to. As it stands, one of the guys in the story eventually dies and those who may survive will have years of medical problems from the radiation damage they took.

I love technology. I love the concept of recycling, but care must be taken with each.

Monsanto can run competitors out of business, sue farmers who don’t buy their products, and generally be underhanded bastards. But they can’t beat Mother Nature. Gee, thanks for helping to screw the rest of us agribusiness.