Who said reporters just sit at their desks rewording press releases? Check out the finalists in the Society of Environmental Journalists 5th annual awards.
Oops, I forgot; "mainstream media" I mean like, MSM, is so 1972. Isn't it our duty to cheer up? It's the dawn of the postpostmodern, postindustrial, post-oil century, which is a new beginning, which must be positive! We wouldn't want to turn off any jetsetting ecorazzi with ugh, more unglossy headlines about the downtrodden state of nature. C'mon, let's say Yippie (no Hoffman/Rubin overtones, for Gwyneth's sake) for our bright, clean, green energy future--for amber waves of organic quinoa, for fleets of veggie oil Mercedes road-tripping from sea to sea, for backyard wind turbines rustling the leaves of native prairie plants that we put up where parking lots used to be!
Y'all couldn't feel any more numb being reminded about the toxic stew that sank the third-world, subtropical boot-toe of this number-one nation, could you? Say one more word about how our citizens stewed and stank and starved last year because of criminal ecological neglect or whatever, and it'll spoil my salad. Who wants to lose an appetite about how many other waters flow with poisons, and why "wars over wetlands" has such a nice ring to it? Can't we go without the gloomcasts about how shifting weather patterns will doom our shivering offspring to relentless wars over resources? So what if there aren't any fish left in the sea, or if teflon and flame retardants float in baby's bloodstream. Wouldn't you rather subscribe to happygrams about shopping in an ecologically-correct fashion, so you can make those little green choices mean a lot, day after day?
If so, nevertheless, let's salute those scandalously underfunded investigative journalists who chase the depressing subjects. Without them, we'd have no motivation to shop at Whole Foods or to rendezvous over fair trade coffee with with fellow "conscious" souls.
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