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• Are You Gonna Eat That?
• g-Think Survey Results: The Fear…
• In Japan, Fear Morphs into Positive…
• I am the Messenger of Fear
• Carbon Footprinting
• The Culture of Fear
• The Fear of China
• The Power of Nightmares
• The True Colors of Terror

It’s always good to be the underdog. And it’s always a damn nuisance when your cause goes mainstream. The environmental movement has been so hijacked by politicians and Madison Avenue that only grassroots action is going to save it from becoming a cliché. But there are signs that, literally, seeds are being planted and that folk are taking matters into their own hands.

The conversion, on the way to the SUV graveyard, of President Bush on the environment is dwarfed by the about-face of Prime Minister John Howard of Australia—who, sensing upcoming electoral defeat, has done a U-turn on climate change worthy of any Hollywood screen chase.

First the politicians grab green, then Madison Avenue turns it into greenbacks and the public sees red. Worldwide, politicians are trying to out-green each other. In the UK, every household will get a “pledge card” outlining how they can make a difference. This follows a European energy rating scheme that will see whether a transparent energy cost gets reflected in housing values.

Companies are cashing in with pretty flimsy campaigns, while the media onslaught culminates in Time magazine’s “Global Warming Survival Guide,” which warns that:

“environmental posing—‘green washing’ is the term of art—will not be a viable business strategy in a world transformed by climate change.”

But in the spin cycle, attention spans are short. In Australia, Westpac Bank—the savviest local company on the corporate social responsibility front—launched a credit card allowing earned points to offset a customer’s carbon footprint. This move was greeted as “guilt appeasement for Westpac customers” by Jennifer Marohasy, senior fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs, according to The Age newspaper. The personal carbon footprint is a nifty indicator, but when Virgin Blue, an airline Down Under, promotes it via front-page newspaper ads as a $1 payment per flight, it starts to look like selling strawberries cheap to get the punters into the supermarket.

Meanwhile, back in Britain, when things get tough, the Brits get gardening. The Guardian newspaper reports that UK sales of flower seeds are down about 32 percent, correlating to a boost in vegetable plantings. Tired of organic being hijacked by every supermarket in town, distrustful citizenry appear to have decided they’d rather dump greenwashing and grow their own lettuce. Power to the people!