Play It Green

Racecar driver and environmental advocate Leilani Munter delivers a first-hand report from the front lines of the Gulf spill–interviewing shell-shocked fishermen who talk about having to find other careers now, discussing how oil execs shortchanged those who lost their livelihood and talking up the importance of moving to renewable energy. Despite her own fossil fuel-driven livelihood and all.

Why did this happen?

Oil companies: $150 million a year for 750 full-time lobbyists.

Gulf Coast residents: zip.

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He’s got a heart of green. Atlanta Falcons fullback Ovie Mughelli has a foundation with the  motto “Our future is green.” Despite pictures of the larger-than-life NFLer on his (frankly, very well-executed) site clubbing with tight-dressed ladies and holding some sort of liquor named “bling,” the guy manages to come across as a down-to-earth do-gooder. He has a football camp in his home state of South Carolina where he’s big on promoting self-esteem and environmental awareness; said camp is being “greened” via recycling bins and reusable totes (it’s a start!) and he buys 40 seats per game to award to worthy kids. Also, he posed with Captain Planet (having received the “Superhero for the Earth” award). And that’s nothing if not ballsy. Also, read his blog, despite the fact that he hasn’t updated it in a year. Choice quote: “I was kinda upset because it didn’t stop raining all night, and I didn’t bring an umbrella.”

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Do you know what you’re wiping your butt with when you use the bathroom at Lincoln Financial Field–home of the Philadelphia Eagles? I do. It’s SCA Tissue! Last May, 3 former Eagles even helped the tissue company plant 15 trees—linebacker Gary Cobb, wide receiver Fred Barnett and wide receiver Mike Quick—in their 6.5-acre Eagles Forest in Neshaminy State Park in Pennsylvania. The football team’s forest was just established last year, all part of its larger Go Green initiative. Last year, they offset all their emissions by purchasing wind power. Anyway, SCA is into forest management, plants 3 trees for every one used in Europe and sells 100% recycled paper products. Now the Eagles’ stadium carries nothing but SCA’s Tork brand, meaning its more than 1 million visitors wipe their butts and mouths with tree-happy recycled content. Since 2004, the team has reduced its energy consumption by 30%, according to the Philadelphia Business Journal.

On a side note, “the Nest” would be a much cooler and greener name for the Eagles’ stadium in an alternate universe where corporate sponsorship was not necessary. Even cooler if it actually looked like the Bird’s Nest from the Beijing Olympics (which Citi Group is now converting to an entertainment and shopping center).

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If you want an explanation of cap-and-trade, who better to ask then a former NBA cheerleader? Falling into the “Google discovery of the week” category is the Science Cheerleader, a former Philadelphia 76ers cheerleader named Darlene Cavalier who breaks down complicated science jargon and ideas into easily digestible explanations and attempts to get regular joes interested in contributing to science research and policy. Take cap-and-trade. The one-time cheerleader–beginning and ending in the early Charles Barkley-era ’90s–who also happens to be the former Global Manager for Senior Business Development for Walt Disney Publishing Worldwide, compares the idea of companies adhering to carbon emissions limits by buying or selling credits in a market-based system (in effect, rewarding the environmentally friendly and punishing the polluters until they get up to speed) to moms trading babysitting chips. More recently, she highlights the  efforts of EarthDive, an organization that aims to better document the effects of pollution, overfishing and trafficking in endangered species by engaging the millions of recreational scuba divers as “citizen scientists” to record their findings in the Global Dive Log.  Observations are mapped on the site, and provide real time data used to influence ocean policy worldwide. If it all sounds a little kooky, well, it’s always best to keep in mind the power of a pretty face–particularly with a brain attached.

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I was all ready to write about the cacophonous silence coming from baseball players in regards to their teams’ green initiatives. With a LEED-certified stadium (silver) from the Nationals, Minnesota seeking their own new LEED stadium (gold), solar panels at Fenway, green power purchasing and major recycling at the Phillies’ Citizens Bank Park, 95% recycled steel at the Mets new Citi Field, and on and on across Major League Baseball, it seemed like a major loss that no players were acting as the spokespeople, that the conduit between teams’ green initiatives and fans were essentially PR people.

That’s no longer the case. Chris Dickerson from the Cinncinati Reds and Jack Cassel from the Cleveland Indians launched We Play Green, an initiative to get athletes–many of them baseball players–to make green changes to their everyday routines. They’re looking to bring environmental awareness to the locker rooms, to get players to shed their umpteen water bottles in favor of refillable bottles, to recycle, and to leverage their clout to get stadiums and city officials to do more. Geoff Jenkins of the Phillies is on board (his “inspiring” message: “I still recycle”), as is the Red Sox’ Jacoby Ellsbury (”I think many people think plastic just kind of melts away”), Joe Smith of the Mets (who quotes Art Bushwald, “and Man created the plastic bag…”) and Mike Aviles of the Cleveland Indians (”Everyone can do something”). It’s a major step for baseball, to put influential faces in front of these environmental efforts with people who have a lot more clout with fans than the guys and gals in the head office.

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By Andrew Gardner
In all of sport, the greater environment is an unnamed opponent. Bowling to auto racing. Equestrian events to slow-pitch softball. Surfing to rugby. Sport is marked by a variance of control over a world that is carefully bordered out by pavement, ski runs, white lines and targets. From the earliest cave dwelling archers to David Beckham, those with supernatural abilities set the benchmarks of sport. Fans love when teams dominate, love it more when individuals stand out. We’re thrilled when actions are superhuman, never-before-seen, record breaking and epic. Similarly we like big personalities to go with big success, even if the bigger-than-life persona is manufactured. (Witness Michael Phelps on Saturday Night Live – the great swimmer is a goofy guy, regardless of his athletic abilities.) We demand agency over existence. This affects the athletes in how they live.

The average NFL player’s career lasts three years, upping the odds for personal bankruptcy and unemployment beyond the final season. Sustainability is an ethic that could inform professional athletes beyond the interaction between the player and the green.

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Being a hot woman who races sports cars is enough to ensure plenty of attention (particularly from men’s magazines) and financial success. But Leilani Münter, described on her site as a “vegetarian hippie chick race car driver,” with a site called www.carbonfreegirl.com, is actually using all that attention for eco-good. She’s trying to bring environmental education to the 75 million NASCAR fans and 40 million IndyCar fans and to green racing itself, replacing oil with biofuels and instituting widespread recycling at tracks. Her “Eco Dream Team” plan involves emblazoning the sides of her 200 mph race car with an “eco message” and inviting green companies to advertise on the other parts of the car for less than sponsors would usually pay—instead of 1 company paying $1 million for sponsorship, as is the norm, 5 could pay $200,000. In other words, the green message (which hasn’t been specified) is the “main sponsor,” not an oil company.

Münter is an ambassador for the National Wildlife Federation, she contributes to the green section of the Huffington Post, and made three trips to Capitol Hill to talk about environmental legislation this year. This weekend she’s attending Powershift—a weekend full of pro-green-jobs and anti-coal demonstrations, learn-to-green seminars and live music—in Washington, D.C. where on Sat., Feb. 28, she’s speaking about “creative activism” alongside eco-actress-activist Darryl Hannah and Elliot May of Reverb. On the racetrack, she’s also the fourth woman in history to compete in the Indy Pro Series, the developmental league of IndyCar.

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I’ve been meaning to give them a mention for some time, but I’m slow and easily distracted. I’m talking about 350.org, the new venture in getting people to give a crap about the environment launched by Bill McKibben (he’s the guy who inside the environmental movement is EVERYWHERE–cover blurbing or writing all the books, running or organizing all the latest green ventures. To the point where I had come to assume that McKibben was a household name before asking around and receiving blank stares in response. I really have become seriously and irrevocably immersed in all things green). 

 350.org won my favor immediately by calling E’s office and saying that PlayItGreen had given them a few good leads in terms of athletes they could contact for endorsement. Here’s their deal: they want the number 350 imprinted in as many brains as possible. According to climate guru Dr. James Hansen at NASA, we need to reduce the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million or the world will be irrevocably changed for the worse. (insert screams and doomsday music). This can only be accomplished through real, serious, major overhaul changes–mass support for wind  and solar (and a new smart grid to boot), shutting down coal plants, keeping the rainforests intact.

 Since athletes are akin to gods here on planet Earth, 350.org has thought to enlist their help. Really, the athletes just have to sign a pledge and wear a lime green 350.org wristband and hold up signs where possible (bonus points for signs in cool locations). So far, a lot of winter athletes have lined up in support–not surprising, since they’re the first to notice the effects of global warming. The ultimate goal, of course, is to round up a good 350 of them.

 And the organization is also trying to get 35,000 invites to Obama and McCain (send yours here) to get whoever is elected (Obama. cough.) to go to the U.N. Climate meetings in December and get the country back on track in becoming an environmental world leader.

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Misty May-Treanor and partner Kerri Walsh may be the new dream team for the upcoming Olympics. Yesterday, the beach volleyball stars clocked in their 101st consecutive match and their 18th straight title at the AVP’s Long Beach Open. If May-Treanor and Walsh win at the games, they’ll be the first athletes to ever repeat as Olympic champions in beach volleyball.

As is true with water-based athletes (the swimmers, the surfers, the rowers, etc.), the beach-based ones are pretty eco-conscious, too. They can’t help but notice eroding beaches, and May-Treanor has told me when I interviewed her for E that “the signs of erosion are very noticeable” at the beaches where she practices. She related that she and husband Matt Treanor, a catcher for the Florida Marlins, are looking into solar panels for their roof when they remodel their Florida home next year. As one of the few athletes forced to play outdoors (on a reconstructed beach) during the Beijing Olympics, May-Treanor still said she’s not sweating out Beijing’s horrendous air quality issues. “I have played in other cities in China and never had an issue,” she said. In the city’s relentless quest to offer green games and clear skies, Beijing, one of the world’s most polluted cities, has pledged to cut its traffic in half during the August 8-24 Olympics, and to shutter factories in five surrounding provinces.

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As my feature story in the latest issue of E Magazine details, several of the Olympic athlete contenders have decided to focus a little of their blood, sweat and tears on pointing out the nation’s alarming consumption habits. For most of these, it’s like they backed into green issues at the same time as the rest of the country, when confronted unequivocally with eroded beaches, smoggy air and wild weather. Swimmer Aaron Peirsol is one of the more committed of the lot, and a true California water boy at heart (he surfs! even with a discarded McDonald’s tray during a red tide!) And he’s no slacker in the pool, either. Earlier this month, Peirsol set a world record in the 100-meter backstroke at the U.S. Olympic swimming trials against a really formidable group–Michael Phelps, Ryan Lochte, and Randall Bal. He’s the brand name behind Oceana’s campaign Race for the Oceans–a conservation outlet for swimmers and swimming fans, which includes a blog, and a YouTube video.

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