Shouting from my soapbox: Who the hell's responsible here?

I picked up the book true green, published by National Geographic, with a foreward by Ian Kiernan, Chairman and Founder of Clean Up the World. The subtitle is "100 everyday ways you can contribute to a healthier planet." The cover says the book is by Kim McKay and Jenny Bonnin. I've heard of National Geographic, haven't heard of the rest of these folks. It's broken down into areas of your life where you can "make a difference," like 'in the home,' 'at work,' etc. So this Clean Up the World thing is huge apparently. According to the blurb in the back:
"Fifteen years after its launch, the campaign has become a successful action program that spans more than 120 countries, encouraging communities to take control of their own destiny by improving the health of their community and environment." Have you heard of this program, outfit, whatever you want to call it? It started as Clean Up Australia and morphed into this version.

Here's my problem: I'm reading through the things I can do, around my house, in my yard and the thought occurs to me, "Is there a book like this for ginormous corporations?" Since the federal government obviously doesn't give a rat's ass about the environment or our health, who's helping Proctor & Gamble or SCJohnson or General Motors or L'Oreal or Jack in the Box be true green? The agencies, both federal and state, that might hold a large corporation's feet to the fire, have made it clear they're not interested in passing laws OR enforcing existing laws that will move us closer to a safer, cleaner, healthier world. My personal opinion is that the individuals who make up the governmental groups are getting rich off the individuals from these special interest groups and lobbyists. I can just see it: a couple good 'ol boys (although I'm very aware that there are good 'ol gals too) yukking it up about the toxic dump that's NOT going to get cleaned up or the chemicals that ARE going to go into air fresheners or the emissions of the newest cars that WON'T pass any tests, yuk yuk. Have another whiskey?

See, that's the thing that really jerks my chain. We have to do our part AND we have to make these overgrown bullies do their part too! WTF??!! I'm really tired of carefully taking canvas bags to the market, carefully turning off every unused light, carefully reading labels (until I think I'm going to go blind), carefully getting rid of the toxically poisonous products from our house, carefully trying to educate the stupid imbeciles we have for neighbors, and so on ad nauseum. I want the really gigantic, huge, humongous, gargantuan, great big companies to HAVE TO DO their careful part. You get what I'm talking about here?


Remember Donovan? That wonderful, funny, kind of flipped out singer from the '60's? He said it perfectly in Riki Tiki Tavi. We have to do it ourselves. We have to kill the snakes. Us. You and me. We have to make the big corporations sweat, we have to hold their feet to the fire. How? Fuck if I know. But it seems to me it's time to bring back the Monkey Wrench Gang. In the meantime, here's our old friend to sing it out for us:



This is why we need Slayde to hurry up and finish Law School. She's going to help us kill these fucking snakes.

I finished this but had to come back and add this: do you have any idea how many goddammed eco-friendly, environmentally conscious, green-e, etc. new programs, companies, groups are cashing in on global warming? I am stunned and thoroughly pissed off at people who are touting wind and solar power as if they'd just been discovered. Oh my god. This is so crazy. When Allison was about 5, I knew a guy who was trying to get wind mills used all over California. That was ages ago and now there are those big wind farm things and people are all proud of themselves. Argh!