Glossy Green

I was flat on my back most of the day yesterday, supine host to some mysterious bug that was rooting around in my guts. While my immune system fought the good fight, the rest of me alternated between sleeping and reading the green issue of Vanity Fair -- the one with the photo montage of a polar bear cub and Leo Dicaprio looking a little silly in jeans and crampons. Like most issues of VF, it's thick as a doorstep, plumped with page after page of high-gloss advertisements. There is, of course, no reconciling the glam lifestyles and consumption-driven culture that VF celebrates and the 'green' agenda it purports to champion, but I've learned to accept such contradictions. Furthermore, having so far read three articles in the issue -- William Langewiesche's long report on the Bleak House legal drama involving ChevronTexaco and the colonos of Ecuador's Oriente; Alex Shoumatoff's account of a fact-finding foray across the Amazon; and Michael Shnayerson's profile of professional climate change naysayer Myron Ebell -- I can tell you it's well worth the newsstand price. I still have James Wolcott's take down of Rush Limbaugh to look forward to, as well as Charles Mann on the privatization of water and E.O. Wilson on the world's inequitable consumption patterns. I just have to claw through the perfume, liqueur and SUV ads to find them. If you do get the issue, note the appearance (on page 218) of Mark Massara of our California Coastal Campaign as well as three members of the Sierra Student Coalition (page 260).