Does that kit include a pint of snake oil?

Glenn Reynolds spots the eco-socialites, but misses the main point–these are green hucksters:

But what can we actually do to make a difference on Earth Day besides buying a Prius?”

The

answer, according to Ms. Barnett, is a line of natural health-care and

housecleaning products made by Shaklee, a 47-year-old company based in

San Francisco whose cleansers were beloved in the 1970s by the first

Earth Day generation, the folks who installed composting toilets.

In

2004 Ms. Barnett’s husband and others paid $310 million for Shaklee,

which is mostly sold like Tupperware, neighbor-to-neighbor in living

rooms. And so Ms. Barnett, the daughter of a man whose fortune from

cable television and cellular phones was once estimated by Forbes at

$1.5 billion, was pitching laundry boosters, dishwashing liquids,

all-purpose cleaners and wipes in a parlor designed by Peter Marino and

accented with art by Sol LeWitt, Damien Hirst, and Gilbert and George.

Sloan Barnett is a Shaklee rep! And she just conned the NY Times into giving her free ad space. I’d rather get an anesthetic-free root canal from a preaching Jehovah’s Witness than be around multi-level marketers. But since Ms. Barnett’s social circle has lots of disposable cash for this frivolity, I wonder if they might be interested in buying carbon offsets for their cat farts?

Update (29 April). The New York Times itself is beginning to catch on to the green scammers — carbon offsets aren’t all they’re cracked up to be! Wow. Am I surprised. Tip from the Instapundit.

Update (30 April).  Easy Jet has found out that carbon offsets are a rip-off, too.