GREEN WEB (4)

GREEN WEB: A SWICKI IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

It can be pretty frustrating to search for eco information on the web. Even if you’re interested in something basic, like “greening” your house. Say you fancy making some modest changes to reduce its carbon footprint and increase its self-sufficiency. You logically Google the term “green house,” expecting to find a wealth of material on how to install solar panels and water conservation toilets. Instead, you get 19 pages of links that reference the term “green” in other contexts of the word. So you learn how to build a Victorian greenhouse…and how greenhouse gases are warming the earth…but you’ll have to Google less obvious terms like “greening house” or “house green,” to get the home improvement advice you’re really looking for.

Green Web attempts to address this predicament. It’s a swicki, which is a customized search engine, and it’s dedicated to gathering and prioritizing green information on the web. Green Web relies on the collaborative input of its users, who can “vote” on an entry by clicking a plus or minus sign, and thereby move that entry up or down the listing. Vote tallies are posted next to each entry.

Standard swicki features on Green Web include a “Comment Box” for users to post on a particular search, and a “Hot Searches” box, which is a sampler of recommended search terms. Some of these “hot searches” are unexpected, if not odd, though they’re based on user popularity. For example, alongside “green architecture” and “eco-organic” are bizarrely tangential terms like “tae bo” and “yoga mats.”

This quirky combination of high and low makes for entertaining browsing, but Green Web’s search and sorting ability can also deliver spot-on results. Type in “green house” on Green Web, and you’ll instantly access a treasure trove of helpful eco-oriented material. Unlike Google, this web tool speaks your language. Up pop links to catalogs with products for greening your home, an article on the “green” church architecture movement, another on organic gardening and one on solar roofing, and a video tour of the 2008 “Ultimate ‘Green’ House” contest winner. Bingo.

The occasional missteps in Green Web’s search results are due to its swicki reliance on user frequency and user voting, which puts the most popular entries at the top of the result list. This can lead to some off-topic segues, but at least they have a green twist. For example, a search for the journalist Will Potter (who covers environmental activism) brings up a dozen articles on Harry Potter before anything concerning Will Potter appears. So you may get pleasantly sidetracked, reading eco-minded pieces on Harry Potter, even though they’re not remotely related to your search. You may find it interesting that the publishing industry’s green revolution was jumpstarted by J.K Rowlings, when she learned that each Harry Potter installment uses 250,000 trees, and decided that the last one would use recycled paper. Following this kind of quirky chafe, however, the wheat awaits—a comprehensive list of Will Potter’s writings and website.

Aside from Green Web, there is at least one other worthwhile green search engine, www.greenmaven.com. The latter is a smartly packaged website rather than a swicki, so it lacks the user interaction that makes Green Web so personal and charmingly eccentric. As adjunct tools for environmental research, both searches deliver an abundance of valuable green information. But if you have the time and inclination for perusing an eclectic body of eco material, Green Web is a good place to start.

"ECO-TERRORISM" ON GREEN WEB

If you follow environmental activism of the radical kind, you know that the federal government’s anti-environment campaign of fear and loathing labels it “eco-terrorism.” And if you’re interested in the full spectrum of debate on this controversial term, Green Web is a particularly good research resource. Searching the hot-button phrase on Green Web brings up a great mix of pro and con material. Through its swicki formula of user frequency and voting, Green Web’s results cover both sides in nearly equal measure—and come up with material that doesn’t appear in “eco-terrorism” searches on other search engines like Greenmaven or Google.

On one side, for example, appears a provocative blog by conservative philosopher Onkar Ghate, a fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. He argues that eco-saboteurs are terrorists because they attack the forces of social progress:

…It remains worrisome that we still dismiss such terrorists as deranged individuals who pervert the ideology of environmentalism. Even more worrisome is that few of us intellectually grasp, and then rise to defend, the irreplaceable values under attack by environmental terrorists. Their targets are not, fundamentally, a particular ski resort, logging company, meatpacking center or medical research project, but what these represent: human technology, human progress, human life.
Man's life is sustained--and made longer, healthier, happier--by industrial development and technological progress.

And on the opposing side is an op ed piece by David Roberts, a popular environmental blogger. Roberts attacks the faulty logic behind the FBI’s labeling of eco sabotage as terrorism:

"Terrorism is terrorism -- no matter what the motive," declared FBI director Robert Mueller.

What's the difference between burning trucks for kicks and burning trucks as an "eco-terrorist"? The motive. What's the difference between burning down an abortion clinic (crime) and burning down an animal-testing lab (terrorism)? The motive. Of course the motive matters -- that's how terrorism is defined. "Eco-terrorists" are being specially targeted precisely because of their motives. Mueller doth protest too much.

And finally, Green Web’s link to Bookrags provides a list of scholarly articles that weigh in with more objective views on the issue. Many of these pieces come from compendiums, encyclopedias and journals. An article in The St. James Encyclopedia neatly summarizes why the term “terrorism” applied to eco-sabotage prompts conflicting reactions:

…eco-terrorism is a highly contested term. Ron Arnold, a leader of the anti-environmental "Wise Use" movement, argues for a broad definition of eco-terrorism that includes almost every crime committed on behalf of the environment, even acts of civil disobedience. Many environmentalists, however, passionately disagree with this usage, preferring to distinguish between "eco-sabotage" (an assault on inanimate objects) and terrorism (an assault on living things). The environmentalist David Brower, for instance, has argued that the real terrorists are those who pollute and despoil the earth, not those who seek to protect it.

These examples provide a range of fresh, credible information and opinions on the subject of “eco-terrorism.” And they all appear within the first three pages of an “eco-terrorism” search result on Green Web. By comparison, only David Roberts’ blog appears on Google—and only after slogging through over 30 pages of search results for “eco-terrorism.” Such is the beauty of a customized eco search engine like Green Web.