Tarzan’s love shack blues

I want to be green. Seriously, green. So I’m thinking about tearing down my house and slapping up a sustainable pod built entirely of 100% ecologically renewable pure-green bamboo. Imagine the beautiful smell wafting through my house, reminding me (and my neighbors) of the sweet tropical Chinese bamboo jungles.

And there’s the LEED certificate to point at when the party gets cranked, the organic wine flows, and the solar grill sizzles the GMO-free tofu to perfection.

Calling Al Gore!

Of course, before taking the plunge, it’s de rigueur to wander over yonder to TreeHugger.com for a quick review of the sustainability index of my dream house. At this point, I’m having a distinct vision of that magnificent tree house inhabited by Johnny Weissmuller in Tarzan and the Leopard Woman. Vine not included.

Damn – another dose of freaking reality! As is so often true when dealing with abstractions, the lure of bamboo can quickly morph into a Big Bamboozle in less time that it takes to say “renewably sustainable.”

For example, TreeHugger reports that “…. It is true that [bamboo] naturally regenerates, but forests are being cleared to grow it and it is becoming a monoculture. Although it is claimed that fertilizers are not necessary, in fact they are being used to increase yield.”

Huh? “Natural forests in the vicinity of bamboo plantations have sometimes given way to bamboo as a result of deliberate efforts to replace them or because of the vigorous natural expansion of bamboo in logged over forests. This process has also had a negative impact on biodiversity.”

There goes my dream love shack.

Where’s Cheeta when you need him?

posted by Mudd