Green Fads Inevitably Die, but How?

Yeti by Philippe Semeria

The only question in regards to the death of the current green enthusiasm is, “Will the new green fad die via popular adoption, or via wholesale abandonment?”  Well, I guess this is the first question, not the only.  The second one would be, “What will green living look like when it is either abandoned or adopted?”

An intelligent reader (I know you are out there!) would of course respond, “Well, economical solutions will be adopted while unrealistic and utopian greening will be abandoned.”  And while making sense, this sort of reasoning with the American people is redonculous at best and dangerous madness at worst.  Just look at corn ethanol, still going strong all these years despite its fairly wide-known economic unfeasibility.  And we all know that the milk of the female Yeti could be a financial boon for holistic medicine if someone would just put in the hard work to create a Yeti milking program, or at least learn to synthesize the stuff.

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That’s right, cage matches for manuscripts

Poster of Mad Max
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome by Richard Amsel

How many people decide whether or not the public will like a book before the public even gets a vote?  Maybe a publisher, editor, and agent?  These people are professionals who stake their careers and livelihoods to some extent on knowing what the public will like, and certainly they are often right.

But is it efficient to have so many steps between writer and reader?  We have all heard the stories of books being rejected repeatedly before eventually breaking through into the market and becoming instant best-sellers.  Even more disturbing are the minions of crappy books which find themselves on bookstore shelves just to remain there until they are tossed in the garbage (most often where they belong).

Read moreThat’s right, cage matches for manuscripts