News Flash: No Matter How Many Cookies You Bake In It, Your Car Will Not "Reverse Global Warming"

Photo by Flickr user Amber in Norfolk.

And we're back!

Sorry, folks, for the long absence... as you may or may not already know, I've taken a new gig at PubliCola, which involves my professional and personal passions, respectively: reporting on politics and blogging about food!

I'm hoping, however, to get back to blogging here on a more regular basis now that things have started to settle down a little in my professional life. Although, honestly, the first thing that really got me itching to blog again wasn't about food, exactly—it was this article, linked on the Huffington Post (a site that makes my blood on pretty much an hourly basis) about how "baking cookies on your car's dashboard will OMG save the planet!!!"—which, depending on how you look at it, is a perfect example of greenwashing, "environmental" consumerism, cognitive dissonance, or all three.

I'm not exaggerating. Here's the headline:

Cookies: The New Dashboard Jesus?

They aren't being ironic, I'm afraid:

TreeHugger's virtual “watercooler” (via Skype) was all a buzz this morning with this delicious tip via Lifehacker: warm, chewy, gooey chocolate chip cookies baked a la dashboard.

Which we love not only because it’s one more way to keep our kitchens cool during the dog days of summer but because it’s energy-free, no oven—or fossil-fuels—required. And in the grand scheme of things, helps reduce our carbon emissions!

"Have your eco-friendly cookies and eat 'em too," "reverse global warming," blah blah blah.

Look. I've got no problem if you want to bake cookies on the dashboard, eggs on the sidewalk, or whatever. But the idea that you can "reverse global warming" by baking cookies IN YOUR CAR—the same car, I'm gonna go out on a limb and presume here, you drive to work every day—borders on self-parody. Unfortunately, it isn't April 1.