Newkirk on PETA’s lessons for eco-activists

PETA isn’t an environmental group. At least, not in my book.

That’s because, in the eyes of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, animal rights trump environment values whenever the two conflict.

From time to time, I’ve snickered and sneered at the controversial animal-rights advocates over their headline grabs, moral certitude and occasionally shallow grasp of many of the indirect, environmental forces that actually do harm animals. It was the snicker’s turn last week when PETA staffers criticized President Obama for killing a fly.

All that said, I find it difficult to argue against two qualities of the organization:

1) PETA does fight on the side of the angels. I mean, how else can you describe a group of poorly paid people who have given their lives over to empathy and protection of the helpless and abused?

2) And PETA’s damned effective at what it does. While it shouldn’t get all the credit, the group’s high-profile PR campaigns have played a big role in expanding empathy in this country for animals since PETA”s founding in 1980.

So after fly-gate buzzed by, I got to wondering what environmental groups could learn from PETA. To my surprise, Ingrid Newkirk, the group’s founder and president, was the person who return by e-mail with a call. Read more

Fly-gate’s winner — PETA’s online store

PETA President Ingrid Newkirk just mentioned to me that sales for the Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher have multiplied like, well, flies.

Soon after President Obama was caught by an NBC camera committing fly-icide in the White House, the organization’s named started popping up in stories of the subject. At first, there was derision that a PETA employee mildly criticized the president for killing the fly and making light of it. Then, visitors to the website of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals started snapping up Katcha Bugs.

“In first 20 hours, 116 of them left our PETA shelves. God, knows how many of them we’ve sold since then,” Newkirk said.

How many Katcha Bugs do people normally buy from PETA? “We might sell two a month.”

More evidence, I’d say, that PETA knows how to turn potenially embarrassments into publicity windfalls. Food for thought for environmental groups?

I’ll publish my interview with Newkirk on Cult of Green tomorrow. Mother Nature News will publish my Media Mayhem column on PETA’s marketing genius later this week.

Audrina Patridge: If you can’t buy animals, eat ‘em

This is right up there with Paris Hilton wearing a “Vote or Die” t-shirt but forgetting to show up at the polls.

Audrina Patridge, who appears in the MTV reality show The Hills (and is soon to get her own reality show), recently became a PETA “Angel for Animals.” She posed with a star Chihuahua named Speedy Gonzalez for a poster and a short video. PETA said this:

During the photo shoot, Audrina told us, “I wanted to get involved with PETA because I’ve always been passionate about animals, and I think this is a great way to make people and all my fans aware of all the animals that need a home. And a lot of people go to pet stores and breeders to buy their animals, but you should adopt, so go to an animal shelter and rescue a dog.”

But it’s the tag line on the poster that’s particularly awkward right now. “Always adopt. Never buy,” it says.

Why awkward? Within a month, Patridge was posing for another shoot — except this time it was to promote for a new terriyaki burger Read more

Nature Conservancy teams with designers

The Nature Conservancy commissioned 10 designers — among them big names like Isaac Mizrahi — to come up with stylish products that don’t harm the environment.

The results – which this writer calls “an amazing collection of food, home furnishings, fashion and other products” – are on display at Smithsonian’s National Design Museum in New York:

Ten designers were chosen to fan out across the globe to places where the conservation group is at work to protect natural resources under siege from pollution, development and overuse. Their assignment was to partner with a community or business in the ecologically sensitive extraction of raw materials and manufacturing of products that could be sold on world markets to provide income to support the local economy.

The result of their efforts – an amazing collection of food, home furnishings, fashion and other products – can be seen in “Design for a Living World,” which opened last month at the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum

10 designers are on mission to save planet | hattiesburgamerican.com | Hattiesburg American.