No Impact Man

Move over, Al Gore: there's another environmental savior in town. No Impact Man has radically overhauled his life to show us all what needs to be done. He's unscrewed his incandescent light bulbs, given up his car, and started composting in his kitchen.

Most of all, though, No Impact Man -- he refers to himself in the third person, like all important people -- started lecturing. Save the planet! We're in trouble! Everybody needs to do something! While spouting tips we read in Reader's Digest in 1972. Buy recycled stuff! Buy fruit from farmers' markets! If you've got two air conditioners (like No Impact Man does) shut one off once in a while!

Intermixed in with the information we already know, there are smug little stories. He puts on a Black-Eyed Peas song about universal love -- it's No Impact Man's Theme Song, you know -- while the whole family is huddled around the Scrabble board, and happy little Isabella, the Girl Whose Parents Have Forsaken Electricity, starts to dance! Oh, what joy. And oh, what an odd story, since it's not coal that's powering his stereo. He's shut off the TV, though, so that's probably good enough for him.

No Impact Man smugly recounts going to restaurants and refusing paper napkins, helpfully providing a list of what paper products are recycled (like all us Heavy Impact Folks can't read packaging). Yet he also mentions, oddly, that it wasn't until three months into this "experiment" that he told his MAID not to use paper towels. She's been wiping down their apartment, twice a week, with sprays that the folks at Dow-Corning wouldn't touch without protective headgear while he's been lecturing us about screwing up the planet.

There are hundreds of niggling little details that'll make you go "Huh?" His family can't buy anything that's environmentally questionable . . . but if they bought it before this little experiment started, they can use it until it's gone. They can't use the microwave, so they head to a neighborhood boite and have dinner there. And -- my favorite little peccadillo, next to the maid -- electrically-powered appliances are out, but the laundry downstairs is cool.

You're probably already wondering about this guy's motivation. Answer: he's a writer, and his agent suggested environmentalism if he wanted a book deal. It worked, and now there's a movie in the pipeline too. I'm picturing Al Pacino in the title role, changing the lightbulbs in their million-dollar Manhattan apartment, while Meryl Streep as his Prada-clad, Four Seasons-loving wife screams at the maid, and lovely Isabells (Dakota Fanning) dances nearby.

No Impact Man