Time Special Plugs Eco Tourist Spa with Air Conditioning

April 18th, 2006 2:00 PM

     If you want free advertising for your top-dollar vacation resort, find a way to go green and book a room for a reporter from Time magazine.

     On the heels of Vanity Fairs Green Issue, the newsweekly just released a special Summer 2006 Style & Design edition that promotes Green Living as the new luxury.

     The success of eco-entrepreneurs, wrote editor-at-large Kate Betts, is proof that green living is becoming an increasingly natural instinct. Bettss special edition profiled organic grocery chain Whole Foods and a Whos Who guide of 14 forward-thinking individuals who are reinventing the rules of design with environmentally friendly flair.

     In that vein, Times Lisa Clausen profiled the Daintree Eco Lodge & Spa in Queensland, Australia, as evidence of how so-called ecotourism doesnt have to be a weekend of roughing it in the wild.

     Most industry watchers say the categorys basic tenet is minimal environmental impact combined with some contribution to education and conservation, Clausen wrote before glowingly describing the Daintree resort as part eco-experience, part spa indulgence.

     Surely Clausen doesnt consider Daintree a resort with minimal environmental impact, can she? After all, she admitted half of the resorts guests are from overseas. Has she forgotten about all the greenhouse gases those airliners belch into the atmosphere flying in and out of the Land Down Under? And what of the electricity-hogging air conditioners or the amount of heat needed to power the Jacuzzis?

     She cant mean to say that after her own magazine warned us all to Be Worried. Be Very Worried about climate change.

     The Business & Media Institute recently documented Times extensive one-sided presentation on global warming.