> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Kermit the Frog was right - URL: https://www.smdp.com/kermit-the-frog-was-right/ - Published: 2007-11-09T16:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-25T01:14:41.000Z - Author: Guest Author - Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import I am wearing Lindsay Lohan’s lipstick. No, I am not in rehab with her. (Is that girl still in rehab? I can’t keep track.) I am wearing a pink Cargo “botanical lipstick” designed by Lindsay, which the box says, may or may not contain a very un-botanical-looking ingredient called CI42090. The letter-number-combo stands for just one of many “lakes” used by Cargo. I will now channel my inner-Hooters waitress: “Uh, what’s wrong with a lake? A lake is, like, environmental. Hello, it’s, like, water with fish in it. This lipstick is totally stopping global warming.” Different lake. A CI is a pigment made by combining an organic dye with an inorganic substance. Hooters waitress: “Uh, inorganic is, like, bad, right?” Wrong. Inorganic doesn’t mean unnatural. It does mean that it doesn’t contain carbon, which means that it’s non-living. (Think about the game 20 Questions. The first question you ask is “Is it an animal, vegetable, or a mineral?”) A “lake” is a pigment that is made by combining an organic dye with a mineral. People have been doing this for millennia. The ancient Egyptians used plant leaves to make Indigo Lake, and the Aztecs used a bug called the cochineal to make Crimson Lake. Now, scientists can synthesize organic compounds. Hooters waitress: “Good. Lipstick made out of bugs is sick.” Being fashionably green is confusing. I didn’t need new lipstick (and, yes, a girl “needs” lipstick), but this one piqued my curiosity. The case is made out of corn and the box that the lipstick comes in promises, if it’s moistened and planted, to sprout wildflow-ers. It’s practically a magic lipstick box. Why isn’t every cardboard box embedded with wildflower seeds? When I was in third grade, the urban myth was that every time you tore a Styrofoam cup, it released toxic gaseous chemical elements into the air, and that those elements floated up to the ozone layer and used their little elemental fingers to rip the hole in the ozone open even wider. Sometimes, I think we’re all a little bit third grade. All stars die. In six billion years, scientists theorize the sun will get redder and bigger and hotter until it melts the polar ice caps and causes the oceans to boil. It will keep growing, swallowing up the earth and other nearby planets, before it starts to shrink into a dim white dwarf. So really, there’s no actual way to stop global warming. I’m not advocating people to throw up their hands and accept being char-broiled, or actively make the largest footprints they can. Six billion years is a really long time, and besides, it’s just a theory. That’s the neat thing about science. It changes. Textbooks get discarded (and hopefully recycled into boxes embedded with wildflowers). Since the end of World War II, we’ve been inventing materials that we hoped would withstand a nuclear explosion. We wanted stuff that would last forever. But, stuff that lasts forever is not only bad for the environment, it’s bad for a market economy. Speaking of markets... In the grocery store checkout, occasionally, I get in the longest line, just so I can flip through the tabloids and check in on Lindsay, without actually having to buy the magazines. (I’m, again, saving the earth here by not producing waste.) Never, never do I pick up the latest Old Farmer’s Almanac (oxymoron, yes). Why? Does it have up-to-the-minute news on celeb scandals? No. But, evidently it does have fashion tips, and I don’t mean which overalls are au courant. It says that people want “fashions impacted by world news... biodegrad-able clothing... socks and scarves made from corn-based yarn and clothing made of plant sugars, bamboo, and crab shells.” What people? Who, when polled, says they want clothing made from crab shells? Levi’s is also in on the eco-action, with their line of green jeans. They’re made with organic cotton... and 2 percent not organic Spandex. I suppose the most eco-friendly thing we could do would be to get naked. But what would we do with all of our plastic coat hangers? For your best bet at going fashionably green: ■DO SHOP SMALL boutiques with staffs that know their stock. MARIEL HOWSEPIAN digs black coffee, fairy tales and a man in coveralls. She lives in Santa Monica and ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/55/9f/559f9abc-8372-4a2e-8c2d-27386da4e363/content/images/2026/10/110907-13_01.jpg) SO TRUE: Kermit the Frog said, ‘It isn’t easy being green.’ Preach on Kermit, preach on. (Photo: Photo courtesy Jim Henson) *Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 9, 2007.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/110907.pdf?ref=smdp.com)