Ed Begley Jr VS Bill Nye: Eco Grudge Match!

What happens when you suddenly find your status as Premiere Environmental Activist Semi-Famous Guy on the Block challenged when the new guy moves in next door? If it were a movie, they might try to top each other with increasingly grotesque displays until someone gets hurt and everyone involved learns a valuable life lesson, but for Ed Begley Jr. and Bill Nye (yes, the science guy) it’s a good-natured competition where everybody learns and everybody wins.

The good-natured competition between actor Ed Begley Jr. and Bill Nye, the host of the educational series “Bill Nye, the Science Guy” began when Nye moved into the neighborhood two years ago. Since then the two moderately famous and slightly geeky environmentalists have matched wits over whose home can leave a smaller carbon footprint.

Neighbor Frema Rood, 83, who lives between the two houses, said the competition started the day after Bill moved into the neighborhood.

“Bill announced it: ‘I’m going to best Ed Begley at his own game. I’m going to get him,’” she recalled. “He ordered panels for the garage, then rain barrels, then he had his windows done and he put in a vegetable garden.”

Nice move with the vegetable garden, I’d have to say. It truly is a battle for the ages — will old-school and time-tested pragmatic conservation (i.e. rain barrels to offset Begley’s wife’s long showers) be defeated by flashy high-tech gadgetry (a solar panel system that shows when more power is being made than used), or will it roar in alternative-energy victory? Only time will tell, and both sides keep fortifying every day. Despite Nye’s bold declaration of domination, both parties assert that the rivalry is all in fun and bring great publicity to the eco-friendly house cause — Begley even now has a line of environmentally-safe cleaning products on the market. But whether the rivalry is truly all fun or a bit more venomous and cunning, it still leaves one burning question unanswered.

Where is Beakman in all of this?

Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 10:22 am and is filed under The Daily. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.