Celebrities tend to cop a fair bit of pounding when they jump on the green bandwagon, but some celebs do make quite a positive impact.

The first one that springs to mind in recent times is Al Gore. Regardless of your views of him, I don't think anyone can argue that he didn't play a major role of putting global warming on the radar of many.

On a smaller scale, but also with a great deal of clout is Jamie Oliver a.k.a. the Naked Chef. I'm not sure if he's well known in the USA, but in the UK and Australia, he's quite popular. Jamie is a chef who has made a huge name for himself with his unique style in showing people how to cook delicious meals easily.

Jamie's not vegetarian or vegan, in fact he's very fond of meat, but when he became aware of the plight of industrially reared meat chickens - he was shocked at the treatment these birds endure. I used to work in an area where meat birds were raised for a major poultry company and I remember vividly one of my colleagues describing to me his first job of the day - going into the sheds where up to 25,000 were crammed and picking up the dead chickens and parts of live chickens that had literally fallen off them.

After seeing the carnage first hand, Jamie spearheaded the "Jamie's Fowl Dinners" campaign in the hope of educating British consumers to opt for more expensive free range chickens. It would have been a tough task as free range chicken is quite expensive.

The hard hitting show had quite an effect though. Sales of factory farmed chickens have fallen seven percent while sales of free range chickens have increased a whopping 35 percent.

While many celebrities may be accused of merely performing lip service in relation to environmental and animal welfare issues, when genuine passion is shown by the celeb, it can have amazing results.

Related

Cutting meat consumption
Free range chicken and eggs