SmackDown! The pairing has all the fire and intensity of a Maryse versus Michelle McCool diva pairing on the World Wrestling Entertainment channel. (Hey, don't blame me for this obscure cultural reference. It's my satellite provider's fault!)

In this corner, standing up for the wolves and the bears against aerial hunting, standing up for Defenders of Wildlife, full of righteous fury at the plight of Alaskan wildlife, and the Alaska game management practices in general, Ms. Ashley Judd!

And in the opposite corner wearing red, white and blue, defending the rights of hunting sportsmen, native people, and gunners of all stripes, eager to put something ugly on Judd, here she is, the next best hope for her political movement, John McCain's former running mate, the current Governor of Alaska, Governor Sarah Palin!

Palin has been counseled about improving her green profile, but—except for bundling and putting curbside all those newspapers she reads—it looks like it didn't take. Judd has been warned to tone down her self righteous attitude if she wants to catch a break with the fans, but she still comes on intellectual and pulls the occasional Ghandi quote out of her hat to explain her position.

Both women claim that their positions are conservationist. Palin speaks for a game management program that supports a large herd of moose and caribou (and bounty hunting for wolves) as an attraction to big-game hunters, sportsmen up from the lower forty-eight to bag their trophy. Judd supports an ecosystem approach, letting predators and prey find an ecological balance and essentially limiting hunting.

You can follow the media tag team conflict between the two at ecorazzi, and on YouTube, among other news outlets. Here's the latest volley, fired Friday night by Judd on the Larry King show on CNN.

(Photo credit:Thomas Roche, flickr)

This will be my toughest challenge yet: convince Sarah Palin to go green in 250 words. Ummm....suuuure. Why don't I just reverse the rotation of the Earth while I'm at it? Lil Wayne and Paris Hilton were pieces of vegan cake compared to this.

This is Palin we're talking about, a woman who still denies that global climate change is human-influenced even though the temperature in the state she's the governor of has risen nearly 4 degrees over the last 50 years. Sarah Palin actually sued the federal government when the Department of the Interior listed polar bears as a threatened species, and now she's involved in a spat with actress Ashley Judd and the Defenders of Wildlife based on her practice of shooting wolves and bears from helicopters. Yeah, this is a bit more difficult than just asking her to install some CFL bulbs.

Now, to be fair, the Defenders of Wildlife are definitely using Palin's notoriety to bring attention to the practice, and she's already taken plenty of heat for it. So, I won't criticize her for shooting wolves, but will rather point out a few simple things she can do to get in better with the green community. From the baby steps department:

Continue reading Sarah Palin: prepare for greenification ›

(Photo credit:geerlingguy, flickr; second photo by Jonathan Harris)