After 23 million albums and 15 years of making music, Radiohead is going green. The British rock band recently released a statement saying that plans for their 2008 tour include efforts to “reduce their carbon footprint.” After an evaluation from an eco-consulting group, Radiohead decided to sea freight their gear (saving 47 tons of CO2) and encourage fans to carpool to concerts (reducing around 22% of a concert’s overall CO2 output).

Common reaction to Radiohead’s eco-ethics? The same reaction most green efforts are getting: “Cool.” Recently, however, a few have been brave enough to call this sexy movement something else: “ironic.”

Green is hip, from cradle to grave. Green cemeteries reduce the use of harmful chemicals and non-decomposing caskets are a popular green alternative. Bamboo bicycles use all-natural resources. Green graffiti uses grass to make its mark instead of toxic spray paint. Peanut butter and jelly is hyped as an eco-friendly lunch. The PB and J Campaign says eating one instead of tuna or a burger reduces carbon emission by 2.5 pounds.

It’s no surprise that “ecoanxiety” is growing. Last week the New York Times delved into the lives of 9000-plus EcoMoms with their cold-water laundry, waste-free school lunches, locally-grown dinners, energy-efficient power strips, and even recycled bath water. The women occasionally judge each other for having freshly cut flowers and wall-to-wall carpeting, but one SUV driver said, “It doesn’t fill me with guilt. I think about all the things I’ve done so far.”

Laura McKenna, a political science professor from New Jersey, says the irony of the hip green movement is that the truly green are the “totally unhip.” She says the real environment-lovers are those who wear old clothes, don’t renovate bathrooms, and shop at garage sales. Her advice to the EcoMoms and environmentally anxious graffiti artists: “Stop recycling your San Pellegrino bottles and drink tap water.”

I have my own (slightly) “green” story, which I will tell you later today. But, happily, it doesn’t involve anyone’s funeral. However, when Maine resident Klara Tammany’s mother passed away, her family and friends washed and dressed her body and put it in a homemade wooden casket, which was laid across two sawhorses in the dining room of her condo in Brunswick. Then, for two days, visitors brought cut flowers, wrote messages on the casket’s lid and said goodbye.

The Portland Press Herald reports that such funerals are part of an emerging trend of “green” final rites in which Americans avoid preservative chemicals and steel and concrete tombs that keep a body from decomposing naturally.  Also available: Green cemetaries. Which raises a question: Why do we preserve the bodies of our dead? Now that I’m thinking about it, it seems a little creepy.