At this point, I think George Clooney is mostly a good guy. Like, he works hard, he’s never a douche in a professional setting, he employs his friends and he always tries to cast actors he admires in his films. He’s also a good guy in a charitable way, putting his money where his mouth is in various amazing ways (I’ll get to that in a moment). But Clooney is forever tainted by the way he conducts his romantic life. I don’t know if I’d call Clooney a “douchebag” romantically because I really believe he tries to be upfront with all of his girlfriends: look, baby, I’m never going to marry you and we’re never going to have kids, but if you keep it tight, I’ll buy dresses, jewelry and a condo and get you a decent hairstylist and I’ll pull some strings for you professionally. And that’s about it.

Where was I going with this? Oh – The Daily Star had a funny story about why George and Stacy Keibler broke up. According to a source, “George does not get dumped. She’d get up at the crack of dawn every day and embark on an exhaustive two-hour, pro sports-style work­out. It got to the point where George didn’t want to spend the night with her because she would wake him up at 5.30 in the morning to get ready for the gym.” Perfection! I actually believe this. Or I want to believe it.

Anyway, about Clooney being a good guy in other ways besides romance… The Guardian had a lengthy article about Clooney’s long-time Nespresso endorsement, including how Clooney visited some of the coffee farmers in Costa Rica and how Clooney spends his Nespresso money. You can read the full piece here, and here are some highlights:

George Clooney is the face of Nespresso, the Nestle capsule coffee company, and makes no bones about it. “I’m very comfortable with commercials. I’ve done them most of my life,” he said on Tuesday in Paris, as he provided star power to the newly unveiled Nespresso Sustainability Advisory Board (NSAB). “But I would find myself at a press conference, or perhaps at a film festival and suddenly there’d be some people challenging me about Nespresso’s sustainability. I thought if I was going to be involved on a long-term basis with this company, and I like them very much, I should find out what they’re doing and what they should and could be held responsible for.” Three years ago Clooney headed out with Nespresso to Costa Rica to see the company’s coffee farmers for himself.

Clooney said: “I’m the grandson of tobacco farmers and I grew up on a farm and I really felt that when I went to Costa Rica. I spent time with one amazing family who have changed everything, made it more efficient made it better. They were so proud! Pig crap powers their entire home!”

The family, it turns out, are in the room (they stand up bashfully for a round of applause). They are one family of 56,000 coffee farmers who are part of Nespresso’s environmental and quality assurance system that means they can attract around 30-40% above market price. On Tuesday, Nespresso announced it’d be extending this scheme into Africa, and said it expects to double the amount of coffee sourced from Ethiopia and Kenya to 10,000 tons by 2020.

But the big story here is Sudan. Were Clooney not in attendance I’d probably have been reporting on the fact that Nespresso is planning on leveraging South Sudan as a high quality coffee producer (as it was 40 years ago). Clooney said: “Yesterday we got to drink coffee of South Sudan, and this is the only export to have come out of South Sudan besides oil since the war. The problem with oil being of course that a company takes the oil from beneath the feet of the people living there via a pipeline, back of a truck and a dock in Khartoum. Oftentimes the government gets a small proportion and it doesn’t seem to trickle down.”

But if Clooney wasn’t there, then arguably there wouldn’t be a drive to source coffee from Sudan. The country is an all-consuming passion for the actor, who was arrested at the Sudanese embassy in Washington last year:

“Most of the money I make on the [Nespresso] commercials I spend keeping a satellite over the border of North and South Sudan to keep an eye on Omar al-Bashir [the Sudanese dictator charged with war crimes at The Hague]. Then he puts out a statement saying that I’m spying on him and how would I like it if a camera was following me everywhere I went and I go ‘well welcome to my life Mr War Criminal’. I want the war criminal to have the same amount of attention that I get. I think that’s fair.”

On his own green credentials, Clooney is coy. He likes electric cars, he thinks the issues are important, “but I’ve been in a private jet [I imagine more than once] and once you do that you pretty much undo any good” but he certainly gets it.

[From The Guardian]

I like the symmetry of George’s efforts, and I find myself pleasantly surprised that he’s still actively engaged in supporting the Sudanese people. George became engaged in Sudanese issues in 2005-06, during some of the worst part of the so-called Sudanese civil war (it was actually a one-sided bloodbath ordered by Omar al-Bashir). I’m so pleased that some-odd eight years later, George is still engaged in these issues and he’s trying to bring a non-fuel industry to South Sudan. It’s very admirable, and he’s doing it in a really smart way – through his endorsement with Nespresso, working with such a big company. It’s great.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.