Living the American Green

Ok, so we missed it.  Being out of the city for 8 days, I stopped checking every single environmental blog ever, and somehow missed this Earth Hour thing.  

For those of you also apparently living under a rock: Saturday the 28th we were all supposed to turn our lights out, starting at 8:30 pm and lasting for one hour.  By doing this, we were voting on who would win in a match up between Earth and global warming.  I guess that means I voted for global warming?  Clearly, mistakes were made.

According to PR, they were expecting 1 billion people to participate, but since no one has gone back and counted em we will have to be happy with some really beautiful pictures from major monuments around the globe going dark.  If you have a moment, this slide show is worth the time.  Especially nice: Vegas Strip unplugged:  unlike anything you’ve seen in the desert for quite some time.  It’s down at the bottom at #17.

So, big sweeping symbolic gestures being what they are (mostly pointless, in my mind), I am glad to see that some big companies are getting on board with this stuff.  Coca-cola turning off their sign for an hour means something to me: not that corporations are being more responsible, but that they are susceptible to being pressured by large numbers of people into doing something, however symbolic.

But did we really have to call it “Vote Earth”?  Who came up with that?  Right, because we are so good about voting that we really want to tie turning out the lights to that boat.    The two things Americans do so poorly: get out and vote, plus conserve electricity.  Now, we can ignore both civic and social responsibilities at the same time!

Seriously though: why dosn’t congress get in on the symbolism race?  It would be a pretty cool and symbolic gesture of federal buildings started turning out their big sweeping nightlights until someone can figure out how to run them all on alternative energy.  How about Earth Until-we-solve-this-shit?

Who wrote this one?  TheAmericanGreen - The founding member of the American Green institute, and a New York based producer and writer hoping to make the jump from "freelancer" to "documentary producer". Read more from this author