Flick It Real Good
From a Toronto Star article on the Flick Off Campaign
The campaign aims to get thousands of Canadians to calculate their own greenhouse gas emissions on its website (www.flickoff.org) and then pledge to reduce them through concrete steps like carpooling, shutting computers down instead of putting them to sleep, and swapping incandescent light bulbs for more energy-efficient compact fluorescents.
Participants can also order a “guerrilla activist kit” with a climate change primer, “flick off” wrist bands, and a pack of fliers - printed on environmentally-appropriate paper - promoting energy conservation to slip under the wipers of idling cars or on the counter of stores blasting air-conditioners this summer.
I have no qualms about being using compact fluorescent light-bulbs. They look cooler, last longer, and consequently better for the environment. I’m sold. What I do have a problem with is expensive marketing campaigns that tell me what I already know while looking down smugly at those who just don’t “get it” and then bitching about “the fucking government, man”. Well I do “get it” and I still think you’re an asshole.
With that, while I applaud someone like Al Gore for really bringing environmental issues to the fore, using 20 times the US national average of electricity per home for his own estate is kind of a bit umm…… “do as I say….”. It’s okay though. He offsets his own environmental impact by buying carbon credits - because rather than cleaning his own act, he pays someone else to clean up theirs.