My friend Sean just told me about Deutsche Bank’s huge carbon counter in Times Square. Here’s a picture of it. It supposedly counts the number of tonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere.
I have to be careful to moderate my language here, so I’ll just say: What idiot thought of this?
It’s exactly the “message” I’d use if I wanted to psychologically disempower people doing anything about global warming: a huge, seemingly unstoppable, blood-freezing, onrush of authoritative numbers, mathematically cataloging the road to doom. A slap in the face for anyone naive enough to believe change is possible.
This is an example the “in-your-face” theory of change that assumes that, if people aren’t (in this case) reducing their carbon emissions or lobbying governments, then they haven’t had the problem smashed sufficiently hard in their faces. If that doesn’t work, what next? Children with dead polar bears tattooed on the foreheads?
Al Gore talks about our “hope budget” and the need to keep it in the black. Such dunderheaded corporate social advertising grinds hope into the dust.
Here’s an alternative: a giant widget in Times Square that shows the number of dollars invested in sustainable energy, or the size of the carbon trading market. Or how about the amount of money that Deustche Bank has invested in same. THAT would be statement of commitment that others would talk about and emulate.
While I am thrilled and keen that there are any sort of indicators at all beginning to appear, I do agree that a there could be much better ones that this. However, I’m not sure that positive indicators are what are needed at the moment: would govts have realised that reducing ozone-destroying chemicals was important if the indicator used was the reduction of ozone chemicals in use? No, it was the community threat from being told on the weather each night what the UV index was at any one time that had more impact. Maybe we just need "years to go to get emissions going down so as to avoid the collapse of civilization"? Acording to IPCC Chair Ravi Pachauri it’s five. Yes, FIVE.