Did you watch the Discovery Channel’s report on global warming last night, hosted by Tom Brokaw? Did you? Good. If you didn’t, shame on you (unless, of course, you don’t have cable, in which case, this link is for you). Sure, one can always argue that it uses too much energy to watch TV, but that’s just downright snarky.
Anyway, besides all of the obvious ways to reduce your carbon footprint so that me and my unborn children won’t starve and burn to death in 2050 (Drive less. Drive a more fuel-efficient car. Throw eggs at Hummers. Buy locally produced food. Turn off lights and electronics when not in use. Use low-energy light bulbs. Get those greedy, money-grubbing morons out of the White House.), I couldn’t help but brainstorm all kinds of ways that we could live the way we live, only smarter. Here’s a solution to the obesity problem and the energy problem: What if the only way you could power your TV was if you pedaled a bicycle for an hour a day? Sure, it’s not realistic, but it’s an idea.
What we really need is to be more open-minded toward new ideas, and not fear change. Take it from Norbert Wiener, who wrote in The Human Use of Human Beings (in 1950, folks), “We have modified our environment so radically that we must now modify ourselves in order to exist in this new environment. We can no longer live in the old one.”
This article appears in Jul 13-19, 2006.
Speaking of Hummers, I have a cartoon on my refrigerator that I tore out of the Weekly in 2005. It’s The City cartoon and shows a drawing of a Hummer. Caption: True Story, second in a series: Things people write on the dirty windows of Hummers – “I have a small penis.”
I have been waiting to write those very same words on the next dirty windowed Hummer that I find and I suggest you do the same.
You go, Annie.
I saw a design for a bumper sticker some time back espcially made for slapping on Hummers: I’m changing the planet. Ask me how!
Giant pickups should get the same rude treatment.