Here's a simple, beautifully executed campaign to encourage people to conserve water. It's for Denver Water, and is a great example of effectively getting a message across in a non-intrusive manner.
Plus, it makes me want to buy fish just to watch them "swim" on the conveyer belt...
Click here to see a video of the "river belt" in action.
"Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of
our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free
sources within 10 years."
Big bold dreams for the planet from Al Gore... Inconvenient? Perhaps. But so are high gas prices.
An excerpt from the speech:
Like a lot of people, it seems to me that all these problems are
bigger than any of the solutions that have thus far been proposed for
them, and that's been worrying me...
Yet when we look at all three of these seemingly intractable challenges at the same time, we can see the common thread running
through them, deeply ironic in its simplicity: our dangerous over-reliance on carbon-based fuels is at the core of
all three of these challenges—the economic, environmental and national security crises.
We're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of
that's got to change...
But if we grab hold of that common thread and pull it hard,
all of these complex problems begin to unravel and we will find that
we're holding the answer to all of them right in our hand.
The answer is to end our reliance on carbon-based fuels.
I'm kind of in love with the state of Massachusetts!
More ripple effects from the Atrium School's outreach campaign on behalf of Margins. Wicked Local Malden reports that Malden Mayor Richard C. Howard has adopted Efficient Margins for the city, after receiving a letter from Courteney Dorcena, a 10-year old former Malden resident. Her persuasive letter included the following excerpt:
“Some people say that it’s a waste of time and money to change the
margins everyday, but remember that it’s for your own health and the
health of the earth,” wrote Dorcena. “Changing the margins is easy and
works to save paper, which saves trees, which reduces air pollution and
slows down global warming.”
According to the article, Dorcena had almost given up hope on getting a response from the Mayor - everytime she called his office to follow up, he was out (imagine that...an unavailable politician!). But in May, she finally received a letter announcing adoption of Margins. “These are tight economic times for everybody, so the mayor is looking
at any and all means to save money,” said Deborah Burke, spokesperson
for Howard. “This was a no-brainer to do and it was easy to do, too. It
saves what we were wasting in paper. It’s probably something we should
have done sooner.”
The New York Times Dot Earth blog takes a look at the latest pledge from the Group of 8 meeting in Rusutsu, Japan. This article includes the agreement, along with notes from Andrew C. Revkin.