Wednesday, March 9, 2011

No Pressure

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfnddMpzPsM – 10:10 Video on Reducing Carbon Emissions

10:10 is a campaign that was developed by an English film director named Franny Armstrong in October of 2009 which was created to reduce carbon emissions and help to decrease global warming. The idea behind it is to get each individual to decrease their carbon emissions by 10% in the year 2010, hence the name 10:10. This video was created as an advertisement for the campaign but was later removed from all the mediums it was being played on because people thought it was too graphic to blow people up based on the fact that they were not willing to participate in the campaign. The video is somewhat flawed in my opinion. You can’t be forced into making a difference in the environment, you have to want to. The smarter way to go about it would have been to inform people of the actual issues instead of forcing them to be a part of the solution.

The method for cutting down the carbon emissions that the campaign recommended includes fewer plane rides, lower heating, replacing old fridges and freezers, turning off appliances, driving less, eating local and in season veggies (as opposed to meat and dairy), cooking only what is needed and reducing water usage. In my opinion these things are not hard to do and if the entire world went along with this I think we would see results.

They recruited many English celebrities to participate and also help to advertise the campaign that include Stella McCartney (Paul McCartney’s daughter), Ian McEwan and Colin Firth. I’m sure that Hollywood could have provided much more support in the form of celebs if the campaign is brought to North America.

I tried to look up the results of the campaign, to see if the carbon emissions in Britain were reduced at all, to see if the campaign worked. I am not sure how hard it was pushed in Britain but I know I did not hear about it until the end of last year and this is how I found out. I havn’t really asked around to see if anybody else has heard about this but it seems to me they should have tried this throughout the entire world.

Blowing people up who refuse to participate in something like this isn’t the answer, and I doubt that it was the actual point of this short video. I think the point of the video was to show people that you don’t have to put a lot into it in order to make a change. You also don’t have to do it all at once. If you make small steps and small changes in your life, and maybe tell 4 or 5 people about the small changes you have made and encourage them to make changes that maybe we can slowly take a dent out of the damage that we have done to the earth.

- Ryan Pinkerton

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