Good Stuff

Lights out Denmark

I've been following the Danish campaign 'Sluk Lyset' (turn out the lights) with interest. The campaign has been running here in the weeks up to the event itself although I'm not sure how visible it has been to 'ordinary people'. (I don't count myself as ordinary as I have an unhealthy interest in advertising communication, so I'm probably looking harder that most)

Having been in and looked around the official site I see that 3,730 people registered there, but their Facebook group was far more impressive with 13,863 members! This says something about the efficiency of the Facebook format.

The campaign was headed by a burning panda which popped up in various places around town. They made some quite nice little projections and filmed them. They also stenciled some funky burning panda graphics around town for good measure.

I took a little drive through central Copenhagen on Saturday to check see how dark it was and whether Danes were entering into the spirit of it. (I know it's not really in the spirit of the event but I was on my way to pick up my son from a friends)

It wasn't that dark, I have to say. It seemed to me that largely, the event itself wasn't a huge success. People just didn't switch off.

So what are we left with? If people can't be bothered to join in for an hour, were does that leave us? Did this event do enough to raise awareness? Will it prompt the kind of changes we need to make to avoid catastrophic climate change? Well, it's a start. And it's good that someone is doing something but personally, I'm doubtful. Don't get me wrong, I really really really think it's great that something happened. I just want people to wake up and get a bit more angry about it.

Big changes. Now. That's what needs to happen. Maybe a bit of Alarmism would be a good thing?

Alarmism

A group called The Alarmists want you to help draw attention to recent scientific evidence that climate change is much worse than we first thought.

More interesting graffiti

Via PSFK

SUV disarmament

Benetton talk reports this story about a group of Swedish activists who've decided to annoy SUV drivers into submission by letting their tyres down.

“If selective SUV-disarmament is done repeatedly and on a massive scale, it will develop from a slight annoyance in the eyes of the owners into a real obstacle for driving the things, thus putting an end to perhaps the most obnoxious aspect of bourgeois carbon addiction.”

It's interesting how people see the SUV as a symbol of everything that's wrong in the world. Personally, I can sympathise to a point. Maybe it's because driving such a large vehicle is such an in-your-face statement. I wonder if it catches on? Secretly, I kind of hope it does.