Climate Culture

Media Shower: The MTV generation

A lot of media companies have been jumping on the stop-global-warming bandwagon lately, but few are as influential with the kids as MTV:

Following President Bush's State of the Union declaration earlier this year that "America is addicted to oil," MTV announced today the network's latest pro-social initiative, BREAK THE ADDICTION, a year-long campaign to engage, educate and empower young people to take simple, daily actions that can have a measurable impact in the fight against global warming. The campaign will launch with a channel takeover on Earth Day, Saturday, April 22, including an on-air, online and wireless messaging campaign about how to help stop global warming, break-ins to regularly scheduled programming that offer environmental lessons, multiple public service announcements (PSAs), and an MTV News package introducing BREAK THE ADDICTION, featuring a leading young environmental activist.

BREAK THE ADDICTION is MTV's year-long recovery program aimed at mobilizing a new generation of environmental activists. On-air, online and on wireless, the initiative will connect the audience to simple, daily tips, as well as in-depth resources, to help them recognize and change habits that harm the environment. Viewers will be directed online to think.mtv.com to quantify and track their efforts by the amount of carbon dioxide emissions and dollars saved due to changes they commit to making throughout the year. Supplemental MTV programming - both long-form and news packages - will air throughout the year and the tips will be revealed in daily PSAs on air on MTV, MTV2, and mtvU as well as online and delivered to cell phones. Additional PSAs will appear on mtv.com, mtv2.com, mtvU.com, MTV Overdrive and mtvU Über. Through partnerships with StopGlobalWarming.org, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Grist.org, World Resources Institute, Student PIRGs, Campus Climate Challenge, and Clean Air-Cool Planet, MTV will go beyond the broadcasts to create online and wireless resources, as well as opportunities for grassroots organizing and outreach.

And as part of our partnership with MTV, we will be providing MTV with select Grist content over the next 12 months. Check it out.

Props to our marketing manager, Brendon Smyth, for making this happen.

Earth Day Network TV

Today, the Earth Day Network launched Earth Day Network TV (currently streaming: a live panel discussion on matters earthly, accompanied by a live chat).

You'll also find a variety of videos submitted from different groups, on subjects ranging from renewable energy to climate change to trailers for environmental-media projects.

Here is some info included in an email that I received back in March:

[The network] will include hours of interviews, documentaries, film clips and compelling visual and interactive information on climate change from leading independent films such as "Nobelity" and "The Great Warming", cable television networks such as Lime, public and broadcast television networks and leading television production groups. The Earth Day TV Network will be available worldwide to anyone with high speed internet, and will look much like a regular television broadcast. EDN is partnering with Google Video as part of this IPTV launch.

For more info on today's live chat, go here.

From Hip-Hop to Hybrid

The Ghostface of Earth Day present Want to celebrate Earth Day, but don’t wanna roll wit dem punk-ass bitchez? Stop by NYC’s Green Apple Music and Arts Festival and catch a set by Ghostface Killah, who shared these words of wisdom about the importance of conscientious environmental stewardship: “I don’t know nothing about that.” Word, […]

Our Earth Day nod to the year’s goodies, oddities, and inanities

With Earth Day fast approaching, we’re pleased to bring you the First Ever List of Grist Superlatives. It’s our modest take on the year past, and a few predictions for things to come. Miffed about what we missed? You’re welcome to make additions in Gristmill. Soaking up the Sundance. Photo: Eric Neitzel/ WireImage.com. Most improbable […]

A dispatch from the launch party for Vanity Fair’s green issue

Wednesday, 19 Apr 2006 New York, N.Y. Why was last night different from all other nights on which people have gathered to party for an environmental crusade? Because it was the launch party for the first green issue of Vanity Fair — a glossy, celebrity-drenched cry to mainstream America that global warming is “a threat […]

GreenScanner

Have you ever been shopping and wanted to know how environmentally friendly a particular item actually is? Me too, and I have been meaning to propose that someone create the very database that GreenScanner has now developed.

Who Killed the Electric Car? launch date set

In addition to An Inconvenient Truth, we've been also tracking the film Who Killed the Electric Car? This morning Grist received an email concerning the official launch date, which is scheduled for June 28th of this year.

The movie was screened at Sundance and will also be appearing at the following festivals:

San Francisco Film Festival (April 21-22)
USA Film Festival, Dallas (April 29)
Tribeca Film Festival, New York City (May 2, 4-6)
Mountain Film Festival, Telluride, Co (tentative: May 28)
Seattle Film Festival (tentative: June 9)
Atlanta Film Festival (tentative: June 11)

A broadband TV channel for environmental films

Environmental media is blooming on the internets these days. The folks over at Treehugger are keeping on schedule by pumping out a new video each week. The latest piece is on organic and biodynamic wines.

Along the same lines, I discovered that Daryl Hannah has launched a weekly video blog called dh love life, where she'll cover issues like biodiesel to green building.

And late this week I got word of green.tv (a domain I wish I grabbed myself):

From Bikes to Butte

Blessed are the two-wheelers What would Jesus drive? Please. Jesus would bike, bro! To vouchsafe this essential spiritual truth, New York City cyclists are gathering in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Earth Day to have their rides blessed and sprinkled with holy water, while they ring their bells and angels get their […]

Michael Pollan digs into the mysteries of the U.S. diet in The Omnivore’s Dilemma

In The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, Michael Pollan diagnoses the national attitude toward food: angst. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan, Penguin Press, 320 pgs, 2006. Channeling the modern middle-class shopper wandering vast supermarket aisles, Pollan asks: “The organic apple or the conventional? And if […]