“Save the World” on Blog Action Day

(To skip the speech and go right to the track, click here)

When I first heard about Blog Action Day, I thought it was specifically meant to raise critical mass awareness for climate change and sustainability–a campaign to flood the internet with enough facts and insights and motivating factors to convince the web’s million users to start taking action and fighting against the world of high-profits and high pollution. However, another blogger pointed out quite deftly that Blog Action Day seems to be driven more by an ambition to be “the largest-ever social change event on the web” than a campaign to enlighten and inspire.

He has a point, and I’m guessing all of the blogging on this issue in one day may have the adverse effect of training interneters to ignore climate news (although I hope not).

Even after registering this blog for the event, my confirmation email was mostly about spreading the word about the event. There was a brief mention of the “cause”:

Thanks for joining Blog Action Day! Now that you’ve registered it’s a pretty simple process. All you need to do is put up a post relating to the topic of climate change on October 15th and link to www.blogactionday.org somewhere in your post.

Not very inspiring stuff. Feels more like I just registered for a contest I have little chance of winning. What a shame.

Nevertheless, climate change and the environment is my thing. I can’t remember when I started caring so much about sustainability. I can’t remember why I starting giving money to the Sierra Club and NCRD and signing every email petition I get from these organizations. I can’t remember when I started to feel guilty every time I bought water in a plastic bottle or every time I flushed after only a #1. I don’t know why I started taking other people’s recycling for them rather than have them throw things away. I don’t even like nature!

Well, that’s not exactly true. I appreciate nature very much. But I don’t like swimming. I don’t like beaches. I don’t like insects or things that come out of the ground. I appreciate trees. I like the occasional walk thru a forest or alongside a wetland. After watching the recent Ken Burns series on our national parks, I’d very much like to visit Yellowstone someday.

But I’m an urbanist. I’m a city guy. I’d rather be in a rock club listening to a band.

But I’d like that rock club to ensure that they’re recycling their beer cans and providing recycling bins for plastic cups. I’d like the club to save a cache of electricity from solar panels during the day to power bass, guitar, and PA amps later at night.  I’d like them to throw their food scraps into a vermicompost bin, and to properly dispose of kitchen grease instead of destroying the sewers we all rely on for the sanitation that keeps us from getting cholera.  I’d like the club to eliminate plastic bottled water and just serve people from the tap and not charge $1.00 for a swig of aqua and a plastic bottle (Ahem! I’m looking at you on this one, Magic Stick).

The point is this: climate change is a real and present danger and there’s a lot we can do to stop it, or at least reduce it.

And the thing about it is that we don’t all need to become crunchy granolas to do it (no offense to you treehuggers out there). We can have just as many video games, clothes, food, and other good stuff as we’ve always had. We just need to think more about different ways of making that stuff. Is energy coming out of your walls any better when it’s generated from burning coal? No, it’s just as good as the energy from wind, hydroelectric, solar, etc.

And to be honest, the folks at Blog Action Day aren’t entirely misguided. When it comes down to it, changing our individual lives and making wiser choices about the things we buy won’t help unless the faceless people who own most of the world are called to account and made to change their practices. And the only way to do that is to take action on a mass scale.

Enough of me being preachy. How about a little sermon from Mr. George Harrison?

“Save the World” is the final track from 1980 barely adequate Somewhere in England, which has 2-3 decent tracks, tops. Not that Harrison really cared or anything, since he’s George Harrison and he didn’t need to prove anything to any of us. But the two things he did care about produced the two best tracks.

The first: John Lennon. “All Those Years Ago” is a tribute to his recently murdered friend and collaborator and it nearly brings a tear to my eye every time I hear it.

The second thing he cared about is the world, and all of us who live in it. Did he far too often try to pull off the Jesus haircut? Yeah, what Beatle beside Ringo didn’t have a savior complex occasionally. Do the lyrics seem a bit cliche? Yeah. But I like the song because it’s kind of antagonistic. It is sung sweetly, particularly in the Demo version included in the completely unnecessary 2004 remaster of Somewhere in England, yet it puts blame where blame is due:  the politicians and business people who care more about profit than people.  In fact, the one thing the song does really well is bridging the caring part of him with the pissed off part of him. Is it a silly, middling song at best? Yeah, it is. Does it seem forced and uncertain of itself as a song? I think so. But deep down, the song is an act of controlled expression borne from anger and empathy.

And that is the basic feeling that drives every activist out there today.

For a more meaningful “action day,” please go to 350.org and find an October 24 climate event to attend near you.

Also, if you ever play that quiz game on a touch screen at some local bar, if it’s a music question, the answer is always “George Harrison.”