Just outside Penn station in NYC, this bright sign and ticker is counting up cumulative greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It has been a few years since I’ve been to NYC, and like a rube from the sticks, I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and the bustling rush hour crowds to snap this cell phone picture.
I’d like to believe that this and other media campaigns are raising awareness about climate change, but, wow, what a mixed message.
Please share widely!
I was just in New York, staying near Times Square. It takes something big to get attention there.
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p>Across from each other — an entire store dedicated to Hershey, and an entire store dedicated to M&Ms. Not M&M/Mars products, like Milky Ways and the like — M&Ms.
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p>Mixed message? Fine. Got to mix it up sometimes.
This caught my eye:
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p>So in a world of commercial messages, you can’t beat ’em, just join ’em? As large, bright and loud as you can afford?
They just give the impression that whatever they are tracking, whether it’s the national debt, the population, greenhouse gasses, is unstoppable and inevitable, like time itself, and that it doesn’t make a difference.
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p>This one at least has the effect of causing people to think about how stupid the sign is, and then how much power all these signs use, and maybe people will finally say “turn it off”!!