not only is our production designer, brad, a patient man when it comes to printing substrates and traffic jams, but his patience also looks fantastic in a hazmat suit.
brad suited up for a campaign we created for earthjustice earlier this year to urge the epa to regulate and classify coal ash as a hazardous waste. this campaign also had john and me traveling across the country to interview victims of coal ash contamination in kingston, tennessee and waterflow, new mexico, getting stranded in houston {the airport kinda smells like ketchup} and getting caught {slightly} speeding in a little town called cuba along the way {“officer, i’m trying to make up time from being stranded in houston”}. we worked with a talented photographer and retoucher who generously dedicated their time for this project, and this is essentially why our work is good… ’cause our clients do good work.
Check out this new video about cap & trade from Annie Leonard, the woman who brought is “Story of Stuff.”
There are about as many takes on cap and trade as there are environmental groups, which isn’t surprising given the system’s complexity and multiple permutations. The big take home message in this one is that the simplicity and promise of cap and trade evaporate when we try to enact it in the real world.
Wherever you stand on cap and trade, it’s hard not to be delighted by Free Range Studio’s spunk and style. And I’m always charmed when cartoons commingle with real life. Annie Leonard is happy to hop into cartoon land to talk about cap and trade, but it’s clear that she wants it to stay on that side of the divide.
The rest of the world will find out in April when HOW Magazine publishes its 11th Annual Interactive Design Award edition, but YOU, dear Underground Blog Reader, get the low down skivvy on the inside tip:
WE WON! WE WON! WE WON!
(Not that we care about that kind of thing.)
But we are rather proud that StopSoot.Org – the video, website and ad campaign we created for EarthJustice – was selected out of over 700 entries to receive one of handful of merit awards.
Congrats to everyone who worked on the project and EarthJustice for a super successful campaign.
Judith Warner had a great piece in the New York Times a few days ago, in which she managed to weave together an argument that featured both Michael Moore and the practice of female genital cutting. Worth reading, because she also put quite eloquently an idea that forms the basis of Underground’s own approach to communication:
…she had learned, through years of trial and error, that to reach people you had to meet them where they were. Respect them. Acknowledge their social norms, beliefs and practices. Find common ground. Build on shared human aspirations — for safety, for dignity, for a better life for one’s children — then discover how those shared aspirations might reasonably translate into ending practices that cause suffering.
If you come in and say, ‘You are awful people,’ people tune out and say, ‘Who do you think you are?’ …Making people feel bad about what they’re doing doesn’t work; they only get defensive. What does work is getting people to discuss together what are their rights and what they mean. It’s not just a question of blaming and shaming people but educating and empowering them.
Above, an ad from our new campaign for the American Wind Energy Association, highlighting the contribution wind power can make to a new economy. The people featured in the ad, and in the longer videos after the jump, work for companies like Cardinal Fastener, who makes the bolts for the turbines, and Gamesa, a re-tasked steel plant, now building the turbines themselves. They have the kind of quality manufacturing jobs that help blue collar workers get into, and stay in, the middle class. Sure, wind power means using less coal and it means a fighting chance for all of us against climate change, but it also means good jobs for real people.
Right now, Congress is debating the American Climate and Energy Security (ACES) Act. The bill is a big step towards a new direction on climate change and energy policy in this country, but that doesn’t mean that it’s perfect. In particular, while a Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) is part of it, there’s a chance it will get watered down in the horse-trading that accompanies big pieces of legislation. And that would be a disaster– the Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that a 25% by 2025 RES would create 297,000 jobs, and anything less than 12% by 2012 would actually mean losing jobs. We just can’t afford that right now.
Renewable energy is a huge growth industry around the world, with 37 countries, including China already having firm RES in place. Standing up for the climate, and the American worker, means doing the same here at home. You can learn more about RES at PowerofWind.com. After the jump, a couple longer videos we did highlighting the stories of some of the workers from the ad.
