politics + internets = ?

Google has signed on to the Earth Hour campaign. Great, this isn’t the first time the singularity-spawning, consciousness-gathering supernova known as Google has endorsed environmental awareness. They’ve invested in green technologies in the past, and are looking to have carbon-neutral office buildings, etc. So this isn’t exactly the first time they have engaged in the sustainability conversation.

But right now, it’s 6:30pm in NYC, and apparently people are talking about this campaign, as Google’s current link (www.google.com/intl/en/earthhour) is currently not loading. The campaign calls for turning off any electrical equipment from 8-9pm local time, worldwide.

I plan on participating, what the hell? But that’s not why I am posting this. I am posting this because the common theme is ease of use: the campaign itself is easy to adopt (turn out the lights for one hour — cue: population rise akin to the August 2003 blackout), and the way of getting hundreds of thousands of people to be aware of it is also easy: Google simply
switches one variable on their homepage and posts one line of text
containing one link, and sparks traffic to a cause they deem worthwhile that
is valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars. I applaud them for
taking a stand, and being unafraid to use their platform to push
awareness about the environment.

But it’s a nice example of lowered barriers meeting ease of use. It took Google all of two minutes to generate significant awareness (let’s see what metrics come out of this efort…), and the campaign itself is easy to adopt. Will it make a difference? Judging from the fact that this is only the second year of Earth Hour, I’d say it’ll be remarkable if this makes a dent in consumption. But if it does, it’s a tidy illustration of the power of los interwebs.