How To Jerk Yourself Off While Being Globally Warmed

There’s the semi-automated way…

The solo method…

Or with a ‘carbon neutral’ buddy…

Or…

The “Earth Hour” circle jerk…

…dramatized by Time Magazine, as reported by by P.J. Gladnick at NewsBusters:

Have you celebrated Earth Hour tonight by turning off your lights during the hour of 8:30 to 9:30 PM? Time magazine thinks this is so important that they have melodratically asked, Can Earth Hour Galvanize the Global Warming Fight? Writer Bryan Walsh seems to be desperately hoping that the Global Warming movement can find its "defining image".

Gladnick goes on to quote Time:

Every successful social movement has its defining images. Think of the civil rights movement, and the photos of protesters being attacked by police dogs and pummeled by high-pressure fire hoses. Or the Vietnam anti-war movement, and the video of body bags being beamed back to America's living rooms. Even environmentalism has its iconic images, like Cleveland's heavily polluted Cuyahoga River catching fire in the 1960s, smog wreathing Los Angeles's skyline during the next decade and even the stark hole in the ozone over Antarctica. To help galvanize public support — especially around a complex issue — the right picture really can be worth a thousand words.

When it comes to climate change, however, that picture hasn't yet been found…

Ha! Wrong!

TMR has found the perfect defining image:

Hurricane Katrina's destruction, drowning polar bears,…

…spreading deserts — these images are powerful in their own right, but they're not the sorts of pictures that can drive a movement. Precisely because global warming is so, well, global, potentially touching just about every corner of the world and every aspect of our lives, encapsulating it in a single image has proven elusive.

You can't connect climate change to a natural disaster as simply as you can connect a napalm bomb, a running child and the war in Vietnam. That's made building and sustaining a movement against global warming so challenging. We can't see it yet, not quite — and we can't see its victims. But by the time we can, it will be too late.

Don’t fret, the actual celebration wasn’t nearly as morose as that diatribe, evidenced by this video:



Burning candles in a fancy restaurant and on the beach, party boats lit up in blue on the water, all the cars to get there, the flame thrower blasts to light up several hot air balloons, burping, exhaling, flatulent yuppies… all give off carbon and other greenhouse gases.

Party on to save the planet, or to be seen as if you were.

"A very strong message" indeed.

NewsBusters update: North Korea celebrates Earth Hour 24/7.