When I heard about the #Greenathon, a ‘Green Initiative’ by Bollywood stars together with the NDTV media channel to promote Earth Day, I was sceptical. How can the Film and Television Industry (FTI), anywhere in the world, be green?
I confess it was an intuitive guess as I’ve never seen any Kollywood movie shoot even for a day, leave alone Bollywood or Hollywood. The only shoot I’ve actually some experience is of the making of a short film, by a neighbourhood visual communications student last week at his flat in my apartment complex. The 10 minute short film took about 4 hours to shoot and astounded me with the amount of electricity consumed and heat generated.
Just to get my facts right, I searched (where else) but the internet, to see how far correct or wrong the ball-park guesswork was. Guess what? I hit the nail right on the head. An UCLA study in 2006 tagged Hollywood as the 2nd largest polluter in the Los Angeles area after the oil refineries, but ahead of aerospace, clothing, semiconductor manufacturing and hotel industries [http://www.environment.ucla.edu/reportcard/article.asp?parentid=1361].
You know what is said to be the most ‘greenest’ of films? The eco-disaster movie, The Day after Tomorrow, is upheld as a model for ‘carbon neutral’ film making by the UCLA study - not because it didn’t emit excessively, but the producers paid $200,000 to ‘Future Forests’, a ‘carbon-offset-contractor’ to undo the emission effects by planting trees elsewhere in the world.
:-P
If it is so in Hollywood, I can’t get my head around to believe that Bollywood and Kollywood would be less offensive to Mother Earth. In fact if we take the realities of infrastructure and industry efficiency in account, these Indian ‘-woods’ would be deep into the woods. (pun intended).
The only question that puzzles metill now is how Toyota Motor Corporation, the maker of one of the most eco-friendly hybrid car today, the Toyota Prius, had been hoodwinked (no pun intended) into the whole smoke-up-your-backside gig.
I mean when I first saw that Toyota was involved in something called the Greenathon, I assumed that they are showcasing their hybrid Prius off in India and trying to make city commuters in Delhi and Mumbai plump for it. Which isn’t a bad idea at that.
But no. What the bunch of intelligentsia has planned is the worst kind of abomination on Mother Earth. Making a Bollywood star Milind Soman (surely along with a lot of hangers on) run 1500 km from Delhi to Mumbai in 30 days.
Now, if you think that is all the abuse they’ve planned in the name of being ‘Green’, you must have your heads up in those smog clouds. The run is to be culminated on 20th May 2012 at Mumbai with a live telethon - Oh! Yeah! a Film and TV show - with ‘musical extravaganza, live chats with celebrities, simultaneous green activities across India, reports on environment and green pledges by celebrities, politicians and the common man’.
Heckuva job Toyota India!
Just to make sure my facts are correct, I searched around for the confirmation that long distance travel by a Hybrid car would be more eco-friendly than jogging the whole way. With some qualifications, it is true that 4 men running will pollute more than travelling together on a hybrid [http://www.wisegeek.com/what-produces-more-co2-4-men-running-or-4-men-driving-in-a-hybrid-car.htm].
Especially when they do it in the name of being ‘Green’, they blow more smoke-up-our-backside. Too bad they could not get a Doctor Blight look alike to tag along.
>:->
BTW, if anyone of you reading this blog has some money and ‘muscle’ power to do it, isn’t it time the Indian B, K, T-woods et. al., are ‘taken by hand’ and taught to contribute towards carbon offsets? Isn’t there a business model in there?
It is a fairly simple model you know - guesstimate pollution, plant trees, grow fat, and shove greenbacks into Swiss banks! Cross my heart, the ‘muscle’ power I referred to is ‘brain’ muscle power - not anything else.
:-P
Wait a minute! Just think! FTI being such a disgusting polluter, the erstwhile Government of Tamil Nadu under M. Karunanidhi was dishing out tax-exemptions just for naming the movie with a Tamil word, which was twisted into absurd ways by the film producers.
Even the present administration under J. Jayalalitha is tagging along, with some sensible modifications - that the movie dialogue should be predominantly in Tamil, if not exclusively, etc., but nothing about carbon emissions or contributing to pollution.
What such policies seem to mean in effect is, as long as you pollute exclusively in Tamil language - it should not bother anyone!
My Smug half stutters, ‘For Earth Day, I swept out the leaves, pebbles and junk off the earth strips around my apartment complex, and planted about 20 ladies finger, 6 flat beans, 10 French beans and 4 pumpkin seeds’.
I confess it was an intuitive guess as I’ve never seen any Kollywood movie shoot even for a day, leave alone Bollywood or Hollywood. The only shoot I’ve actually some experience is of the making of a short film, by a neighbourhood visual communications student last week at his flat in my apartment complex. The 10 minute short film took about 4 hours to shoot and astounded me with the amount of electricity consumed and heat generated.
Just to get my facts right, I searched (where else) but the internet, to see how far correct or wrong the ball-park guesswork was. Guess what? I hit the nail right on the head. An UCLA study in 2006 tagged Hollywood as the 2nd largest polluter in the Los Angeles area after the oil refineries, but ahead of aerospace, clothing, semiconductor manufacturing and hotel industries [http://www.environment.ucla.edu/reportcard/article.asp?parentid=1361].
You know what is said to be the most ‘greenest’ of films? The eco-disaster movie, The Day after Tomorrow, is upheld as a model for ‘carbon neutral’ film making by the UCLA study - not because it didn’t emit excessively, but the producers paid $200,000 to ‘Future Forests’, a ‘carbon-offset-contractor’ to undo the emission effects by planting trees elsewhere in the world.
:-P
If it is so in Hollywood, I can’t get my head around to believe that Bollywood and Kollywood would be less offensive to Mother Earth. In fact if we take the realities of infrastructure and industry efficiency in account, these Indian ‘-woods’ would be deep into the woods. (pun intended).
The only question that puzzles me
I mean when I first saw that Toyota was involved in something called the Greenathon, I assumed that they are showcasing their hybrid Prius off in India and trying to make city commuters in Delhi and Mumbai plump for it. Which isn’t a bad idea at that.
But no. What the bunch of intelligentsia has planned is the worst kind of abomination on Mother Earth. Making a Bollywood star Milind Soman (surely along with a lot of hangers on) run 1500 km from Delhi to Mumbai in 30 days.
Now, if you think that is all the abuse they’ve planned in the name of being ‘Green’, you must have your heads up in those smog clouds. The run is to be culminated on 20th May 2012 at Mumbai with a live telethon - Oh! Yeah! a Film and TV show - with ‘musical extravaganza, live chats with celebrities, simultaneous green activities across India, reports on environment and green pledges by celebrities, politicians and the common man’.
Heckuva job Toyota India!
Just to make sure my facts are correct, I searched around for the confirmation that long distance travel by a Hybrid car would be more eco-friendly than jogging the whole way. With some qualifications, it is true that 4 men running will pollute more than travelling together on a hybrid [http://www.wisegeek.com/what-produces-more-co2-4-men-running-or-4-men-driving-in-a-hybrid-car.htm].
Especially when they do it in the name of being ‘Green’, they blow more smoke-up-our-backside. Too bad they could not get a Doctor Blight look alike to tag along.
>:->
BTW, if anyone of you reading this blog has some money and ‘muscle’ power to do it, isn’t it time the Indian B, K, T-woods et. al., are ‘taken by hand’ and taught to contribute towards carbon offsets? Isn’t there a business model in there?
It is a fairly simple model you know - guesstimate pollution, plant trees, grow fat, and shove greenbacks into Swiss banks! Cross my heart, the ‘muscle’ power I referred to is ‘brain’ muscle power - not anything else.
:-P
Wait a minute! Just think! FTI being such a disgusting polluter, the erstwhile Government of Tamil Nadu under M. Karunanidhi was dishing out tax-exemptions just for naming the movie with a Tamil word, which was twisted into absurd ways by the film producers.
Even the present administration under J. Jayalalitha is tagging along, with some sensible modifications - that the movie dialogue should be predominantly in Tamil, if not exclusively, etc., but nothing about carbon emissions or contributing to pollution.
What such policies seem to mean in effect is, as long as you pollute exclusively in Tamil language - it should not bother anyone!
My Smug half stutters, ‘For Earth Day, I swept out the leaves, pebbles and junk off the earth strips around my apartment complex, and planted about 20 ladies finger, 6 flat beans, 10 French beans and 4 pumpkin seeds’.
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