If you’re going to use electricity tonight, you may as well do it watching Sundance Channel’s new green living show, “Big Ideas for a Small Planet” (9 p.m. E/P).
In true Sundance tradition, “Big Ideas” is a series of short documentaries. But they’re not the drab, depressing kind. Instead, they feature cutting-edge technologies and brilliant inventors bent on saving the earth.
Each episode has a theme, and tonight’s is alternative fuels. You’ll meet a couple who’ll retrofit your gas-guzzling vintage ride into a clean machine, see an Indy 500 driver get better torque and pull using ethanol, and feel the rush with a monster trucker who fries chicken and then uses the grease as gas. These are people who don’t just “talk the talk” about being green; they “drive the drive,” as one quips. (That this first episode is about alternative fuels and a later one is about green vehicles is probably no coincidence: the show is “sponsored by Lexus,” who has a new hybrid SUV on the market.)
The series doesn’t end when you click off the TV. “Big Ideas” is just part of a larger line of programming, web features, and blogs called “The Green.” Viewers can check out easy tips for green living, watch video clips, or learn more about environmental issues on “The Green” section of Sundance Channel’s site, for which TreeHugger provided much of the content.
But lest you think Sundance the only cable channel targeting green viewers, the Discovery Channel is launching an entire network devoted to everyday green living next year.
—Jen Phillips
