New Yorkers (actually, more like throngs of tourists) will be able to see exactly how many metric tons of greenhouse gases are in our atmosphere in real time, thanks to the new 70-foot-tall carbon ticker that Deutsche Bank unveiled in Times Square today. Deutsche Bank says the ticker itself is carbon neutral: It’s made of LEDs, and is offset with carbon credits. (Wonder what kind…)
MoJo contributor Joel Makower, who runs the site GreenBiz. com, points out that the ticker could be overwhelming:
“It’s good to get this information constantly in front of them [people],” says Joel Makower executive editor of GreenBiz.com. At the same time, however, he says that such a huge number could be intimating to some people, who might question whether they could actually make a reduction in those numbers. “Big numbers are impressive, but they make us feel impotent,” adds Makower.
The other problem: Metric tons can be hard to wrap your mind around. I guess the point of the ticker is to show how quickly we’re dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but a more concrete measure (cars on the road? Power plants? How close we’re getting to some kind of tipping point?) might make it all more fathomable, and hence more effective.
HT @makower.
