One Million Acts of Green (and one act of borrowing ideas)

The CBC is in a celebratory mood today, their Million Acts of Green campaign has reached the one million mark. It's great that they've done this and that people have pitched in to the extent that they have. What I've wanted to hear though, since they started this campaign, is a shout out to the people that they borrowed the idea from.

If you're on Facebook you already know I Am Green application. It asked people to commit to small acts of "Green" told everyone about what everyone else was doing and kept totals for individuals and collectively about how much of an impact was made and how much was saved in carbon emissions.

At about the same time that 'I Am Green' appeared the World Wildlife Fund in Canada launched The Good Life. It asked people to commit to small acts of "Green" told everyone about what everyone else was doing and kept totals for individuals and collectively about how much of an impact was made and how much was saved in carbon emissions.

About a year ago Gerard Kennedy of the Liberals showed up at my door. He said he was starting a campaign for the riding where everyone would be asked to commit to small acts of green and individual and running totals would be kept so that the Conservatives would know that the neighborhood was serious about the environment. When I told him that the World Wildlife Fund was already doing that, his response (as I remember it) was 'well the more the merrier'.

That's true. Anyone who can get anyone to become more green helps overall and makes the world a better place, and kudos to Strombo and the CBC for doing this, but it wasn't their idea. Someone at the Ceeb must have known about 'I Am Green' or 'the Good Life' but there is no acknowledgement that the idea is borrowed, no links to other sites where you could get some ideas about going green. It would appear, reading the about page, that they thought it up all on their own - the CBC, George Stroumboulopoulos and Cisco:

"This season, CBC and The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos want to mobilize Canadians to do One Million Acts of Green. In partnership with Cisco, the idea behind the campaign is that one small act can make a big difference."

So while I do many things to try and make a difference and I'm a member of the Good Life and I Am Green I have largely ignored "One Million Acts of Green". To me it seems more like wanting credit for helping the environment as opposed to wanting to help the environment and I'm not interested in environmentalism as public relations campaign.

Personally I'd recommend The Good Life - it's a great site, it's been around for a few years and has alot of good suggestions, and information and you don't even need to have a Facebook account to use it. (Plus I generally give the WWF some credibility on environmental issues.) There is also a new WWF http://polarbears.wwf.ca/home.html