Pink is not the new Green

This interesting add has shown up at our local bus stops to happily coincide with a frigid winter. As you can tell our pink friend is reminding us that your local utility wants you to turn that thermostat down and put on a sweater, and like it. If I had to guess she may be Jimmy Carters granddaughter or niece. She clearly came ready with her winter gear, like a hello kitty collector all grown up.

She triumphantly is fighting those high heating cost by taking the logical step of turning the thermostat down to the point where her refrigerator is in equilibrium with her living room. Her perkiness belies the fact this add breaks the cardinal rules of messaging- Don’t Suffer. Amory Lovins, director of the Rocky Mountain Institute has been appealing to us for years that saving energy “doesn’t mean having warm beer and cold showers”. I live off the grid and indeed enjoy many cold beers and the occasional warm shower. Interestingly two utility consumer relations personnel recently indicated to me that comfort is almost never why they get calls.

Somebody gave the utilities department some money to blatantly ignore the obvious in green messaging and as a result just made my job a wee bit more difficult. It is fun to make fun of our local utility. They have struggled for a number of years to get beyond a bureaucratic and insular approach to helping their clients (us) save energy and promote the energy savings industry. Not being effective is one thing, equating energy savings with suffering is quite another.

Naughty utilities now go sit in the corner until you behave.