When the going gets tough, and people remain ambivalent towards the simple steps they can take in their lives to reduce their energy use, it seems there’s only one thing for it… It’s time to start breaking into people’s apartments, changing their light bulbs, dropping bricks in their toilets, and switching off their appliances by stealth, obviously! 
Radical Energy Saving Action
Published by Matthew Carroll, December 7th, 2006 Act Locally , Direct Action , Efficiency , Humor , Popular Culture , Video 7 Comments7 Responses to “Radical Energy Saving Action”
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Matthew that is absolutely awesome!!! I love it!
This is a really well done piece. I love parcour.
Who made this? This is incredible!!!
Awesome video. You beat me to the blog! I thought this film was brilliant and was shocked to see some of the negative reviews it got on YouTube. While the film can easily be brushed off as, “wow those kids are really cool, but, it’s just a movie,” I think we can learn from their creativity and boldness.
One of the barriers to our clean energy transition is that so many people are in this trance where they take cheap oil for granted. This type of Direct Action snaps them out of this trance, even if just for a minute, and penetrates that collective conscious we need to influence.
I remember Cameron, or maybe it was Dana, sent an email a long time ago about this “Steal this Space” campaign some people were doing. They would go into bookstores and rather than stealing a book, they would “steal” the bookshelf space and place a book (in our case it would be about the climate crisis) with the words “this book is free, just take it, walk out the door, and spread the word.” Or something to that nature.
I can also remember back when my buddy Darren and I used to switch people’s lawn balls. You know, those different colored ugly looking balls people put on pedestals in their front yard? Anyway, we had a few lawn-ball-lawns in our town and used to go around late at night, all stealth mode, and simply switch around the colors. While the mission might not have been so noble then, I reflect on it now and am quite pleased. Even something like this that is sooo unrelated, snaps people out of a culture trance. A trance that has become so self-destructive.
I’m also reminded of the time at Wheaton when the Progressive Alliance went Anti-corporate Caroling. We practiced for a week beforehand with some regular Christmas Carols (I am still impressed, to this day, how the campus acappella coordinator made a tone-deaf Progressive Alliance actually sound really good!). Then, during one of these mid-December weekends, we all dressed in our Sunday best (a few of us equipped with little Santa hats of course) went to the Malls, and started singing – first with the regular carols to draw a crowd, and then with our modified carols that critiqued a culture based on materialism and excess. We followed up with out awkwardly shocked bystanders with leaflets about alternative gift ideas. We were escorted off the mall property by police in every situation.
As I said, I think we can learn from the creativity and daring of these kids on the video. There is a cultural turning happening from a belief in limitations, to a belief in possibilities. For those readers out there whom have never participated in a direct action like this, may I leave you with a little quote from an anarchist cookbook:
Better stop asking yourself, “What if I get caught?”
Mother#%$@*, you’re already caught.
Better start asking yourself, “What if I break free?”
Awesome blog Matthew. Thanks.
What an awesome video! I love this creativity. I am definitely going to have to share this video with the students I have been meeting and presenting to across Rhode Island!
I teach environmental Science. This is a great way to get students into the idea of energy conservation!