Orion Magazine - November-December 2008

collaborative project of the video-blogging brothers Hank and John Green and their viewers, a group of bright, active teenagers who call themselves the “Nerd- >ghters.” John, thirty-one, writes books for young adults, including the recently published Paper Towns, and Hank, twenty-eight, runs the environmental technology website EcoGeek.org.

They’ve also raised money for Illinois state representative candidate Daniel Biss, and given microloans to people in the developing world.

When the brothers started their blog nearly two years ago, their main purpose was to exchange video messages. “The viewership was a surprise,” John said. “The activism that resulted from having a viewership was just a natural product of who we are. We spend a lot of time talking about how to decrease world suck because it’s something we think about a lot. We’ve also spent a lot of time talking about Harry Potter.”

Some of the Greens’ appeal might be their lighthearted approach to serious issues. In exchange for viewers contributing to the political action committee ActBlue.com, John >lmed himself drinking a blenderized Happy Meal. When he made a video explaining the political situation in Pakistan shortly before Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, he did so while eating twenty-four Halloween-themed Peeps. But their appeal goes beyond hilarity, say viewers. “[My friend] Liz and I agree that we’re better people after having become Nerd>ghters,” viewer Kristina Horner, twenty, wrote in the text accompanying their project video. “We both care a lot more about the things that are important.”

For those who grew up marching in protest to make a di=erence, what the Greens and the Nerd>ghters do can look suspiciously subtle. “The work being done today is more about making the current system better than about changing it,”

Hank said. This is consistent with what others have pointed out about the activist tendencies of the generation coming up: it’s upbeat, team-oriented, and tech-savvy; it makes broad connections among social, economic, and environmental concerns; it focuses on small, practical changes and makes them fun. John describes his and his wife’s attempts to live a greener life, and Hank gets excited about the Chevrolet Volt, but these thoughts get sandwiched between jokes and daily concerns.

“[Young people] are simultaneously the most energetic and the most bored members of our society,” Hank said. “Being able to tap the energetic free time of youth is like having a 100 percent e;cient solar collector. If you could do it all the time, you could rule the world.”

Planet Shame

by kiera butler

Let’s get started.

American Public Media’s Consumer Consequences game is basically an online carbon footprint calculator dressed up as

a slick, animated adventure. Once I’m done, I’m told, I’ll know how many Earths would be required to support our global population if everyone lived like me.

I’m feeling pretty good about this. I’m a carless twenty-something almost-vegetarian who lives with a roommate in an Oakland, California, neighborhood where residents recycle with the same zeal that folks in other places play competitive sports. After signing on and selecting a glamorous avatar, I breeze through the Home section, entering the number of people in my apartment—two—and the size of my home—between >ve hundred and one thousand square feet. Since I can hear my roommate chewing in the kitchen when I’m lying in bed, I suspect this is not exactly living large. I’m right. If everyone lived like me, the game says, we’d need . 8 Earths. The Trash section is easy, too. I estimate that my household recycles about 90 percent of paper, glass, aluminum, and plastics. My score doesn’t change.