If the IPCC can’t get it done and the European Union won’t stop stalling around and the US fails to get on board as promised and China keeps putting up a new coal plant every day or so and faster than it can erect wind turbines – maybe a newspaper will make the crucial difference. Hoping so – at least a little bit - are executives at The Guardian in the UK. Today it launched, along with partners, a program of crusading journalism called 10:10. It urges a fast reduction in carbon footprint. That’s a tiresome term already, only a few years after entering popular idiom, but carbon footprint gets the job done. The 10:10 term’s meaning? That it is a good idea for everybody, from individuals to corporations and other collective organizations, to reduce their carbon emissions by 10 percent in the year 2010.

   There was a swishy soiree of celebrities and others at the Tate Modern to launch it, twitter feeds galore, and a special website laying out the newspaper’s ambitions. A vast amount of verbiage explaining it is at the site. One place to start is an explainer from environmental editor Ian Katz,  10:10: What’s it all about?  This sort of open campaigning in news pages for specific policy is not so rare in the UK and Europe, but is in the US where an official stance of neutrality and disinterested objectivity is sought (if rarely achieved) by most news outlets.  

   It can’t hurt.

  Grist and Stories in one place: 10:10 main site ;  

-CP

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