It's The Age Of Stupid, stupid

The Age of Stupid Global Trailer w/Spanish Subtitles from Age of Stupid on Vimeo.

Went last night to see The Age Of Stupid, actually a very well-made and powerful film. Biggest simultaneous screening of any film ever, etc. etc. Very impressive what they've done with practically no money, strong beliefs and good organisation - chapeau.

It's probably an important film, as was An Inconvenient Truth, and it will probably stir people to action to do something in advance of the Copenhagen summit - good. In fact, 90% of what it says is pretty much correct, it's just a shame it can't resist the temptation, Michael Moore-style, to sound off about whatever other perceived injustices (like the war in Iraq) are against Franny Armstrong's personal beliefs.

If one part particularly rang true for me, it was the comment by an environmental scientist that humans had never before had to deal with a slow-moving iceberg of a problem like climate change, we were evolutionarily equipped to deal with wild animals, warring tribes, etc. - immediate threats. We had no experience of dealing with something like this. The unspoken corrollary is that we tend to vacillate, panic and achieve very little, as we can show over the last 10 years or so.

Anyway, it certainly shows that the issue of Climate Change is by no means far from people's minds, indeed if anything it's resurging. Good - and not just for Barcelona Green.

Wow...didn't expect that...

As a coda to The Good Entrepreneur competition, we now have a paragraph on their site from TGE's Steve Sedgwick (he's one of CNBC's main presenters, I think) about our entry:

"Rob Marchant - Climate Change Retail

Well put together. Combining the need to educate and push the roll-out of proven green, energy saving products. I think the idea will be a great success but my concern surrounds the basic concept of a retail format. Having physical retail stores rather than perhaps a dedicated online offering as a standalone still requires a physical footfall and hence increased energy consumption from store set up to transport to and from the store."

Well that's quite complimentary, really. I'm delighted.

Responding to Steve's concern, the obvious answer is that we would LOVE to do an online-only shop, if ONLY people would buy from it. But there are already plenty, and they don't.

It's a shame, while I understand entirely that your carbon footprint is higher in retail, you have to deal with the way people are now, not the way you would like them to be. Educate first, move them to online purchase later. The key thing is to change their domestic habits, whatever it takes to get there.

Funding starts here!

Well, the Good Entrepreneur competition gained us over 1400 pitch video views (the most of all entries in the competition), pretty much constantly in the top 10 pitches, and a great deal of profile-raising, so we're delighted. Now the real business of getting funded starts in earnest - going well so far, we already have pitch meetings booked. Watch this space...