Mobile Billboards Pollute, Regulation Needed
Most of us have seen them, mobile billboards:
These two weren’t rolling when I passed them twice the Saturday before the All-Star game. Yet both had their diesel engines running as they sat outside Flamingo Bowl. I also spotted the Red Bull Mini Cooper a couple of times — it was not parked but cruising around — wasting gas and polluting.
Mobile advertising has become a big industry. I actually don’t object to the commercial messages but I do have a problem with the environmental impact. I think the Board of Aldermen should investigate to see how other cities have sought to curb the carbon footprint of this form of advertising.
An 80 mph crosswind would put an end to those Bud Light signs.
If they’re mobile, I doubt the city can do anything (federal free speech rights and interstate commerce, ya know), but if they’re stationary, they might. I also think the Red Bull Mini Coopers are kinda cute, and I really like the Oscar Meyer Weinermobiles!
Community standards are lowered when the human scale is violated and dominated by motorized power. It’s just a matter of time before Metro also gets into the action with its busses and train cars, it needs the money.
“It’s just a matter of time before Metro also gets into the action with its busses and train cars, it needs the money.”
Um, do you, perchance, live in St. Charles Co.?
It already has.
Don’t we already have an ordinance against diesel engine idling in the city? If not, we should.
A couple things about billboards and the environment:
1) The carbon footprint of the new digital billboards popping up around town is quite high… each digital sign face uses the equivalent of 17 homes, according to the Austin, TX Green Building Chapter.
2) I love the Ameren billboards that urge us to use less energy while being lit up at night… wtf?
Right now at http://www.infrastructureusa.org, users are discussing urban living throughout the country. Check out the short article by Regional Plan Association about climate change, the video by Street Films about an innovative Seattle Crosswalk, or the report from the Labor/Community Strategy Center, “Highway to Hell†to get a sense of the important conversation happening here. Most importantly, share your unique perspective today.
Egads, not more regulation. Start a campaign to write/call/eMail the advertisers and express your displeasure with this particular method of advertisement. Enlist the aid of some tree hugging hippie groups to put a little extra leverage on the deal. Maybe put the idea out to the graffiti artist community that these are the best thing to be tagged since Roman chariots. This society is strangled by enough laws as it is. Let’s get back to creativity and social hooliganism in order to effect the changes we wish to see instead of relying on some fatcat politician threatening everyone with taxes and fines. Seeing “My Dick” spray painted in front of “Tastes Just Right” would make me a lot happier than seeing a pink ticket sticking out from under the windshield wiper, and would probably be just as effective.
I can’t wait until all this “carbon footprint” nonsense dies. Like most fads, eventually it will. For the record, I am not some global warming denier nut either.
How are parents walking with their kids to a Cardinals game supposed to explain those “Come see the rest of me” billboards for places like PTs and the Penthouse Club roaming through downtown? Are there rules limiting advertisements for sex businesses?
I’m pretty against billboards in general (especially those new LED ones). Any advertising should work with the environment, not against it. Otherwise, it should be banned from construction.
I about spit my water all over my monitor, CarondeletNinja.
What next, ban the A-B Clydesdales?!
While I don’t like to see fuel wasted (or breathe the pollution), advertising is a “sign” of a vibrant city.
Advertising and marketing is mental pollution. Hell, Edouard Bernays himself, the father of modern PR and marketing, said it was propaganda. He couldn’t call it that though, since, at the end of WWI, that word had rather negative connatations due to its relation to the former Wiemar Republic (Germany). Straight from his own mouth. *http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8953172273825999151* Also, some of the links from this page will probably help you discover what marketing has done to poison our minds. *http://www.goodsearch.com/search.aspx?keywords=Edouard+Bernays*. C-ninja has a good idea. It’s called culture jamming: defacing or altering marketing and advertising to subvert or alter the original message. Essentially, most marketing and PR is corporate propaganda. “It’ll make you happier, stronger, lighter, more free, content, blah, blah, blah. That car is sooo you! The X Corporation regrets the events which have lead to the loss of life. We are working to see that the inidviduals involved are dealt with properly.” That’s why I usually refer to marketing and PR people as whores.
“How are parents walking with their kids to a Cardinals game supposed to explain those “Come see the rest of me†billboards for places like PTs and the Penthouse Club roaming through downtown?”
Think that’s tough? I don’t see how parents can explain the pitcher hitting eighth in the Cards line-up or why that nice Mr. Ankiel is always flirting with the Mendoza Line.
The concept and existence of the carbon footprint of an object, and its calculation for the purposes of cumulative effect in contribution to total emissions is not “B.S.” You’re simply tired of the currency of the term, along with many other popular terms du jour, but I can certainly appreciate your frustration.