At Greenpeace headquarters in Amsterdam, we are sooooo crap at celebrating. 20 months of sustained campaigning pays off in a big victory against coal use, and we mark it with one quick glass of champagne on a Thursday evening and within minutes everyone was back at their desk.
It’s time to crowd source this celebration.
So, all you people who made this happen, dammit, raise a glass of your favorite beverage this weekend to one small victory in the fight against coal and climate change. I’m talking everyone who asked Facebook to support renewable energy, who “Liked” the Greenpeace Unfriend Coal campaign, who wrote to Mark Zuckerburg, who created images, changed their profile picture, joined our world-record comment fest, dogged Facebook staff at conferences and trade shows, made videos, wrote songs, or did any of the way out wacky and wonderful things that Greenpeace supporters and Facebook fans did to make this win happen: Pat yourselves on the freakin’ back people, call up some music, Maestro, hit the dance floor and jump up and down a bit: one of the key members of the club of biggest electricity consumers on the planet has agreed to prefer renewable energy over coal in the siting of their future data centres. 3.8 million Greenpeace fans on Facebook proved themselves an irresistible force in this campaign: but it’s time we took seriously the immortal words of Emma Goldman:
A revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having.
I’m pretty sure she was talking about the Energy [R]evolution. Dance, people, dance. The politicians may be slow as molasses, but you proved that 3.8 million Greenpeace fans on Facebook can make change happen. Celebrate.
And then, when the hangover subsides and the party wreckage has been righted, roll up your sleeves and tell Microsoft, Twitter, and Apple to take a page out of the Facebook book and adopt the same policy.
