April 6th, 2006

Enviro-Bloggers School Chevy, Nightline

by Philip Baruth

This one is too beautiful.

VDB-loyalist Margaret Gundersen sent a tip this morning: her son Eric — an environmental activist and blogger at developmentseed.org — was interviewed for a Nightline piece last night. The footage was well worth checking out, Margaret hinted.

We were skeptical. Like, dude, she’s his mom — what else is she going to say?

But Margaret wasn’t shining us on: the segment is truly worth checking out, for two reasons, each more delicious than the last.

Reason #1: Nightline traces the story of a contest Chevy ran recently, asking customers to design their own commercial for the new and enlarged Chevy Tahoe. Not surprisingly, bloggers like Gundersen hijacked the contest, flooding the organizers with environmentally-themed “commercials” — wicked little satires that then began to fly through the net.

And so Nightline has some snarky fun with Chevy’s travails. But that’s not the beauty part.

No, the beauty part (Reason #2) is that as Gundersen and his activist partner exited the Nightline facilities, they snapped pictures of a fleet of Suburbans and Tahoes lined up in the corporate garage.

The You-Tube footage of the Nightline segment and the gotcha photos are here.

That’s beautiful work, Eric.

And of course — in a slightly more roundabout fashion — beautiful work on your part as well, Margaret.