Carbon Trace

Can you credit a single public service advertisement with changing the American mind? No. But one mind? Yes.

I remember “The Crying Indian” ads because they had their intended effect on me. I was 15 in 1971 — too young to worry about Vietnam, but still itching to be caught up in the causes of the day. And here it was dropped right in my lap through my television screen.

Here’s a description of the ad from the Ad Council web site:

More than four decades ago, the Ad Council partnered with Keep America Beautiful to create a powerful visual image that dramatized how litter and other forms of pollution were hurting the environment, and how every individual has the responsibility to help protect it. The ad, which featured Native American actor Iron Eyes Cody, “The Crying Indian,” first aired on Earth Day in 1971. Created by ad agency Marstellar, Inc., the campaign used the line, “People Start Pollution. People can stop it.” The ad became one of the most memorable and successful campaigns in advertising history and was named one of the top 100 advertising campaigns of the 20th Century by Ad Age Magazine.

You can read the complete story and watch both videos here. You can learn more about actor Iron Eyes Cody from Snopes.

I got caught up in the ecology movement that summer following the introduction of the ad. Fighting litter was one of the easiest routes into that movement. You may recall we were once awash in litter in U.S.

Yes– people still litter, but not nearly to the extent we saw in the mid 20th century. Part of the reason for that is simple awareness. I think the biggest change that the anti-littering campaign created was a new way of thinking — a new ethic. Individuals stopped littering because they suffered the scorn (often verbal) of witnesses. It became totally uncool to litter.

It’s too much to hope that we could make driving a car totally uncool. We all know that tens of thousands die each year in automobile crashes caused mostly by human hubris — not “accidents” because there’s nothing accidental about texting and driving, or drinking and driving, or putting on makeup and driving. No actor pretending to be a crying Native American is going to change the death toll because of the pervasiveness of car culture. We are willing to put up with carnage for our tender convenience. We are willing to risk crashes caused our inattentive and selfish driving for our own tender convenience. The only people crying are the the families of the victims. America apparently can’t hear them.

What we can do is make active transportation — walking and cycling — totally cool.

Here are the Ad Council guidelines for sponsoring organizations. Hint, hint.

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