From a Fox News online report:
LOS ANGELES -- Jimmy Kimmel is going bicoastal as a TV talk show host.
The host of ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" will fill in for a vacationing Regis Philbin on "Live with Regis and Kelly" in New York while still hosting his namesake show from Los Angeles.
During the week of Oct. 22, Kimmel will fly back and forth across the country daily, co-hosting with Kelly Ripa in New York each morning and taping his own show in Los Angeles each night. That's two cross-country flights a day for five days.
"I am a little bit insane," Kimmel told The Associated Press. "It will be difficult, but that's how committed I am to entertaining America. And parts of Canada."
Kimmel plans to prepare for his nightly show while flying west and hopes to catch some sleep during his overnight flights east.
The cross-country element adds spice to the show, he said. "For whatever we lose from not being able to prepare for a long time, I think we'll gain in stories and stunts as it happens," he said. "People can tune in and watch me collapse on air."
If there's a good guest on "Live with Regis and Kelly," he said, "I might force them on the plane and make them come back to L.A. with me."
Kimmel is "framing" this stunt as funny--but I could reframe it as just plain excessive use of airlines at a time when we are increasingly concerned about CO2 emissions. Now, I'm no saint on this front: I fly, but when I do at least I buy offset credits. Kimmel, in contrast, signals no awareness that his daily bicoastal jaunts raise any environmental issue at all.
On the one hand, I get sick of global warming being debated on the level of personal behavior all the time--what we really need most of all are political solutions. But when it comes to this Kimmel story, I guess I'm not amused....
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Exactly Chris. And I feel personal decisions are extremely important.
ABC has produced some great pieces about going green, so I'd like to see Jimmy Kimmel set an example.
What do readers think?
Frivolous, yes, but at least those planes would be flying back and forth whether he was on them or not.
Air Force One bouncing across the country from photo op to photo op, all at taxpayer expense, is a huge and unnecessary source of oh so many kinds of hot air and stinky gases. Politicians taking private flights so they don't have to actually mingle with the people they supposedly work for... Those are the ones that get me all fired up.
I am especially outraged by this because Jimmy Kimmel is not that funny.
I think that Scott makes a good point (as does, Signout, but that's a different matter...). Provided these are standard commercial flights and not charter flights, then I find it not as much a problem. To be sure, we should be finding ways to reduce airline emissions or at the very least, offsetting them. As you allude to, Chris, we need something more systematic than celebrities making press releases about emissions. We need policy.
Anyway, assuming Kimmel's going to be on commercial flights, it's hard to get upset for a guy adding a couple of hundred pounds to a flight that was scheduled anyway. I sure hope he, or ABC, considers purchasing some offset credits from a reputable company.
This thread is funnier than anything Kimmel has ever done. You guys are worried about this guy flying commercial? When will you be posting about Laurie David, Ariana Huffington, or St. Gore and their private jet jaunts?
I continuously examine the behaviors of the people I encounter. I continuously assess whether they improve or degrade my world, my life, the lives of future generations, or even just the blogs I read.
I'm pretty sure that's a routine many of us share.
I have examined the circumstances and the sequence of choices of some of the persons named above. I find it easy, trivially simple, to see which people consistently demonstrate authentic efforts to improve my world, and which people consistently manufacture time-wasting distractions.
Chris and Sheril, thanks for this contribution, and for your past, present, and ongoing efforts.
"Now, I'm no saint on this front: I fly, but when I do at least I buy offset credits"
just b/c you make ultimately meaningless gestures doesn't make your flights any better
My wife just turned me on to the HGTV show "Living with Ed" starring Ed Begley and his wife, Rachelle. Apparently, they go to different celebrities' houses to make them more green. Maybe they should head over to Jimmy Kimmel's house.
http://www.livingwithed.net/index.asp
I think whatever a person can do is great, and it is challenging to participate in modern life and have a low carbon dioxide (& other GHGs) output. Celebrities definitely reach more people, but they also have the media watching their every non-green move. By shining light on the Kimmel situation, maybe someone will bring it to the attention of ABC and their advertisers :)
Chris - I'm going to categorize your comments under the same heading as I addressed with Jennifer on our Shifting Baselines blog when we debated whether people should stop eating fish because of over-fishing concerns (I said I refuse to stop eating fish when theres no mass movement or leadership in that direction).
To engage in guilt-mongering over behavior patterns when there is absolutely no clear mass movement or leadership on an issue is to simply do exactly the sort of thing that makes environmentalists annoying.
The real question that this sort of sentiment should be directed at is why there is nothing, nothing, nothing at the national or global leadership scale being done to talk about the idea of reducing air travel?
I always felt that right after 9/11, when air travel had plummeted, would have been the perfect time to start such a discussion. But clearly to have even mentioned it would have literally been heresy. It was one of the shared sacred beliefs of this nation after 9/11 that we MUST get air travel back to its pre-9/11 levels.
Personally, I think a worldwide goal of cutting air travel in half is the simplest major step that could be made in addressing the global warming problem, because of all the add-on effects it would have in changing lifestyles. But is there even one politician who wants to talk about this?