Like so many well-programmed liberal robots, I recycle more or less automatically, feeling a Pavlovian shock if there's no recycling bin and I'm forced to discard my soda can in the garbage, but otherwise not really thinking about environmental issues beyond my immediate vicinity.
Speaking of soda, I take scissors to my six-pack ring, but I do so without a clear vision of the fish (or is it birds?) I'm supposedly protecting. It's just what you do. Kind of like tipping 20 percent, saying "sorry" to the door you bump into, and utilizing the "sunk cost fallacy" to justify living in a city barely fit for Donald Trump's rats.
And, like so many New Yorkers, I'm aware that Times Square is the worst. It takes forever to navigate, by foot or car. It's always crowded, even at night. Walk faster, tourists! There are very few places to eat that aren't overpriced, overcrowded or both. And the cartoon characters are assholes.
But then, there are the lights. The glamorous, glorious light display, the Colossus Lite-Brite that shines as a beacon, illuminating itself to uptown and downtown, to Jersey and Queens. That puts Paris and the stars to shame.
I'm kidding. The lights suck too.
What's worse, they're unsustainable in the geocentric sense. I realize that most New Yorkers think the sun revolves around us. But...the rest of world is real. The future of the world real. At a certain point, our solipsism is no longer quirky. It's literally destructive.
Times Square doesn't just suck aesthetically; it sucks energy.
I've admitted that my environmentalism is more habit-based than committed and heroic. Still, every now and then I reflect upon the grotesquerie of Times Square’s global implications. A few-block radius of avarice wastes more power in a day than the moon—for all its luminescence—does in a year. Okay, maybe the moon is a bad example. But you get the point.
Supposedly, the hypnotic, neon flashing lights and alluring radioactivity are part of Times Square's monetary appeal. The spectacle—shitty as locals find it—brings in tourism to NYC. Those dollars then help with social services. Other Republican talking points.
I say, well let's have an experiment. It's going to have to involve the R-word. That's right:
Regulation.
For one year, we’ll alternate which businesses are allowed to keep their advertisements lit. On certain nights, two-thirds will be legally required to stay off. By the same ordinance, on other nights, every sign will be dimmed to 50 percent. Occasionally all of commercial Times Square will be completely unplugged, and people will have to navigate by street lights, the way cavemen used to.
And we'll see. Has the amount of revenue decrease by a statistically significant amount? Have we reduced waste by a significant amount?
If the answer to the former is yes and the latter is no, I promise I'll shut up.
Just kidding. I mentioned I'm a liberal, right?
