TV SHOW "24" GOES GREEN

The Jan. 30 issue of The New Republic has an article entitled Eco-Terror(subscription required). Here are some excerpts:

Fans of the show "24," or anyone who has followed the recent controversy surrounding its portrayal of torture, may have been understandably surprised by a mid-summer announcement by Fox network executives: The series--whose co-creator and executive producer, Joel Surnow, is a Rick Santorum- supporting, friend-of-Ann-Coulter sort of conservative, and whose hero, Jack Bauer, knows his way around a waterboard--was going green. In fact, it would be the first TV series ever to do so. Henceforth, every electroshock session would require the purchase of carbon offsets. Led by executive producer Howard Gordon, whose wife coauthored The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming with Laurie David, high priestess of Hollywood environmentalism, execs promised to reduce the show's carbon footprint during the upcoming seventh season, with a "carbon neutral" finale as the ultimate goal. Surnow, for his part, has remained mum about the venture. "He is tolerating it rather than embracing it," Gordon tells me by phone.[...]For one, the show shoots roughly half of its scenes on location--unlike, say, a medical drama, which mainly adheres to a single interior. This makes "24" something of an energy glutton: Each new venue requires the transportation of crew and equipment, the building (and dismantling) of sets, the rigging of generators to power the voracious lights that illuminate those sets. And, of course, the series' numerous special effects (car chases, explosions, shootouts) are not exactly low-emission--the show's carbon footprint for 2006 was 1,684 metric tons, the annual equivalent of approximately 364 cars or 89 households.[...]Through fuel reductions and the purchase of green power, Posey says, the series has reduced its emissions by 125 metric tons, "the equivalent of taking twenty-seven cars off the road, and like fourteen thousand gallons of oil."....

The artwork accompanying the article shows Jack Bauer in action with the caption being "Jack Bauer saves the environment."

I've been to some team ropings where Kiefer Sutherland competed and he didn't strike me as the green type. Don't tell Twentieth Century Fox Television I said that. They may require some "cowboy offsets".