This is off-topic, but somewhat timely...
Global warming has become has become the cause celebre amongst, well, celebrities. What’s the single best way for Hollywood to decrease greenhouse gases? Buy more Prius hybrids? Nope. Stop making movies.
The MPAA reports paid theatrical receipts of $8.99 billion in 2005, at an average ticket price of $6.41. Dividing ticket price into receipts you get 1.4 billion people who attended movies. How did they get to the theatre? For the most part, they drove, let’s say in a average group of 3 to a car. That means that 468,000,000 car trips were made going to the movies. The average passenger car gets about 22 miles to the gallon. Lets assume the average trip to and from the theatre totals 4 miles.
468 million car trips multiplied by 4 miles per trip equals 1.87 billion miles driven getting to the theatre. Divide that 1.87 billion miles by 22 miles to the gallon and you get a total of about 85 million gallons of gas burned by the simple activity of going to the movies. It takes 4.4 million barrels of oil to produce that much gas. My math may not be exact, nor my assumptions correct, but you get the point.
Going to the movies creates a whole lot of greenhouses gases. Shouldn’t Hollywood demand theatrical exhibition be halted in the name of global warming, and distribute films solely on DVD and VOD?
Notably, if Al Gore’s upcoming global warming film grosses $20 million, then 189,000 gallons of gas will be burned into the atmosphere driving to see his movie about, well, gas being burned into the atmosphere.
