Obama Girl's "Save Your Energy" and New Green College Contest

Earn some green for your school through America's Greenest Campus. (And see our list of greenest colleges.)

April 3, 2009 at 11:00AM by Brian Clark Howard | comment

"Save your energy. You're looking good but you drive an H3… Be like Ed Begley."

So sings the adorable, lovable Obama Girl, in her latest video, urging us all to save energy. The pop ditty is surprisingly catchy, and the video is cute fun.

It's being promoted by America's Greenest Campus, a project of Climate Culture, SmartPower and the U.S. Department of Energy. What's that? America's Greenest Campus is billed as "the first nationwide contest among colleges to reduce the carbon footprints of their students, faculty, alumni and staff."

Schools have until October 5th to get as many people associated with their institution as possible to pitch in to reduce their carbon footprints. The Climate Culture site keeps track of those who pledge to participate, even keeping a leaderboard of schools (both my alma maters are doing pretty well, it's nice to see).

There will be two winners: the school with the most participants and the school with the most carbon reductions per participant (winning $5,000 each). There's also a $10,000 SmartPower Energy Smart Ad Challenge, recently announced by Russell Simmons. Cut a video for your chance to win (the three videos posted there so far are none too exciting, unfortunately, but the good news is someone with a little vision might have a good shot at the gold).