Energy

Superheroes Need To Be Environmentally Conscious, Too


The earliest memory I have of Marvel Comics is reading the issue where the Watcher first appeared to the Fantastic Four, in the month of my birthday in 1963. Every month, I would follow my older brothers to the drug store to get the latest issues.

I actually credit Marvel with my becoming a scientist. It’s amusing that radiation, a subject that I’ve spent about 40 years using, measuring and understanding, figured so prominently in the Marvel Universe and resulted in such amazing effects on the majority of their characters. One can think of Marvel Superheroes as being children of the Atomic Age. Their major use of poetic license aside, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were very pro-science.

So I was tickled to see that SaveOnEnergy.com/uk came out with their list of which Marvel Comics superhero are the most eco-friendly. They used a ranking system based on several eco-factors for 30 of the top superheroes, to rank Spider-Man at the top and Iron Man at the bottom.

Instead of wondering who is the strongest or coolest, wondering who cares about the environment the most is an interesting twist. And is an ingenious way to reach a different audience on the subjects of energy and the environmental. It is also no coincidence, I think, that Marvel Comics rose to prominence at the same time that the environmental movement was also rising in America.

Peter Parker choosing his own spider webs over taking a car to get around, reduces his carbon footprint and, along with other things, earned him the top spot. At the other end, Tony Stark, who chooses lavish cars, polluting technologies and is just stubborn about change of any kind, comes up last.

SaveOnEnergy.com/uk decided on these particular 30 superheroes as being the most iconic with the highest ability to influence serious ecological thinking in the general public. They ranked and scored each superhero’s contribution to the environment from 1-30, with 30 being a positive contribution and 1 a negative contribution based on the following criteria:

1. Ethos and background – what kind of homeland does the superhero hail from and what are their attitudes towards planets and their ecosystems?

2. Personal composition – does the superhero possess a natural ability or power and how did they acquire it?

3. Raw damage potential – how much could the superhero’s natural ability harm the planet?

4. Choice of weapons – what kind of weapon(s) does the superhero wield and how does it impact the environment?

5. Choice of transportation – does the superhero waste energy and fuel driving to their destination or do they make greener travel choices?

Considering the most recent box office film for each superhero, SaveOnEnergy also tallied the number of times each superhero caused damage to the environment and/or prevented damage to the environment in their most recent box office films, ranking and scoring them the same way.

The final eco-friendly scores were calculated by totaling these scores.

So it’s nice to see that the high-scoring Wonder Women has a new movie coming out for Christmas.



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