Warming Trends: A Comedy With Solar Themes, a Greener Cryptocurrency and the

CULTURE

‘Bromates’: Passionately Pushing Solar

A message about climate change and renewable energy underlies a new bro-mantic comedy coming to theaters next month.

In “Bromates,” directed by Court Crandall (“Old School”) and starring Josh Brener (“Silicon Valley”) and Lil Rel Howery (“Get Out”), a pair of lifelong friends—Sid, a passionate solar panel salesman, and Jonesie, an eccentric, foolhardy womanizer—get dumped by their live-in girlfriends on the same day and decide to move in with each other. Through their misadventures that eventually lead to an odd encounter with rapper Snoop Dogg (played by himself), Sid excitedly tells everyone he meets—even the women he attempts to flirt with—about the benefits of solar energy, both for the environment and for energy savings. 

Take a first look at the film in this exclusive clip: 

The inclusion of solar factoids was very intentional. The film is the brainchild of Chris Kemper, CEO of the solar company Palmetto, who co-wrote the script with Crandall. Kemper compared “Bromates” to “Don’t Look Up” as another example of an entertaining, comedic film with an underlying message about the environment.

“You can take these narratives and make them more mainstream, however subtle, it doesn’t have to be in your face,” Kemper said. “So it’s more of a dialogue. Like, after a movie, you’re talking to friends about it, those kinds of things.”

The movie will be out in theaters in the U.S. on Oct. 7.

SOLUTIONS

Ethereum’s 99.992 Percent Carbon Footprint Reduction

The blockchain Ethereum underwent a major software update this week that experts have compared to turning a gas-powered vehicle into an electric vehicle while the car is in motion. A report by the Crypto Carbon Ratings Institute found that the update reduced the electricity consumption of the blockchain—which supports the second-largest cryptocurrency, Ether—by 99.988 percent, and its carbon footprint by 99.992 percent.

On Thursday, the long-awaited Ethereum “merge,” as it is known, shifted the foundation of the blockchain without disrupting investments after nearly two years of preparation. The merge changed the way that transactions are validated on this cryptocurrency model, which unlike traditional currency systems is not backed by a centralized institution. 

The fundamentals of the merge are complicated, but here’s the gist of what happened: the Ethereum blockchain formerly relied on a “proof of work” security method, where energy-intensive cryptocurrency mining computers solve complex equations to validate transactions in exchange for more cryptocurrency, to a “proof of stake” method, where significant investors validate transactions, staking a portion of their investment as a kind of collateral to keep them honest in their validations. 

Shifting to “proof of stake” has long been seen as the most significant way to reduce the carbon footprint of the crypto industry. A White House report out this month estimated that crypto activity in the United States leads to approximately 25 to 50 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year, similar to the amount emitted from diesel fuel used in the country’s railroads.

“Proof of work is wasteful by design,” said Scott Faber, senior vice president of government affairs at the Environmental Working Group. “And the merge shows that a code change from proof of work to proof of stake is possible.”

Now that Ethereum has made this shift, the pressure is on for Bitcoin to follow. Bitcoin accounts for about two-thirds of the electricity used by the crypto industry worldwide, according to the White House report. Environmental Working Group, Greenpeace and other organizations have launched a campaign urging leaders in technology and finance who have big investments in Bitcoin and presumably have sway within the Bitcoin community to shift the blockchain…