My story today on changing out my incandescent recessed lighting for high efficiency LED units couldn’t have come too soon. I don’t have to worry now.
This video below is one of the most talked about Superbowl commercials today. You have to watch it more than once to catch all the visual gags in it.
Watch the Audi commercial featuring Cheap Trick, the Green Police, and the Audi A3 TDI® clean diesel, Green Car Journals 2010 Green Car of the Year®.
Here’s another variant with a styrofoam sniffing anteater:
There’s a whole series of these which you can see at the “Green Police” channel on YouTube here
That’s hilarious, but it makes me squirm. How will it be before the EPA has the microscopes out?
… how *long* will it be …
I thought the Betty White and the Favre commercials were the best.
I didn’t like the green police ad. Seems like there really are nuts who’d love to see green police like that.
When I saw it, I kept hoping there would be a satirical skewering around the bend. I thought maybe our nefarious oil overlords had sprung for a spot during the Superbowl.
Green: It’s the color of bovine semi-solid body waste. What? It’s not like it’s inorganic or something!
Interesting message. I suppose if one is not of the nuanced, NYT-reading, edgey class, they might get the impression that this is a realistic view of the greenies hope and change. Then what kind of car one is permitted would only be a minor consideration. The ad agency must have decided that potential Audi buyers would not see the ad in that manner?
Strange as it may seem, my favorite few frames in this commercial were:
The anteater. :-]
And; actually: This was indeed a great commercial; from a professional ”grab the viewer and keep their attention” point of view.
OTOH: There are parts of the USA (CA comes to mind) where parts of this commercial are or could be not too far from the truth. Scary; VERY scary. . .
The “Green Weenies” outed.
This is what they really want, isn’t it. More fines, more revenues.
I think Audi knew what it was doing with this commercial — the comedy proves it. The commercial may sell a few cars but the hidden agenda is larger.
BRILLIANT!
OK, that is really NOT funny. Too close to the truth to be funny.
I did like this one. But I liked the new “Pledge of Allegiance” one better – “And I will be paying interest to China, for the rest of my life.”
The times, they are a’changing.
If the “green” mindset is now the butt of a funny commercial, at the superbowl, no less, then they are far down on the loosing streak. I could not imagine a commercial like this to air just 3 months ago.
Of course, in an actual Green Police State there would have to be some justification for driving any car anywhere. You’d have to say something like: “My name’s Pachauri and I have to get to the airport in New York because I’m due at cricket practice in Delhi this afternoon.” That seems to work well.
That cinches it. No Audi for me.
I like the environmentally correct police dog.
I don’t get it. It’s supposed to be an advert for cars, but after watching it, I want to buy shotgun shells. What gives? Is there some kind of subliminal message?
This commercial scared the hell out of me. Coming from a German company it was a little scarier. Where were the armbands and swastikas? “…. excuse me, sir, we need to see your papers …. we seem to have a problem, these are not recycled, please come with me…. to the green re-education camp….”
Such trashy ads only weaken the ant-AGW side and strengthen the push for an Orwellian society. Hitler would be so happy in our future world.
Repost…
Audi just had a “Green Police” commercial in the 4th quarter of the Super Bowl (thanks for posting) It was funny, but I also believe that this talks directly to the core issue that fuels revolt even amongst the anti-AGW wave currently sweeping the globe.
While the commercial makes fun of being “green”, it points to a fundamental reaction of people who are sick and tired of having this eco crap shoved down their throat – the pinnacle of which would have been a global treaty like Copenhagen driven by IPCC.
Bad science – yes it was…
Bad politics – absolutely, and a very corrupt process…
Bad timing (worldwide economic downturn) – possibly the most important silent component…
Bad karma – “the watermelons should not have tried to take over our (normal people) lives with such arrogance because the retribution will be a @#$%^&* ! “
Ya gotta love the treatment of Cheap Trick’s tune “Dream Police”!! I wonder if they re-recorded it fresh, or just edited it?
When the comedians start to weigh in on something, the end is near….we can only hope!!
While they arrested the guy for the plastic bag they should have asked if he had Astroturfed his lawn yet. If not, got him on two counts!
Note to self never buy an Audi.
By golly, Cheap Trick re-recorded the tune and made it into “Green Police”!!
Here’s the link to their website: http://www.cheaptrick.com/
There’s a download MP3 available from the Audi Facebook page. Freakin’ hilarious!!
Peter of Sydney (21:39:59)
I think most people are not so dumb. It was hilarious and a direct slap in every AGW-spewing-extreme-environmentalist’s face! It beamed irony!
Sorry, but i cannot provide references for the following,
but its worth knowing.
Audi is closely related to Porsche.
The then CEO of Porsche is on record, about 2 yrs ago, as
saying the eco-green push will all be forgotten in a few years.
They’re trying to paint skeptics as conspiracy theorists who believe the green police will inevitably become a reality.
Meanwhile, a retired USMC drill sergeant searches through people’s trash in a rural Pennsylvania town to ensure compliance with recycling laws (USA Today article I found circa 2003). It already IS a reality.
Nice try, but I think Audi may have unwittingly helped us with this ad.
Urgent…from UEA CRU Super Bowl watch team to US partners:
Guys
Please don’t any of you tell the UK Government, local authorities or police forces about this data. They will only use it as a training video for all their jobsworths. Better to delete it first. Or could you not hide behind the Data Protection Act?
I will ask Mike and Tom to the same. Thanks, hugs, luvya, Go Hockey Team!
Phil
It seems to me that this advertisement works on three levels, the three levels of “climate awareness”.
Dedicated greenies will salivate at the thought of plastic criminals being brought to task for their wickedness and will see Audi as a valuable sponsor of the message the whole world must learn Choruses of Kumbaya will be sung as the tofu burgers circulate.
People with no interest in the topic will see it as an entertaining way to advertise a car.
Dedicated non-believers in the religion du jour will sigh with a pained expression signifying “if only it were a joke”.
Of course, it’s not a joke. The Green Police exist already. Here in the UK people face financial penalties for putting the wrong type of material in their (compulsory) recycling bins. Ownership of a large car rather than a small car attracts tax penalties. Businesses have to pay fees/taxes according to how much carbon dioxide their activities produce. Our electricity and gas billed rise ever higher because of green levies on energy suppliers.
The move towards pricing/valuing activities in units of carbon dioxide rather than in money gains pace every year. The further it goes, the more it will have to be enforced and the more Green Police will be required. It’s moronic, but it’s the way things are.
What are GREEN POLICE ? Are they some kind of official authorities?
I have no sound for youtube so I don’t understand what is happening.
REPLY: check the tag for this post “satire”. – Anthony
I think the ad displayed a lot of Audacity, myself
What am I missing? Audi skewering GREEN, but touting their “clean diesel”?
Hmmmm, I’m not sure what to make of this add… The first three quarters of it was set up to show how unbelievably nuts warmies are, whether or not it was irony. Then they try to sell a car??? What? Were? They? Thinking? The only thing I can guess is that they think that wacko greenie nut jobs are watching the superbowl, and will buy their clean diesel in droves. I sure hope that there are not that many of them that they are a target market.
It scared and revolted me. My thought? “I’ll never buy one of those cars or anything green ever. Unless I get a VERY good deal. A brand new Audi for $200 and it is Green too? Let’s make a deal.
satire?
Maight be not in the next generation…
http://www.climatecops.com/
To endorse Fat Bigot’s remarks.
In UK this is perilously close to reality.
Already failure to comply with recycling directives is a finable offence. Many local authority inspectors have the absolute right to enter your home or premises without warrants in search of evidence of this.
We have more public CCTV cameras per head of the population than any other country on Earth. New taxes are always presented as ‘green’ taxes, though the money raised is rarely spent on ‘green’ projects.
Our mid-term national energy security is at risk because of government dithering between choice of new coal power stations (bad – greenhouse gases) or nuclear (very bad – government ministers were all in CND when spotty youths), so have instead chosen to rely on wind power. We have juts had the coldest winter in many people’s memory where prevailing weather conditions meant that the wind didn;t blow. For three weeks. And so on ..and so on….
As a commercial, I felt it tended more to the UK sense of humour than the US…but with a dash of Police Squad thrown in. Very very funny, and obviously very well thought out. It deserves a wider international distribution
I guess I should mention that Cheap Trick is a home town band. And that one year the city car sticker featured them.
Loved the commercials – well done.
Well in Australia they are training our green police with building audits starting by the end of the year on commercial buildings and residential buildings later. I understand similiar systems are in the works for the UK and USA.
Already we have a system called BASIX (its on the net) where whenever I design any residential building over $50,000 I have to log in, put my design in the program and then tick all the right boxes on light bulbs, double glazing, water tanks etc Unless I get a certain rating or change the design to achieve a rating it will not be approved for construction. When it is constructed then it is checked to make sure all the green compliance measures are in place prior to occupation.
The future is here now!
Why an Audi ad, you ask? Great approach! The diesel-turbo direct injection (TDI) will knock you back into your seat, whilst also giving great mileage and emissions!
So, if you WANT to be a greenie, you can either splurge for a fun-to-drive rocket like the Audi, or spring for a Prius….oh wait, I forgot about the brake recall!
ha ha ha!! How many greenies are going through agony over THAT?
After the geriatric Who performed so poorly, I stopped watching a took a nap. Gray is the new green.
You couldn’t invent this if you tried
Keywords: big brother, predictive programming, familiarization, Edward Bernays (father of PR_opaganda)…
Just more psy-ops conditioning of the masses. I do not find this funny at all. My niece and I were watching the game and she was flabbergasted when she saw these ads. For the first time the issue came home to her. She had been oblivious to the whole issue till today. The add may have a whip-lash effect.
Wow – talk about over-analyzing! This campaign is freaking HILARIOUS… sorry if you have thin enough skin to see it as an insult.
Maybe you have to have been part of the target audience… ie. people who remember when Dream Police was about the biggest thing going in music. I swear, I got goosebumps when the music started, I instantly knew it was going to be “green police”…
What I got out of it was: the whole “green” thing is a ridiculous farce, but hey, buy our car anyway, it’s good.
Beautiful irony, Lucy… love the 100 watt bulbs. Luckily I can still get them here at the dollar store 🙂
It mocks the Greens (very Alinsky-esque) and at the same time portrays the Audi as a subversive means of beating the tyrannical greens.
I was thinking that Monty Python must have covered this several decades ago.
And then I rediscovered the Village Idiot Sketch
Watch for the absolutely priceless lines at around 2:40
“Mr Figgis was no ordinary idiot, he is a lecturer in idiocy at the University of East Anglia”
It may be funny but it’s bizarre. It surely looks like a commercial that is making fun out of the green policies. But why is it a commercial for an energy-efficient car? The viewers who like the fun are unlikely to buy “green cars” like that.
Let me offer you a possibility: they *actually* want to scare the green customers that there is a green police and they must actually buy green cars. And many of the green customers are talented enough to react exactly in this way. 😉
They should really have used the Dead Kennedie’s “California Uber Alles” as the song…
FatBigot (22:11:12)
“Of course, it’s not a joke. The Green Police exist already. Here in the UK people face financial penalties for putting the wrong type of material in their (compulsory) recycling bins.”
FatBigot is dead right, and this is simply not funny to anybody living in UK.
Some authorities are even putting computer chips in bins to check what goes in!!
This is the land of George Orwell remember, we have thought police, camera’s on every street corner, state broadcaster to keep us all “On Message”.
Wake up over there, it’s coming to you soon, and you are going to be very annoyed.
BTW little know fact of the day:- George Orwell:- real name Eric Arthur BLAIR.
Green. Why is green the color of nature? Looking at the earth, I see an awful lot of blue, followed by shades of brown, white, then green. Looking out… Black. A whoooole lot of black, with some specks of white to break up the monotony. Yet green is the color of nature.
That senselessness aside, if I were Audi, I wouldn’t be proud to be the car that kisses the Green State’s derriere. Heh, come to think of it maybe Audi and the Jolly Green Giant could team up and do a commercial where… never mind! Point is, I can’t stand this either, those companies who figure to get in on the good side of authoritarianism. Like the green color of nature, they strut around like they’re so big, important, and desireable when in fact they’re in the very small minority that most sensible people would as soon steer clear of.
So I dub this new car the Audi ‘Kisser. I don’t care if that’s what it isn’t called. It’s what it is!
I did not like this ad at all – do you know that there are people out there that WANT this type of patrol? Look at San Francisco – they’re about half-way there now.
paullm (22:23:23) :
What am I missing? Audi skewering GREEN, but touting their “clean diesel”?
The ad works by making the Audi driver appear smart. He’s fooled the green cops and not only got away with it, but been waved past the queue. How?
Because he’s using ‘green’ diesel in a super efficient ‘vorsprung durch teknik’ engine, but the cops don’t realise it’s a relatively high performance car, so the smart Audi driver doesn’t just get to breeze past the queuing hoi polloi, but they get to taste his rubber too.
The subtext is that it’s smart to be green, but it’s even smarter to appear to be green while having fun burning up the tarmac using more fuel.
From a post i did on dec 16th….
********THE GREEN POLICE*********
Who says it couldn’t happen??
Check out this article by Justin the founder of I Love CO2.
http://ilovecarbondioxide.com/
Then come back here and sing this with me, a modified “Cheap Trick” song.
“The green police
They live inside of my head
The green police
They come to me in my bed
The green police
They’re coming to arrest me
Oh no
‘Cause they’re waiting for me
Looking for me
Every single night
They’re driving me insane
Those green men inside my brain”
I dunno whether to laugh or cry.
Sad days indeed.
Baa Humbug of Brisbane (Reply)
Wed 16 Dec 09 (01:07am)
Titter ye not! The green police are everywhere! Last week the council refuse collectors refused to take away my recycled plastics and metals because I PUT THEM OUT FOR COLLECTION IN A RED CRATE AND NOT A GREEN CRATE!
Weeks ago my green one blew away in a gale and I refuse to pay the exhorbitant cost of replacing it with an official plastic crate. Naturally, on phoning up and querying the claims of the taxpayer funded flunkeys, I demanded a copy of the council creed that states I must use the OFFICIAL crate only. There wasn’t one. Crate colour wasn’t mentioned either.
Taxpayers pay through the nose for council services and the contractors the council hires to provide some of these services are making up stupid rules to wriggle out of performing said services.
Oh and my main wheelie bin (trash can on wheels) has an electronic spy on board. Or at least it did.
Honestly, you couldn’t make this up…
Since when is DIESEL clean?? It produces the most POLLUTION and HEALTH problem and accounts for 80% of smog. The world is nuts!
LIke the other Brits say, this is no bloody joke to us, intended satire or no. We already have the green police and there’s no doubt they’ll become more powerful as the deluded green apparatchiks and politicians tighten their grasp on us. One man from my home town in Wales was prosecuted for putting a single envelope in the wrong recycling box and found guilty. This is, I repeat, no joke – it’s coming to a republic near you soon.
Perhaps seeing something like this will wake them up. As someone mentioned above, this could be a real wake up call to people who haven’t bothered to follow the debate.
A perfect example of the true lunacy of the whole issue is today’s article in The Australian quoting our “Climate Change” Minister, the ever robotic Penny Wong, as saying that the emissions of the million or so feral camels in Austalia don’t matter (something I totally agree with, by the way). However, what was her stated reason? That under Kyoto only the emissions of domestic animals count! Well really, what’s the point of worrying about something you can’t control and tax? If this doesn’t beat Village Idiot sketch it comes close!
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/feral-camels-clear-in-penny-wongs-carbon-count/story-e6frg6nf-1225827641354
Here’s a repaet from Niche Modeling blog of a year ago, re Top Gear:
“Did you see the Jeremy interview with two lovely looking BBC lady reporters? One of them did a fairly good time around the circuit in the average family car, but came more than half way down the board of times. Jeremy explained that it was wet weather when she did her drive, and had it been dry, she would have been higher up the board, about here. “Then why don’t you stick it right up there, right now?” was the question, the only one really, that I have seen leave Jeremy speechless.
Re Science, of course if you make a heavier car you lose efficiency. It’s a poor excuse to claim benefit from regenerative braking into the electricals, like Prius. Reason is, when your brakes wore out would you rather pay for a new set of disc pads or a whole new set of electro-mechanical components? I’d rather pay for one of those BBC lasses.”
Hilarious. The irony is doubly delicious with this ad for incandescent bulbs displayed right below the videos:-
100 Watt Light Bulbs UK
Buy From The UK Premier Bulb Supplier. Low Prices, Fast Delivery
TheLightBulb.co.uk
Think I’ll stock up before they get banned – can’t stand those feeble and toxic florescent replacements – much prefer the nice cosy glow of incandescent lights.
I think it’s a superbly clever advert on every level.
It’s humerous, It makes fun of econuts and it pointedly underlines people’s diminishing freedom to behave their own way and own what they want.
But then it does its job as an advert showing the cars as eco-friendly and eco-futureproof so as to be a legal ‘object of desire’ for both sides of the ‘debate’ .
Not as if the A3 TDi is particularly green. In Aus at least it scores a very average 3.5 stars on the Green Vehicle Guide. http://www.greenvehicleguide.gov.au
Now the petrol version is different – 5 stars.
Absolutely fantastic. What a piss-take. Great to see we are starting to laugh at these fools.
Cheers
Michael
Larry Huldén (22:14:49) :
(…)
REPLY: check the tag for this post “satire”. – Anthony
Satire – Have you been to the UK recently? When you hear about “green job” creation just remember this advert.
And you wouldn’t be alone.
It’s a very suggestive joke, they are selling a green car and Audi are Germans. It isn’t mocking green attitudes, just creating humour from exaggeration.
ecofascism
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/sealed/gw/greennazis.htm
Only through a re-integration of humanity into the whole of nature can our people be made stronger. That is the fundamental point of the biological tasks of our age. Humankind alone is no longer the focus of thought, but rather life as a whole . . . This striving toward connectedness with the totality of life, with nature itself, a nature into which we are born, this is the deepest meaning and the true essence of National Socialist thought.”
Ernst Lehmann, Biologischer Wille. Wege und Ziele biologischer Arbeit im neuen Reich, München, 1934
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofascism
That commercial was, possibly, the most disturbing thing I’ve seen on television in the last 20 years.
This is VERY clever advertising.
I used to be an advertising planner (someone who attempts to get inside the heads of their customers to develop strategy). I would be extremely proud of this campaign – both professionally AND as an AGW skeptic.
Very few companies manage to read the zeitgist well enough to blend sophisticated satire with a sales message.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. The REAL tipping point is when the comedians start making fun of AGW alarmism. This is now happening on mainstream BBC comedy shows (Mock the Week) and we see it here now in US advertising.
Some people seem to think that this advertising campaign may be a ‘softening up’ exercise for things to come (with comments like ‘This is already happening in the UK! etc).
I don’t believe that to be the case. I think the existing ‘Green Police’ in their various guises have overstepped the mark, and that we are slap bang in the middle of a popular culture tipping point.
Bring on more green satire I say!
Re: Michael In Sydney (Feb 8 02:23),
Exactly, Michael! The Germans, despite stereotyping, do have a sense of humour – besides which, this was probably done by an American ad agency.
Ad men tend to keep a very close watch on public opinion and, when they start making fun of something, you can be pretty sure that’s the way public opinion is headed. When something like greenism becomes an object of ridicule people find it very hard to take seriously.
As Spenc Canada posted above:
So, that’s one more person starting to think about it in terms of more than just “saving the planet” already. I suspect the possible “whip-lash effect” may well have been intentional.
I’m struggling to see how diesel engines are clean, certainly in the context of warming effects. I can see how efficient combustion may reduce gaseous emissions, but no matter how efficient there is still the problem of carbon particulates, and I refer you to a recent thread on WUWT attributing glacier melt to black carbon.
We Western Canadians love our turbo diesels and Audi bringing that stellar TDI power plant they’ve enjoyed for decades in Europe, Indochina and the rest of the intelligent civilized world is indeed a great thing. Excellent power, fantastic fuel mileage and a dirt cheap cost of ownership? If it helps just think of all those in the Canadian wilderness who do have a VW Jetta TDI to go along with that F350 King Farmer.
RichieP (01:26:16) :
‘LIke the other Brits say, this is no bloody joke to us, intended satire or no. We already have the green police and there’s no doubt they’ll become more powerful as the deluded green apparatchiks and politicians tighten their grasp on us. One man from my home town in Wales was prosecuted for putting a single envelope in the wrong recycling box and found guilty. This is, I repeat, no joke – it’s coming to a republic near you soon.’
Why do you keep electing the same type of politician. It sound like you could use your Tea Party Movement.
Yes, I didn’t read that as irony at all. Just a complete misread of where the American people are on the green issue. It’s perhaps the most brilliant piece of anti-green advertising ever – but as it was selling a green car on exactly that and only that merit, it certainly wasn’t intended as such.
You must recognize that this is and will be the “GREEN-goes” so awaited Armageddon. These adds will kill non-“greengoes” by the thousands just from laughing!!!
Just don´t worry buddies, the december 21th, 2012, it´s near, you are happily done!
“What am I missing? Audi skewering GREEN, but touting their “clean diesel”?
”
What I took away from it is a skewering of what the “green agenda” would love to do (and ARE in the process of, though at a lower scale) but basically saying, “We may not be able to stop it, but if it does come true here’s a car that they’d approve of that YOU’d approve of.”
But yes, pretty terrifying stuff.
Keywords: predictive programming, Edward Bernays – father of PR(ropaganda)…
Ranks right up there with the Apple 1984 commercial.
Geoff Sherrington (01:43:31) : Top Gear also did a “real world” comparison between a Prius and a 1.4TDI Volkswagen Lupo. This included some long hill climbs where the Toyota’s batteries quickly ran down, leaving it with no power assist. The diesel gave better mileage, and much better performance.
But I have to agree with other UK commenters – this is perilously close to reality…
I was with a group of Environmental Educators once. They were developing a program for kids. They showed four types of objects and asked children how long they think that it took that object to decay. They showed aluminum cans and Styrofoam. I think the other two things were paper and tin cans. The paper of course composts quickly, the tin can rusted and also deteriorated rather quickly, The aluminum lasted a bit longer but the Styrofoam, they said, lasted a million years or something like that. Their lesson being that Styrofoam was the biggest evil. Very dramatic but wrong. These were freshly graduated, education majors. Not chemists.
Styrofoam is inert. Its structure is something like wood. Termites will eat it. On the other hand aluminum, creates big environmental messes when it is extracted from the ground leaving behind great big pools of contaminated acid. If you do anything for the environment, it should be recycle aluminum. Styrofoam is nothing compared to aluminum. I noticed that they got this right in Washington State Parks, last time I was there they only recycled aluminum.
I’m pretty sure the ad is aimed at poking fun at Prius drivers/owners/lovers without mentioning the car or Toyota by name. Most people drive a Prius to eco-pose – that’s why the Prius (with it’s distinctive shape) outsells the drivetrain-similar hybrid Camry by a large margin, because of the pose factor.
The Germans (VW/Audi, BMW, MB etc) have been pushing diesel technology for decades, and are probably frustrated at the fixation in the USA over hybrids, when clean diesel technology is cheaper, as-clean and simpler than hybrid tech.
To me, the ad says ‘want a green car? Buy an Audi, and laugh at the self-righteous Prius loving types’.
You’ve got to remember that diesel acceptance in the USA is very, very low – they are trying to get cut-through on recognition that the diesel Audi is just as ‘green’ as a hybrid.
wayne (21:47:27) :
While they arrested the guy for the plastic bag they should have asked if he had Astroturfed his lawn yet. If not, got him on two counts!
This commercial really rankled me last night as too many of the scenarios seemed not that far off the mark. In Toronto, Garbage police – check! Not allowed to cut down trees on one’s own property, check! However, here in Toronto, Astroturf is deemed better than using herbicides to kill dandelions on the lawn. Most pesticides and herbicides were outlawed first by the Toronto municipal and later by the Ontario provincial government: the latter allows the use of Roundup but the former don’t – and that’s the only option allowed as a week-killer in Ontario, which of course is useless for lawns. Toronto citizens, fed up with the time involved in becoming weed-wallahs, have increasingly turned to astroturf as the solution. This seems to be fine with the city of Toronto, despite the fact that most wildlife probably benefits more from the occasional use of weed-killer on a natural lawn. What a wonderful Green world!
We’ve just seen a glimpse of a future…
To those who worry that some would like to see actual green police, they’re already here in some places, at least by name!
A few years back in Massachusetts we we gridlocked at the Sagamore Rotary next to a pickup truck with MA govt tags, whose side panel read “Massachusetts Environmental Police, Patrol Boat Maintenance Division”.
Less reassuring than that brave new scene for me was the fact that it was truck number 140-something.
To be fair, with the miles of coast, marsh and estuary in MA, I can see needing to monitor a lot of activity, but it did give me a turn to see “Environmental Police” on a government truck.
(paranoia on) Maybe that was a first effort, to get people used to the idea, and now these ads are the precursor to the force entering everyday life? (paranoia off–lol)
I liked the commercial. It was a great ad for Ford. The green police would have a hard time catching me in a new 412hp Mustang. 🙂
It´s time for us to see and hear once more to George Carlin´s genius:
When I first saw that commercial, I said to my friends who were also watching the game with me: “That isn’t too far from the truth.” They agreed with me. I thought it was clever. And at the same time show people the dystopia the eco-commies want us to live in.
What? no Brown Shorts on the Green Police?…
General Al should be corpse martialed…
h/t american Thinker.
Algore seems to building a loser profile for himself.
To UK skeptik–we have computer chipped wheelie bins too–but only for our recycleables. We get COUPONS sent to us based on how good we are at filling them!
So we are at the volume stage–not sorting yet. Getting us habituated.
And, no doubt, comparing what is logged about our recycling habits to what is purchased (via our store discount cards and barcode scanning at checkout) so that when that great day comes and the right people are in control, they’ll know exactly who to come for.
Not funny, I know. All the more reason to reduce our GOVERNMENT footprint at any and all costs. It has, at all levels, become a self-perpetuating runaway growth and control machine.
I am a big fan of satire. Jonathan Swift’s “A modest proposal” is a classic. Yet I also failed to laugh at Audi’s commercial. I have acquaintances (not friends) on the left that have in the past advocated using force to achieve their “just” ends. To me, the “Dream Police” commercial was too close to whistling pass the graveyard. Which come to think of it, is the mark of really good satire.
I checked what other people are saying on other blogs.
David Roberts says, “The ad only makes sense if it’s aimed at people who acknowledge the moral authority of the green police — people who may find those obligations tiresome and constraining on occasion, who only fitfully meet them, who may be annoyed by sticklers and naggers, but who recognize that living more sustainably is in fact the moral thing to do. This basically describes every guy I know.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-roberts/audis-green-police-ad-isn_b_453064.html
Katherine Griwert writes, “The Green Police’s humorous delivery has a serious underlying message. “If everyone followed this rule [only one napkin], more than one billion pounds of napkins could be saved from landfills each year,” Pfiefer says. Audi’s Green Police campaign is geared to remind Americans that even simple eco-friendly practices can make a big difference in the nation’s conservation efforts.”
http://www.thedailytell.com/2010/02/audi-and-the-green-police-will-unleash-a-game-plan-for-environmentally-friendly-behavior-at-the-super-bowl/
Wii said, “I think that the idea is great. For too many years people like you have been allowed to poison others without a second thought. Soon that will stop. You can go the easy way, or the hard way. The hard way will *not* be quick and painless.”
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100207220917AAK9Ih5
I am less inclined than ever to buy an Audi.
Mike Ramsey
Scarlet Pumpernickel (01:09:04) :
How can you not see the irony? Lighten up!
He’s packing a bundle of horses under the hood and burning ‘green’ and the Green Police just pass him by!
They are not so much selling a green car, they are selling diesel as able to burn green and clean, you keep the performance. Bet that clinches the Addy Awards for that agency!
I use white vinegar to kill dandelions. Just pour a little vinegar in the center of the plant, in a few hours it wilts and then dies all the way down to the root. After it rains and washes away the acidity throw a pinch of grass seed in the space left.
Weed and Feed is the worst. It will collapse your lawn eventually. It kills all the bugs and worms that aerate the roots. My neighbor used it on his lawn and you can see the compacted dead dirt on his side and the lush green grass on my side.
High nitrogen fertilizer is even worse. It promoted a quick green top growth which the roots cannot support, it eventually collapses too.
I use cheep 10-10-10 spring and fall, mulch my clippings, seed any bare spots spring and fall, use vinegar on the dandelions quickly before they spread, and leave the rest of the little weeds and clover. My lawn looks better than anybody’s on my block!
vigilantfish (06:07:09) : BTW, I know that you in Canada have a huge mining residue pond at Thompson, Manitoba, filled with nickel, copper, palladium, which contains a 6 to 7% of arsenic metal. And I know it because I developed a process for extracting all metals from this residue (in a foreing country).
As you may suppose the metal values are high, however “green stupidity” prohibits to remove it and sell it because it´s forbidden to transport arsenic and, at the same time, people don´t want to have it there and even greenpeace has rallied many times to remove it. This is why I call those “green” policies “green-goes” silly policy. You can see clearly what the purposes of these policies are: They are not contradictory as it may seem, its goal is above that contradiction: To destroy any progess whatsoever wildly promoting poverty and the return to the supposed “green golden era” of hunting and recollection, in atonement with Gaia.
… but I buy and horde incandescent light bulbs.
A single compact florescent light bulb has enough mercury in it to contaminate 6000 gallons of drinking water. The ones I had that were supposed to last 10 years lasted one and a half.
Don’t they use crumbled Styrofoam in potting soil?
Re: Austin (05:06:08)
Thanks for posting that Apple Commercial from 1984, how apt for today.
without computers and the Internet ( that Al Gore invented ), The Global Warming movement would be running full speed ahead, with very little dissent, now Big Brother is having a tougher time.
Sponsored by James McDermott, HR1444 Sub section 4B6:
“Whether a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people could be developed, and how such a requirement could be implemented in a manner that would strengthen the social fabric of the Nation and overcome civic challenges by bringing together people from diverse economic, ethnic, and educational backgrounds.”
The legal descriptions of this “mandatory service requirement for all able young people” had to do with young volunteers updating buildings to be more ecologically sustainable, among other things.
this ad almost annoyed me – but the Cheap Trick remake won me over, I couldn’t help but like it even if, like Bubba, I did want to stockup on shotgun shells.
Would Pachauri qualify for diplomatic immunity?
I don’t think Styrofoam is bad but…
During two weeks in Budapest two years ago, I could not find a single place that had take-out coffee. Even the McDonald’s in Budapest had an espresso bar where you sat down with ceramic cups and saucers… even at the gas-station rest-stop on the high-way they had ceramic cups and saucers and a place to sit down!
Did I just commit thought-crime?
Heil vegan reich.
This ad clearly went over the heads of a lot of posters here. It’s a clever satire that exposes the basically fascist Greenie mind-set. Write a letter to Audi and tell them you loved it. I thought it was what we’ve been waiting for.
H.R.2857
GIVE Act (Reported in House)
Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act, or the GIVE Act
SEC. 152. ESTABLISHMENT OF NATIONAL CIVILIAN COMMUNITY CORPS PROGRAM
SEC. 1506. TRAINING.
including a focus on energy conservation, environmental stewardship or conservation, infrastructure improvement, urban and rural development, or disaster preparedness needs
I enjoyed what I took to be mocking the greens, but it didn’t make me want to buy an Audi. That’s a confusing message!
Scarlet Pumpernickel (01:09:04) :
“Since when is DIESEL clean?? It produces the most POLLUTION and HEALTH problem and accounts for 80% of smog. The world is nuts!”
Scarlet,
http://www.greencar.com/articles/difference-between-diesel-gasoline-engines.php
“Many Americans still envision a diesel-powered vehicle belching out clouds of black smoke. But if that’s your view of diesel vehicles now, then you have a lot to learn.”
“Computerized, turbocharged diesel engines equipped with emission control devices have pretty much taken care of this very obvious pollution problem.”
“With the growing attention being devoted to C02 reductions these days, not to mention legislation that’s sure to drive the auto industry toward higher efficiency and lower C02-emitting vehicles, diesel is sure to have a promising future.”
Incandescent light bulb sales have been banned in Germany.
Styrofoam is banned in Seattle.
You can also be fined in Seattle if excessive amounts of recyclables are found in your garbage.
Butch (07:41:07) :
I enjoyed what I took to be mocking the greens, but it didn’t make me want to buy an Audi. That’s a confusing message!
That sums it up for me too. I get the satire. I don’t get how Audi figures to sell green cars with it.
Mike Ramsey
@old construction worker (04:43:05) :
“RichieP (01:26:16) :
This is, I repeat, no joke – it’s coming to a republic near you soon.’
Why do you keep electing the same type of politician. It sound like you could use your Tea Party Movement.”
*All our main political parties share the same agw ideology and you couldn’t put a fag paper between them on this issue. The BNP (fascists) and UKIP (anti-EU no hopers) are the only serious dissenters and neither have the remotest chance of having any major (or minor for that matter) influence on our impending election. And I’m certainly not intending to vote for “traditional” Nazis! The saddest part is that in the UK, unlike the States, a Tea Party movement would require people to get up from Strictly Come Dancing on the TV and actually do something. Not a major facet of the average Brit’s life at the moment, given how utterly turned off politics we are. Also, most average folk are deeply indoctrinated by government propaganda and so don’t give much thought to these issues. Resigned acceptance is where the masses are, though it may change, but slowly. I hope so.
@Spenc Canada (23:30:40) :
“My niece and I were watching the game and she was flabbergasted when she saw these ads. For the first time the issue came home to her. ”
I believe that’s exactly what the ad was meant to do. Audi is on the side of liberty. They know that if the Greens do come into ascendancy to this degree, the issue will not be “this car or that” but “no car for you, comrade”. I can’t shake the suspicion that Audi is already stretched to the limit trying to meet all the useless regulations they must operate under; any more and even the big corporations like themselves will fold.
Oh, and I forgot to add: If I needed a car right now, and could afford a new one, I’d buy an Audi, and point to this ad as why. This is one of the bravest ads I’ve seen.
Hey, before it was revealed to be an ad for Audi, I thought it was promo for California!!! 🙂
r (06:48:00) :
… but I buy and horde incandescent light bulbs.
A single compact florescent light bulb has enough mercury in it to contaminate 6000 gallons of drinking water. The ones I had that were supposed to last 10 years lasted one and a half
Drom where did all mercury come from?….from Jupiter, Mars, a proxima centauri planet?…NO…it came from Mother Gaia, and to mother Gaia it will return, btw as all Gaia worshipers too. (or rather to hell?)
Zeke the Sneak (07:36:47) That is why, in history channel, in dicovery channel and through all progressive MSM preach about the End of the World, about armageddon, about mayan and hopi’s prophesies. YOU WANT those scenarios or you are hunching them as near possibilities, but, again, the USA or UK are not the world!: YOU have been selected to disappear from Gaia’s face, and you are already in such a process, thanks to greenies. The only way out left for you is to stop them right now.
When they announced the introduction of buses as mass transportation in our community a few years ago, I dreaded the smell and pollution that I thought they would cause. However, there has been next to no smell or pollution coming from these buses, even though they are obviously diesel-powered. I am quite impressed by the advances in cleaning up diesel!
I think this advertisement will be an interesting microscope into the world views of the people who see it.
I think you will find vastly differing responses to the message. As noted here on this blog, most of the hard core AGW “green” movement folks seem to have poorly developed senses of irony and humor. They will see the commercial as a view of the way the world should be and not find it funny or satirical. It will reinforce their world view that this is the way the world “ought to be”.
Meanwhile the folks who do not buy into the AGW movement will find it both hysterically funny and at a deep level disturbing as a glimpse of what the world could turn into if the AGW/Green movement is not throttled back.
For people in that camp (or susceptible to this line of thought) it will be a wake up call satire, that as mentioned above will make some folks do a double take, and start to ponder where this never ending parade of new regulations are heading. Some will think it far fetched until people in the UK point out that in some respects this world is already in the making.
The third group are the Yuppie players who are the natural market for the high performance Audie A3. They will see it for exactly what it is, a pitch that they can come off as a financially successful, intelligent, green environmentally aware individual (chick magnet) and still have a high performance car. Sort of like a tax shelter scheme, just a Machiavellian way to play the game and get what they really want and screw the green agenda.
I thought it was marvelous satire, and will have a strong negative impact on the Green movement (at least here in the U.S. ——– It might also increase, black market hordes of 100w incandescent bulbs, and shotgun shell sales as well 😉
Larry
brc, re: Prius drivers
I drive a Prius. I bought it because I liked the technology and I enjoy getting high MPGs. But, I must say, you are completely correct about the attitude of a typical Prius owner.
I used to participate in a Prius message forum on the internet. These guys are extremely overzealous, hysterical environmentalists. They count toilet flushes in order to save water, they spend thousands on appliances that will save them only dollars per year. In essence their environmentalism is more wasteful than the vast majority of the population.
Further, when it comes to global warming, they are by far the most thick headed, anti-intellectual people I’ve ever met. For instance, one user actually believed that when water freezes into ice, the ice stores energy. He feared that when the ice melted, it would release all of that energy stored up in the ice and further the effects of “global warming.”
I saved a screenshot of this because I have never seen someone confuse natural laws so poorly:
http://www.theclimateconspiracy.com/files/images/2010/01/Screen-shot-2010-01-17-at-6.31.10-PM-Jan-17.png
The same user subsequently posted an image of global temperatures and was puzzled why Australia was showing such warm temperatures. He failed to understand that Australia was in the southern hemisphere and that their seasons are approximately opposite of ours.
With Prius drivers, if you don’t worship CO2, then you are, of course, a denier, a flat-earther, etc. I’ve since been banned by the moderators because I asked for that stuff that alarmists hate: evidence.
It’s enough to make we want to push my car off a cliff. 🙂
r:
Much as I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, I am inclined to agree with you. For the greens, there are no technological solutions to any problem that are acceptable. The only acceptable route is to lower our standards of living dramatically. We must reduce, reuse and recycle, even if, as in Toronto’s case, most of the diverted waste apparently ends up in the dump anyway. I’m an avid recycler, hoping that the recycled waste will end up being used, but realize that this is in truth a pipe dream. Toronto is willing to ship its waste to Michigan, but generating energy from waste via in incinerator – a nice technological solution – is impossible because it would generate too much carbon dioxide.
In the meantime we have Dalton McGuinty, our Premier, committing Ontario to a future of “green energy” including a wind farm 2 km away from where I live. A contact with Samsung will create “green jobs” but will allow Samsung to market green energy, which we will be obliged to buy, at very profitable margins. Ontario is about to go the way of Spain and Germany, but McGuinty is duping Ontarians with promises that we’ll develop “green leadership” and will be selling our technology to the U.S. because of Obama’s cap-and-trade legislation. The sooner that falls, the better for us all!
Incidentally, for two years now the government and Ontario hydro have been trying to get Ontarians to hand over control of their electric meters to Ontario Hydro, so that they can turn off our air-conditioners at peak energy use times so as to conserve electricity. The bribe amount is that consumers get a one-time $25 rebate. In the meantime, our energy generating capacity is at early 1980 levels and there is no real urgency on the part of government to increase capacity, since the greens are convinced that making us all conserve is the way to go (our population has tripled since then). Urban dupes go along with this rubbish, but I worry that the green gestapo will one day make this remote control of our energy consumption mandatory for our own good!
Go Green Team!
Are some posters on here Stupid?
This Advert puts the Greens in the place of the establishment, and Audi drivers as the rebels. Which way do Audi think the prevailing fashion is blowing?
Hint Green != Cool (hehe).
Apparently, Audi also put out a Green Police quiz so participants can see how green they score. This confirms the menace some of us detected in the Superbowl ad!
hotrod ( Larry L ) (08:35:54) :
Larry,
I think you hit the nail on the head.
Mike Ramsey
The Audi ads are a spoof TODAY. Next year they may not be funny at all. They could be reality. The book, 1984 has been cited already …
Part 1, Chapter 2
It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children. And with good reason, for hardly a week passed in which The Times did not carry a paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little sneak — ‘child hero’ was the phrase generally used — had overheard some compromising remark and denounced its parents to the Thought Police.
Just substitute “Thought Police” for “Green Police.”
You can read the whole book here:
http://www.george-orwell.org/1984/0.html
Clive
Hilarious ad! Well done. Nice to see Madison Avenue finally catching up with the great comedian that warned of this 18 years ago:
Respect to Audi for originality.
This is very clever advertisement. It matters to Audi not a jot whether it is frightening or laughable – just consider the number of people who, thanks to the internet, are now discussing it. Brilliant!
The AGW social movement brought us perilously close to the absurdity of that Audi commercial.
What’s Audi’s message then? Proud to team up with the Khmer Verts? Is that it.
It’s good because it works on several levels. It horrifies those who’ve had similar experiences with green police-type bureaucrats, it pokes fun at the greenie mentality and likens it to fascism, it makes people laugh, and it sells a good fast car that runs on a petroleum product but doesn’t foul the air so much. As ExxonMobil said in a statement recently, everyone wants to reduce emissions.
I particularly like the final scene with cops being busted and clearly outranked by the green police for using styrofoam cups.
Diesel is very much more efficient (thermodynamically) than gasoline, and so does get much better fuel economy (~30% lower fuel consumption is a reasonable estimate), but the engine itself and down-stream systems to clean up the exhaust (remove particulates, NOx, etc) are quite expensive. I have driven often in Europe in diesel cars, and aside from a bit more noise, they seem OK. It’s probably not had to justify the higher price for the car if fuel is as expensive as it is in Europe (>100% tax rates!), but without substantial increases in fuel prices and/or plans to drive a huge number of miles, I doubt you could make a good economic case for a diesel car in the States.
Of course, you would be able to turn your nose up at all the non-green gasoline users!
Ben (21:38:20) :
This commercial scared the hell out of me. Coming from a German company it was a little scarier. Where were the armbands and swastikas? “…. excuse me, sir, we need to see your papers …. we seem to have a problem, these are not recycled, please come with me…. to the green re-education camp….”
—
It’s satire. People without a sense of humor shouldn’t watch it.
This ad was way too close to what eco-tyranny would look like that should we ever be foolish enough to give them the chance.
Peter Plail (04:22:53) wrote: “I’m struggling to see how diesel engines are clean, certainly in the context of warming effects. I can see how efficient combustion may reduce gaseous emissions, but no matter how efficient there is still the problem of carbon particulates, and I refer you to a recent thread on WUWT attributing glacier melt to black carbon.”
Peter-
Your information is out-of-date. Modern diesels, like Mercedes, have various methods for trapping carbon emissions and meet California regs. IIRC, the Mercedes uses a filter to catch the carbon, which is periodically burned off into gaseous CO2.
You have to read the car magazines to keep up-to-date on developments, not the alarmist literature.
IanM
Here is a link to the story about the guy fined £100 + £100 costs.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/oct/19/greenpolitics.uknews
And another –
http://www.recycle.co.uk/news/869000.html
“Whitehaven resident Gareth Corkhill received a criminal conviction earlier this year when he refused to pay a £110-on-the-spot fine for leaving the lid of his wheelie bin open about four inches.”
“Corkhill isn’t alone. Over one 12 month period, approximately 44,000 were fined due to various infractions, including faileure to secure bin lids and putting bins out on the wrong day.”
Audi would be well advised not to run this in the UK, it would seem a very bad joke.
Clive (09:40:10) “They”(Google-Al Gore is a member of board-, Microsoft) already know what you think, everytime you google or everytime your Windows updates….
If you bought an apple or meat at the market this morning, “they” knew it.
And the law needed for them to knock at your door is already in place as a binding international agreement, it is called “habeas data”, the right to access your data.
It is a case comparable to the Tianamen’s square…will you stop the green tanks with your body?
Kinda scary!
Audi make the A8, which gets about the same mileage as some private jets. I think they know who their audience is.
The video is a preveiw of an America that is most likely in the planning pipeline. Certain agencies would love to be doing exactly what you see in the clip.
You have informants in the picture, willing and able to ‘turn in’ thier neighbor, friends, loved ones, etc.
If you choose freedom, you will have to rebel.
In the end, even the loyal policeman is subject to being accosted, which speaks of a coming chaos should these things come to pass.
It was truly a shocking video on par with the 1984 Apple athlete big-screen smashing scene. A lot of thought went into it.
OK! Who had the bright idea to use a UK documentary for advertising?
DaveE.
The sudden shift in the culture.
The greenie weenies have been proud and obnoxious. It also comes with a passion for laws and rules that are intrusive.
Only recently it is now fine to make fun of them. Laugh at the zealots.
People like myself and many on both sides of the CO2 issue have practiced conservation of a lot of resources in our own way.
Conservation is not new. The crumbling of the “science” and other claims will make for great comedy this year.
John Deere, Daimler, Audi, Bosch and others are far ahead of a lot of greenie weenie thinking when it comes to technology, aerosols, common rail diesels and performance. America has made tremendous improvements in reducing the amount of fuel consumed in bringing a ton of grain to market. But the greenie weenies want to attack trucks and tractor fuel consumers. Transportation has not done as well in efficiency improvements.
Well yesterday’s tailgate party seemed to be about 14 hours of totally boring inactivity, interspersed with about 20 minutes of actual football on the field.
It WAS a fun game though; but I got totally nauseated by all the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth over that Hurricane Katrina from years ago. It seems to me that they rebuilt Europe after WW-II in less time than it has taken to rebuild this underwater city. I’m not sure why they are even bothering. Same thing with that San Francisco area apartment building that is trying desperately to fall over the cliff into the ocean and be done with it. They already spent enough money to buy a luxury home for each of the residents in those apartments.
But back to the TV ads. Pretty much totally unmemorable as far as I can remember.
The Audi “Green Police” comedy routine may have seemed that way to most of the viewers; but not to those of us who live in Northern California. It was more in the nature of a 6 pM news bulletin to us; because we have exactly that setup now, in Northern California. So yes I give the Aurdi AD department top marks for making a news item seem like a comedy.
I believe Intel or maybe it was Apple had an ad; no idea what they were advertising but something about a robot that ran out of batteries or something.
The vast majority of the ads (and I did watch all of them), had one thing in common; the ad was all over, before I had any idea who the hell was advertising what. That is the sign of a lousy ad. If I don’t know in the first two seconds what is being sold, and by whom; I usually have tuned out, so I completely miss whatever came later. That’s how it was with that Intel or Apple ad; maybe it was Intel, because it said something at the end about an i3/i5/i7 processor. Never did catch the message, because those things have been out for eons, so no idea why they would be advertising them now. Never said a word about their new processor with 4096 cores or whatever number it is.
Basically a big waste of $2.7Meg per 30 sec in my view. The Bud Lite beer can house was a nice idea; but anybody who thinks that Bud Lite is actually beer; just isn’t with it.
I didn’t watch the half time show; I was put off by that Latifah Queen botch Job on “America”. I don’t take kindly to having any Patriotic Songs turned into some pop shrieking episode. Sorry; I’m funny that way; and I still believe in Chivalry too.
Good game though; and the better players won; but spare me the crocodile tears for New Orleans; the French Underwater City.
It burns hydrocarbons and is an upscale car – the extreme-greens HATE that. The ad’s a good poke in their eye, but still a warning of sorts for the rest of us.
Diesels still use sticky, dead dinorsaurs and ferns and stuff right? 🙂 I wan’t to get one of those obnoxious HYBRYD badges and put it on the back of my 1970 Trans Am that gets 5 mpg.
“democracy has failed and new forms of governance are required” and “a common enemy must be found, one either real or invented, to unite humanity.”
“in searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.”
http://www.green-agenda.com/turningpoint.html
As people have noted above, the irony of the ad’s message is distasteful.
It’d have been more funny if the Audi ran a couple of Segway’s off the road and these left skid tracks down the slopes of a steep Californian hill with a few smashed Smart cars here and there.
I agree this ad seems somewhat ambivalent at first glance. On the one hand Audi is clearly mocking the extremism of the eco-warrior mentality and on the other hand they want to sell us a product which is “certified green.” But really this ad is aimed at the moderates (I.e. most of us) who think it’s all well and good to be concerned about the environment but let’s not go overboard – sort of a pro-environment but anti-environmentalist mentality, if you will. Here‘s a car that conserves resources and saves you money but allows you to have fun while doing it. I think many of us might shy away from buying hybrids because we don’t want to be labeled as holier-than-thou environmentalist fascists. Diesels offer great mileage and decent performance and your friends won’t think you’re a card carrying Greenpeace militant if you drive one. Audi’s lesser cousin VW seems to take a similar approach in marketing it’s diesels – they even sponsor a whole race series exclusively devoted to Jetta TDI’s. Motor racing in itself is inherently anti-environmentalist in nature – the very idea that you can have fun while burning fossil fuels. Hybrids just seem to have a more stodgy, extremist, it’s-all-about-the-environment image. It’s difficult to imagine Toyota sponsoring an all Prius race series, for example.
OT Kind of…
Obama administration proposes new climate change agency
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is proposing a new agency to study and report on the changing climate.
Also known as global warming, climate change has drawn widespread concern in recent years as temperatures around the world rise, threatening to harm crops, spread disease, increase sea levels, change storm and drought patterns and cause polar melting.
Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, planned to announce Monday that NOAA will set up the new Climate Service to operate in tandem with NOAA’s National Weather Service and National Ocean Service.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-02-08-obama-climate-agency_N.htm?csp=34&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+usatoday-NewsTopStories+%28News+-+Top+Stories%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo
Lighten up, folks! To our Brit friends, the music is by the US band Cheap Trick, who are the Yank equivalent of Slade!! They are ANYTHING but serious, believe me!
The whole thing was a poke in the eye to the righteous Greens. However, based on the reactions I’m reading, it sounds like the Brits and others have quite a bit more government intrusion into their daily consumption habits than we do stateside.
And, after all, it WAS aimed at an American audience! If we have more of this type of humor and mockery, it will continue to erode the green agenda!!
@ Steve Schaper (23:36:55) :
“It mocks the Greens (very Alinsky-esque) and at the same time portrays the Audi as a subversive means of beating the tyrannical greens.”
I’m sure that was part of the gag but, again, we know what the reality will be: it’s the cops who will be driving the ultra-speedy, clean, green dieselmachine, chasing denialist delinquents in their rusting, petrol-driven, heavily-taxed world-destroyers. Not noble rationalists, fleeing the new faith’s heretic hunts.The rest of us will be stopping every half-hour or so, looking for a place to charge up, at enormous expense. You can see I’m a pessimist, can’t you? 🙁
I appreciate the satire and the possible intents of the ad; if others are affected by it as was the daughter of the commenter above, who had her eureka moment as a result, that’s a huge bonus and a source of hope. I think the humour, though, doesn’t have quite the same impact if you live in a nation (and a EU) that has already instituted and applied many laws and regulations and directives of this nature, ferociously enforced as sources of additional local government finance – like the bin lid guy mentioned above. Far more ferociously, it sometimes seems, than the regular cops with regular crime. Some of these are probably a portion of the three (or is it three and a half?) thousand new laws we’ve got recently.
They warmists may be faltering and regrouping but they haven’t run yet. But every new piece of evidence on this blog helps to push them harder. Thanks, Anthony, and all the others who make this blog indispensable.
that ad is scary to me. I had one of those overpriced luxury Volkwagens once, it started to fall apart after 3 years. How many old ones do you see on the road? I think Audi actually takes the green bs seriously if you read any of their literature
Anyone try that shizzle with me and I’ll put them six feet under the green lawn.
You Americans can take it as a light-hearted joke but in Britain we REALLY do have nutters in local councils like that and it gets worse each year. Remember, we are the pioneers of the congestion charge zone which does nothing to reduce congestion or pollution at all.
Speaking of satire, if you’re a fan of Gilbert & Sullivan (and even if you’re not!) Prof. Phil Stott’s The Clamour Of The Times for Feb. 7 is definitely worth a click:
http://web.mac.com/sinfonia1/Clamour_Of_The_Times/Clamour_Of_The_Times/Entries/2010/2/7_Who%E2%80%99s_for_the_Chop.html
And if that doesn’t work, try: http://tinyurl.com/y87hwnh
(Lots of other great essays on his site, too)
To make the ad truly mocking of outrageous Green fanaticism (and boost the diesel sales point) requires a minor change: all they advertisers need do is make the Green Policemen’s heads completely blow a fuse at the point where they find out the car is a *Diesel*. It would pinpoint the word Diesel in the customers mind.
In the realm of psychology – if Audi consistently use the word “Clean” and mock the word “Green” they could make killing in sales… The simple word change would subliminally put their car one up on all ‘Green’ cars and simultaneous plant the idea that all ‘Green’ cars are silly, white elephant fashion statements. They should go “Clean not Green” .
If anyone from Audi is reading this WUWT thread and you would like more helpful suggestions; I’m in need of a new car so I’m open to offers – JoeH :p
I saw it. While I was not surprised, I am embarrassed. Embarrassed that it is too close to being a reality.
Audi just scored an own goal in a major way. Not that I am eager to buy one of their cars, but after this commercial, I am certain I will NEVER get one. If I ever get rich I’ll drive a Mercedes or BMW instead.
Ever since Eisenhower (thats when I started following politics) the Demos have had the same M.O. with every Repub ticket. They try to make the case that the electee is not very bright & they try to make them a laughing stock. Sometimes it works & sometimes it doesn’t & sometimes I agree with them & sometimes I don’t.
The point is if you get people to laugh at a person or movement it underminds their credibility. I think some of you are missing the satire. If ppl laugh at how ridiculous the Green Police are it damages their movement.
The most talked about ad during the most watched TV program in history, I think Audi hit a homerun by getting their name out there which is the whole point of advertising.
…vorsprung durch ironie
Britain having their own tea party movement. .
You could call it “The Reeds of Runeymede”
On the one hand, these ads are hilarious if seen as what one would hope they are – satire. But then the slogan – shouldn’t that read: Green has never felt so… wrong? But no, it reads that Green has never felt so “right.” So living in a totalitarian police state is what feels right to these people?
James Morrison (11:36:19) :
It’s difficult to imagine Toyota sponsoring an all Prius race series, for example.
Actually, that’s a rather amusing race to imagine. I wonder who the sponsors would be? I’m envisioning Greenpeace and WWF decals on the pit crews’ overalls.
In fact, it’s not a bad idea for improving the Prius’ performance. Auto racing drives (pun intended) better automotive engineering.
Sharon (14:18:28) :
Actually, isn’t that what KERS was all about in F1?
DaveE.
It is troubling when one’s opponent is so insane that satire become so difficult.
And if you guys think we Limeys are exaggerating how bizarre the situation is over here- try this often hilarious events calendar for Cambridge University Green Week.
http://www.camgreenweek.com/events/
These are our brightest young things and, since it’s Cambridge, the alma mater of many of our future rulers ….
The shocking irony is that the Grüne Polizei (green police) really did exist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordnungspolizei
“RichieP (14:42:59) :
[…]
http://www.camgreenweek.com/events/
”
I like this one:
“Peak Oil Talk
PEAK OIL: Forget Global warming – we may not have a society as we know it in 5 years time”
Quick someone tell Abu Dabi.
Can I get a 4WD diesel Prius?
Here is a funny thread full of liberals on the subject
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2010/02/07/the-green-police-audi-super-bowl-commercial/#comments
Here is one comment that proves liberalism is genetic:
Oh dear! It’s such a shame that so many citizens of that Great Suppository (delete – delete – delete) Repository of DEMOCRATIC FREEDOM are unable to recognise one of the finest urine-extraction advertisements aired in these last many years.
This is the very sharpest edge which could be offered up to the AGW monolith. The humour is devastatingly accurate, beautifully filmed and, when the message eventually penetrates, fatal to the Greenies in the US of A.
When industry starts to satirise an ideology then that ideology is dead.
Long live the “Floor-Sprung Duck Technique”!
Long live the “Floor-Sprung Duck Technique”!
http://www.mercia.biz/files/FourSprungDuckTechnique.gif
The Green Police are no joke. Obama is creating a new federal agency: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=9777038
My condolences to you Brits, the posters on this site seem to be intelligent people with common sense, how did you allow such loonies to take over your country? it sounds as though the U.K. is hopelessly fubarred
As for me, I am trying to bring up my carbon footprint sizeup to Al Gore’s. I cannot afford a private jet or 20000 sq fr mansion, but my feeble efforts to keep up with his carbon usage include a boat, v8 sports car and v8 pickup truck. But I cant keep with with Gore’s carbon usage unless I am able to use them all at the same time! Even so, there is no way I can come close to his CO2 emissions on my own. very frustrating
I think there are a lot of good points here, but I look at it like this. They have been selling diesel passenger cars for a long time. But in the last couple of years, they have been excluded from the US market, because we came up with a ridiculous emissions requirement for passenger diesels. The European standard for diesels, which Audi, VW, Mercedes, Mitsubishi, peugeot, etc had met for years was no longer good enough. Audi wants to sell diesels, but they would have been far happier to sell the ones they already made, without having to invest millions in R&D to get back into the market.
While I don’t know this for sure, I suspect the US auto makers were complicit in the setting of the requirement, because the European diesels were building a market segment here. US diesels were limited to trucks, and in the last few years, you could still buy large pick-ups with cummins diesels in them. AS much as helping the environment, the new requirement was a means of screwing with foreign car makers, without harming the US makers, because our makers didn’t have a position is that market. This is my opinion.
The Audi ad is targeted at the buyer that is interested in the durability and economy of a diesel, but has not had a passenger car to choose from in the US market recently. The ad says “we’re back” to those buyers. I think they are betting that the hard core eco-types will forgive them and buy their care anyway, while the diesel aficionado will laugh at the lampooning of the eco-frenzy, and look more favorably at Audi’s car.
Opinion?
Audi makes performance/luxury automobiles (most of which are not stellar in the mpg department) and owns Lamborghini, rewnowned for cars that put the conspicuous in consumption.
Therefore, I doubt they’re actually pushing the green agenda, but here’s a
better song to use next time. Although not quite as funny…
I think most people are missing the point here. In the end, it was the guy who quietly acquiesced that got the free pass.
The AGW eco-alarmists have descended to new lows with their scare propaganda. They are now “greenwashing” the minds of impressionable young kids, turning them into eco-nags at home.
I recently wrote the following column for Examiner.com detailing the extent of the global warming propaganda. It is truly frightening in its scope. It is reminiscent of the Hitler Youth movement of the 1930s.
http://bit.ly/6X32Tq
Am I the only one on here that wishes for a return of the “tastes great!” “less filling” fight scenes, belching frogs singing the bud-wis-er sonet, and super fast gas guzzling trail climbing jeep super bowl commercials? Come on fellas!!!! It’s a FOOTBALL game! The players wear jock straps (which you used to be able see through their white skin tight football pants when they bent over)! And what is that with the “noseeum” football uniform anyway! That’s the only real reason I ever watched the game. GAWD SAKES!! Next thing ya know the spots will be filled with Kimberly Clark commercials! It was race track cars that opened the door to that spectacle. Next it will be the super bowl. I think I now hate football.
I went to the Green Police site to watch all the videos and OMG they are SO funny, for now at least.
Watching the “use-one-napkin” video I suddenly thought of Sheryl Crow for some reason.
Now I have that dang “Green Police” tune stuck in my head. Maybe shooting an Audi will get rid of it?
Pamela Gray (18:29:31) : ‘Am I the only one on here that wishes for a return of the “tastes great!” “less filling” fight scenes…’
You mean like this one?
I’m with you, Pamela!
sumdood,
I can send you pictures of a diesel VW Jetta with 700,000km on it being used, as it has since the man purchased it new, for delivering adverts for placement into newspapers at the various local Canada Post offices here in rural Saskatchewan. You might have had a lemon but most are not. In fact most TDI VW here command top dollar in the used market. 45mpg that doesn’t crap itself when confronted by an incline, a 60km/h prairie headwind or during the snow storm of the century while carrying a full load over half a million kilometers and more over its lifetime… what’s greener than that?
I’m a Brit, with a particularly visceral loathing of being told what to do or how to live; but I loved these ads. I’ve even posted a link to this page to my Facebook page. They are VERY clever, playing both sides – and very funny. And I believe they WILL make people think about where we are headed
I think the Americans here have to understand that all Environmental directives in Europe now come from the EU – national Govts have no leeway in these matters (emissions, disposal of waste etc etc). So the ads have to be seen within the context that the law – EU law – already demands pretty draconian compliance. [the over-zealous enforcement is a peculiarly British thing, though I think the Germans are just as bad, if not worse as the people themselves apply coercive peer pressure…]
On the Australia-gate thread earlier I posted a little about Czech writer Milan Kundera and his experience fighting totalitarianism. I quoted his words:
MK: “I learned the value of humour during the time of Stalinist terror. I was twenty then. I could always recognize a person who was not a Stalinist, a person whom I needn’t fear, by the way he smiled. A sense of humour was a trustworthy sign of recognition. Ever since I have been terrified by a world that is losing its sense of humour.”
@Richiep
I have to disagree with you. The really bright young things go to Oxford, not Cambridge.
The wouldn’t be fooled by such a ridiculous agenda 🙂
@sumdood (15:44:51) : ” it sounds as though the U.K. is hopelessly fubarred”
Affirmative.
These commercial are a bad joke.
If they were really serious the commercial would show them hauling screaming pregnant women in for forced abortions to reduce the global population. A single abortion would do more to reduce than all the ‘crimes’ they show in each commercial. The fact that we pretend otherwise just shows how cynical the Green Movement is.
And that’s the revolting truth.
The ad is NOT a satire. Look up the definition: A satire is an ATTACK on something of which the author strongly disapproves. Now look at Audi’s web page on the Green Police. It is clear that Audi totally approves of everything the environmental movement does around the globe. Audi admits that the ad is a “caricature,” and claims that Gestapo tactics are “humorous.” But Audi’s message is that its car is a way to comply with the Gestapo, not resist.
In Nazi Germany, the Ordnungspolizei were known as the Gruene Polizei (Green Police).
Win win for Audi. A viewer hears and sees what ever one wants to see.
Recalling a mythical accounting of a skeptical Robin Hood, was this a prism vision of The Sheriff of Nottingham?
The Sheriff, or maybe his Deputy Sheriff, came to the village to discover the wrong doings of the commoner that is trying to do what is made difficult in a time of Czars. Wyatt Earp syndrome: doing something wrong, being vigilant a wrong will be found by Sheriff Green.
The sheriff was, in most part, an unpaid position. The sheriffs had to pay the king a yearly sum to keep their offices. This sum was called the “farm” of the county. (There are many perks to serving the King.)
What is real and what is myth (adjusted to fit some need in a historical perspective). Are there good Sheriff’s? A Sheriff that cloths an inmate in pink underwear is a type of Robin Hood.
When it comes to energy Americans have been and are getting a free ride at the world’s expense.
Gasoline, be it diesel or unleaded, is woefully underpriced in the USA.
It needs to sell for a minimum of $10 a gallon. At that price you’ll begin to see some real innovation when it comes to producing fuel efficient cars for a mass market.
NYC labrets – why is Gas underpriced in the USA? Is it being subsidized by the government (like in Venezuela)? If so, that is one expense we should immediately cut out since our deficit is humongous!
Wait, it is not subsidized! So how is it underpriced? are American Oil Companies selling below market value? Below cost? I am curious.
Nyc Labrets (07:07:35) :
“When it comes to energy Americans have been and are getting a free ride at the world’s expense.”
That sounds pretty economically clueless. No one is being forced to sell their oil to the U.S. or to anyone else. It’s a free and voluntary exchange – something the Left always hates, because they can’t control it. And where’s the “free ride”? Oil costs money. Were you personally happy when the price rocketed to $4.50 a couple of years ago?
Fuel is not underpriced in the U.S. The market determines the price, which is set at the point where supply and demand curves intersect.
And decreeing that gasoline, which is by far the “greenest” fuel, should sell for triple the price shows zero compassion for working folks, not to mention the poor. But the Left never gave a damn about them anyway, they are just seen as sheep to be forcibly sheared to fund their big-government ruled utopia, where everyone is equally miserable and where opportunity no longer exists.
If you can’t figure out my name it means I live in Virginia and drive a Jetta TDI. As several posters have noted don’t over analyze this commercial. This commercial is a masterpiece of subversive anti-green agiprop. I love it. You don’t by any diesel because it’s green, you buy it because it cheap to operate and a blast to drive. The greenies crave electrics. The older TDIs aren’t rocketships but they corner like a $50k BMW. The new variant sacrifice a little mileage but go like a bat out of hell. However, I wouldn’t buy the Audi because the A3 doesn’t come with all-wheel drive and you can get a tricked out Jetta for less money.