This is environmentalism jumping the shark:
Click image above to play the game
I don’t know where to begin, except to say that when we see things like this, we should complain loudly and incessantly. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has crossed a line beyond science, beyond decency, and beyond rational thought.
This is what you get after pressing “start”:
The screen above says: When you’re done, click on the (skull and crossbones) to find out what age you should die at so you don’t use more than your fair share of Earth’s resources!
Hat tip to CallonJim who writes:
This “kids” games at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Tell’s kids depending on their magical “carbon footprint” how long they should live?
The actual title is “Professor Schpinkee’s Greenhouse Calculator – find out when you should die!”
The thing I find amazing is the average foot print is 24.6 tonnes of CO2, which calculates out to 9.3 years old! Where it tells the child “YOU SHOULD DIE AT THE AGE 9.3!” Guess what age this kids games is marketed to? That’s right, 9 year olds.
What is most disgusting about this is that ABC ignores their own published Code of Practice
In section 2.12 they talk about content for children:
2.12 Content for Children. In providing enjoyable and enriching content for children, the ABC does not wish to conceal the real world from them. It can be important for the media, especially television, to help children understand and deal with situations which may include violence and danger. Special care should be taken to ensure that content which children are likely to watch or access unsupervised should not be harmful or disturbing to them.
I venture that any child who takes this carbon footprint test “unsupervised” without mommy and daddy around, and who may be old enough to read, but not old enough to understand he/she is being brainwashed by an agenda, would be “disturbed” find they should die at age nine, since just clicking through with default choices gives you that age.
Here is where you can contact the ABC and give them an inbox full of your opinion. This kind of propaganda needs to be removed.
http://www.abc.net.au/contact/contactabc.htm
UPDATE: There is a row developing in the Austrailian press over this.
UPDATE2: The New York Post highlights this site on June 1st with the headline “Enviro Mental Institution“
rex – i was actually referring to the first sentence of your comment… (the offensive slur) you might as well say all americans are like the Westboro Baptist Church while you’re at it (and sheep references are generally related to new zealand)
cait – i dont recall ever saying the game was good or accurate, i said it had a point, rather than being pointless ‘lefty propoganda’… and I bet a lot of mothers in third world countries would love to see their children live past 9. Also, i think you should stop randomly dubbing things lefty.
tom – technological advances have allowed some of us to live healthy interesting lives, and forced those who didn’t to a life of poverty and disease.. and now there aren’t enough resources on earth to accommodate the ‘average american’ lifestyle (not picking on americans that’s just what most of these sort of things are compared to). We’d need about 6 earth’s worth of resources to give everyone the ‘average american’ lifestyle and about another 6 to safely deal with the waste and pollution (which is an assumption OF COURSE, but the point is it isn’t sustainable on ONE earth).
I don’t see why this should cause an argument, I don’t think the game is good or accurate.. I just think its stupid to generalise all australians or ecologists based on a kid’s quiz. The quiz is making a good point, but VERY badly. I don’t think you should ignore or oppose the point because it was made badly. Maybe a good alternative would be to research things like ecological footprints and explain it to your children in a better way than “this is when you’re should die”?
Not only is Ms. Hobbs the spokesperson for ABC Television science, she is also a cultural icon in Australia.
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=%22Bernie%20Hobbs%22
I wonder of gay pigs have a smaller carbon footprint than straight pigs? Breeders produce all those nasty children with their ever so large carbon footprint. But Ms. Hobbs is working diligently to convince the kiddies to die young.
Mike
Wow that site sounds like would be “Logans Run” advocates. Renew in Carousel anyone?
How about a “liberty footprint”? I am tired of individual rights being trampled by people who think they know what is best for the rest of us. How many corpses can be attributed to that mentality?
You get all wound up about a stupid game that will seriously influence about 22 kids.
At the same time the same commies propose to tell each one of you how to live. Not just how companies should or shouldn’t pollute, but how every individual should behave.
MPs call for personal carbon allowance
http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKL2624587620080526?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0
The sick ABC game is just the surface without consequence, the real stuff that will shut the freedom down is happening as we speak in our parliaments: Lieberman-Warner bill, today’s agreement between Quebec and Ontario, the Quebec carbon market last week, the UK personal allowance…
This is what we should be complaining about, in the newspapers, to the politicians.
Scary…
Zee vinahl zolution!
“Arbeit Macht Frei”
Personally I think the danger is that smart children will draw the conclusion from this that the evidence for climate change is about as convincing as the little misleading childrens interactive game.
That would be a shame. Really the ABC should be embarrassed at presenting science in this pathetic way.
I think the intelligence and understanding of children is being underestimated here and by the ABC.
Vodka: “and now there aren’t enough resources on earth to accommodate the ‘average american’ lifestyle (not picking on americans that’s just what most of these sort of things are compared to). ”
Your point seems to indicate to me that the real problem is over population. Technology seems to be the blame as well as the salvation. As technology has enabled humans to produce greater and greater amounts of food and distribute it where production is lower, the population grows where it shouldn’t. Medical advances allow more people to fend off diseases that in the past have helped thin the herd. People live longer and use up resources well past where they wouldn’t have years ago. Damned if we do and damned if we don’t. Are we better off as a species with fewer, healthier people living a very nice life ? Biologically speaking, the greater the number the more successful the species. But is that really true in an intelligent species that has learned to manipulate nature itself? I wonder.
Reminds me of a kid’s show that I had forgotten about but is re-running on TV tonite. It’s about a computer program called “Earth Protectors” that brainwashes the kids.
“It is important to relax and let Earth Protectors do the thinking for you”.
RE: Vodka (06:17:46) :
I repeat myself when under stress
I repeat myself when under stress
Biologically speaking, the greater the number the more successful the species. But is that really true in an intelligent species that has learned to manipulate nature itself? I wonder.
In a word, Yes.
And it is the very “manipulation of nature” that has made this plausible and desirable. The only thing more unlimited than “resources” themselves is the quaint, ridiculous, unsupportable notion that we are “running out of” resources.
(“What are they teaching in these schools?”)
These are some of the organisations that support Ms Hobbs
http://www.claxtonspeakers.com.au/speakers_profile/709
http://www.ideasfestival.com.au/2006/01_cms/details.asp?k_id=154
http://www.cmis.csiro.au/bdi6/openingwebgallery/pages/berniehobbs1.htm
http://www.acec2008.info/item.asp?pid=7536
http://www.qrc.org.au/01_cms/details.asp?ID=1324
http://www.abc.net.au/science/bernie/bernie.htm
How do they determine what ones “fair share” is.
Sounds like they picked what one of those newly discovered Peruvian aboriginals would use.
(”What are they teaching in these schools?”) Evan Jones
To cut to the chase: Anything that will lead to the nanny state.
How do they determine what ones “fair share” is.
They take energy use, and divide it by the number of people. Which is a very, very stupidass way to do it. It sort of assumes that there is a fixed amount of energy and the more one person uses, the more is stolen from others. The usual M&M (Marxian-Malthusian) wealth formula and the usual stupid inanity as the result.
Anything that will lead to the nanny state.
What they will wind up with is a ninny state.
Why is it that they never seem to get that an effective nanny state is VERY EXPENSIVE, yet they do everything possible to prevent wealth creation and destroy what wealth we have? They are so blind they can’t even see their own self interest.
I can live forever!!!
No, serious, people!
I walk to work, eat ethically, invest in good products, cut back on energy usage, grow some of my own food… And I passed the “Forever” test!!!
We need to re-think our wasteful culture.
GG:
Our “wasteful culture” does not deprive others. Quite the contrary! (I’ve done an awful lot of thinking and rethinking on this particular subject.)
As we speak, the poorer countries of the world are fast catching up with us both in terms of production AND wasteful habits (which is a Very Good Thing). And they are not taking ANY of it from us–they are producing it themselves. In fact, we trade with them to HUGE mutual profit.
You premise presumes a finite economic pie. It is, however, a vastly expanding pie.
This game equates environmentalism with socialism, plain and simple. More and more the greenies are exposing their red innards.
[…] ::Watts Up With That […]
to petty tyrants everywhere
You think your way is true,
what everyone should do?
Fine, but first on your own dime
and with your own sweet time.
And if your way proves right
then others will agree;
there is no need to fight.
But if your way proves wrong
should we have come along,
into the darkning night?
Idiots cannot educate, only make money and make others sick. It is anti science!
Environmentalist politics is the most enormous racist power grab in history.
It is also the most successful. The ban on DDT alone has killed more of the target group than the Third Reich, and I mean WWII and the Holocaust combined.
Of course, this is a tiny fraction of the number condemned to death if the Third World is not permitted to industrialize.
[…] when you're going to stop being a burden on an earth that's better off without you. As Anthony Watts comments, "This is environmentalism jumping the shark." Filed under: Conservation, The right to […]
And who gets to decide what my fair share is? Screw these loonies. The only footprint they should be concerned with is the one my boot leaves on their asses.
I don’t do trackbacks because bugs crawl up our tailpipe when I do, but you’ve been linked at Dodgy Business. Many thanks.