As I wrote about in a previous post I am inspired by the Extinction Rebellion movement which I fully support as a peaceful movement of action against catastrophic climate change. I am part of a worldwide collective hub of activists, academics, writers, artists, lawmakers, and members of the public intent on challenging the complacent 'business as usual' mentality of corporations and governments when it comes to climate change and environmental collapse. People must be educated about the reality of climate change and the fact that environmental destruction concerns them, as they are also a major cause of the problem. Consumption is a key part of the CO2 problem and environmental degradation (which is kind of ironic as I am writing on a laptop, using up energy here and in the servers that host the platform and thereby creating CO2). Governments and corporations need to take a lead in changing the model of economics and production or societies will face massive disruption if not also collapse and extinction. Yet there is little discussion of this in mainstream media, who much rather concern themselves with Brexit, Trump and other distractions. The dots are not being connected in such a way that it becomes clear that all these relatively minor issues are all detrimental to our own and earth’s future.
Part of the problem seems to be the media who are taking an almost pedestrian route in informing the public if they provide any meaningful coverage at all. Our wildlife programs are often sanitised versions of the nightmare humans are creating and if there are problems mentioned they are so far away that people watching them can justify their own inaction through rationalising that these problems as not of their making, or because the problems are so far away that it does not seem relevant to them personally. Instead we often see the clichés of anthropomorphic representation of animals, the all too familiar struggle for survival, and cutesy animals dramatically surviving being eaten by snakes and birds of prey. The real story is of course that the subjects of these media representations, animals and plants are threatened in their existence by humans through exploitation of natural and geological resources. And they stand no chance against humans. There are many examples of this. An iconic example is the destruction of the habitats of Orangutans by palm oil production.
If you want to know more about Orangutans being decimated by palm oil production check out the Orangutan foundation. Palm oil is in our food and in cosmetics, having replaced soya in terms of usage. In typical human fashion crops are grown where previously they didn’t and are part of a monocultural farming model which leads to soil erosion and decrease in biodiversity. To produce palm oil, rainforest is cleared and the habitat of orangutans and other species are destroyed, the rainforest shrinks irreversibly and biodiversity is lost. Local people protest the continued unsustainable farming but are thrown in jail rather than heard. The interest of palm oil businesses are protected criminally with the help of huge backhanders to local law enforcement and government officials and threats of violence and death.
As some of you may have seen, the supermarket chain Iceland was the first supermarket to remove palm oil from its product ranges. Iceland produced a Christmas ad in collaboration with Greenpeace which drew attention to the plight of orangutans and was promptly banned.
The YouTube video can be found here The explanation given by Clearcast, the body overseeing and vetting advertising in the UK, who banned the ad was that it broke advertising standards by apparently ‘being directed to a political end’ because of Greenpeace involvement. A political end. POLITICAL END. Once could argue that while certainly Greenpeace has to engage with politics, its aim are environmental and not political. The ban highlights the political nature of environmental protection and sadly reflects the reality that awareness of environmental problems and climate change is so politicized as to make resolving them more complex, even when our natural world is dying. In this instance relatively simple awareness raising is being undermined by the ban. The reason why this is such a problem is that we live in an age where it is necessary to increase awareness and take action on issues rapidly. Yet at the same time it is deemed inappropriate for a somewhat more enlightened business to generate awareness of fundamental problems in production because to do so would be deemed too political. It is difficult to see what makes raising awareness of scandalous production models political other than seeing that politics has so far failed to prevent the destruction of rain-forest habitats, and shown little political will to do much about it. Instead our advertising and media standards seem to be supporting a system that preaches consumption, pretends the world is not dying and that gives us the daily drivel of celebrity news and entertainment to distract from our dependency on earth. It is that system that becomes a big obstacle in alerting the public and educating them about environmental issues. While Iceland certainly has other practices that are environmentally unsound (for example selling meat products) they ought to be commended for their Ad.
The systemic issue in how environmental information is presented and how awareness is raised begs the fundamental question whose interest this system is representing. By squashing the Iceland ad, Clearcast is playing into the political agenda of palm oil producers. Their businesses are thereby shielded from scrutiny and from public awareness preventing the public to choose alternative products.
This is one of the reasons why market forces will ultimately not provide the answer to climate change and environmental degradation. The system is stacked in favour of corporations continuing in their exploitation of environmental resources and our politicians do not seem to be taking any action to massively curtail the problem of global overcompensation. What is deeply worrying is that this is a systemic patterns of denial and misinformation at work that prevents the looming environmental catastrophe from reaching public awareness. Even when corporation such as Iceland are engaging with environmental agendas. Claiming that attention to environmental destruction is too ‘political’, our societal safeguards (in this case advertising watchbodies) are at best the wrong instruments that favor corporate interests, and at worst are scandalous enablers of ecological destruction. Unfortunately, the latter seems the more likely.
How much are media being filtered to prevent awareness of climate change and environmental destruction? The real answer to this is complex but judging from this example and the way in which much other environmental news is covered, evidence of a massive denial of a pending environmental catastrophe is obvious. Without generating massive awareness of the problems caused by environmental degradation and climate change there can be no meaningful effort of developing the type of environment adaptations needed to prevent a nightmare from unfolding. It is for all of us awake enough to spread the message and help others to see the truth.