Climate Change: The Biggest PR Fail In History
B
20 May 2014
Just three per cent of Americans consider "the environment" the most important problem, according to the latest Gallup poll. (In Britain, too, people appear to be decreasingly worried about climate change).
This surely represents, by some margin, the biggest PR fail in history.It was once conservatively estimated (by blogger Richard North) that the cost of propping up the global warming industry since 1989 was equivalent in real terms to five Manhattan Projects. But that was back in 2010, since when spending on green boondoggles (eg the Obama 'stimulus') has risen exponentially, so we're likely looking at ten Manhattan Projects now.
A good chunk of that spending has, of course, gone towards "educating" the public.
This "education" takes many forms: from blatant propaganda, like the UK government's £6 million "drowning puppy" ad campaign, the Obama administration's recent Climate Assessment Report and the one released by a group of compliant senior US military figures calling themselves CNA Military Advisory Board, to more subtle brainwashing ranging from school trips to wind farms and ice cream containers with pictures of wind farms on the side and oil company adverts illustrated with wind farms (to show they're not just "all about oil") to, well, pretty much everything these days from supermarket delivery vehicles boasting about how much biofuel they use to Greenpeace campaign ads involving polar bears to Roger Harrabin's reporting for the BBC to Showtime's Years Of Living Dangerously....
Truly, for nigh-on three decades now, there has been no escaping, anywhere, any time of day or night from the constant, bleeding-heart imprecations and blandishments of Big Green Brother.
Imagine what a private business could do with that level of PR support. A campaign in which not just the government, not just the schools but even Big Oil companies, even supposedly badass, straight-talking generals from the US military were prepared to offer their muscle.
Why with a PR machine like that you could surely persuade your customers to do absolutely anything: to eat worms; listen all the way through a Bruno Mars album without wishing to stab your eardrums with a fork; anything.
Yet, ten Manhattan Projects' worth of expenditure down the line, and we still can't persuade more than a tiny fraction of the population of the urgent need to give up hot showers, iced water, air conditioning, air travel, car travel, warmth, comfort, prosperity, job prospects and economic growth in order to combat the unproven theoretical risk that slight increases in the trace gas CO2 may one day cause the planet to warm by a couple of degrees...
I wonder why that might be.
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