Burning Pandas for Fuel

Sorry about that - another long pause, as quite a bit's happened in the interim. The main news is a move to Portsmouth (home of the country's angriest market florist, it seems) to start a full time post at the university. That's taking up quite a bit of time at the moment, so there's not been much opportunity to keep up with things here. I'll try and be a bit more productive in the future, honest.

To business. In early 2006, I saw George Galloway give a talk at the University of Exeter. I was by no means a Galloway fan, but thought that it would at the very least be interesting (at least, as interesting as the fact that Respect, who had organised the event, wanted the names of everyone who attended. Had anyone at the front desk read G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday my pseudonym wouldn't have lasted long). George actually turned up half an hour late, and when he inevitably ran out of time the meeting moved from the lecture theatre onto the lawn outside the Northcott Theatre, standing on a bench while surrounded by listeners. How radical, we thought. How kinda Pankhurst. Towards the end of the question and answer session, a friend of mine came up to me and asked "Is it still propaganda if you agree with it?"

An interesting question. While largely agreeing with the perspectives under discussion, I was slightly concerned with Galloway's tendency to respond to difficult questions (why don't the projections of the Iraq election support that thesis, George? What's with the Portugese villas, George?) by implying that the matter was irrelevant or the questioner was ignorant of some other crucial factor and manipulating the crowd against him or her (that said, no effort was required with the guy who asked if the BNP cared more about the British people than Respect did, since this drew an almost comedically exaggerated gasp from the rest of the audience; Galloway's response on the uselessness of nationalism was superfluous). I could appreciate much of Galloway's position; it was the means of getting there that was problematic. A year later, I'd encounter the same problem reading Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, but this time in starker terms. Dawkins' conclusions were easy to agree with, but not the sometimes shallow rhetorical moves; I was still an atheist, but not because of these arguments. I agreed with it - but did this absolve it of propaganda?

I ask this because I've just seen the latest "Act on CO2" advert, and despite agreeing with its broader argument, my immediate response was to want to burn a panda for fuel (incidentally, did you notice the sad panda toy beside the bed? I didn't until the second viewing). At whom is this advert aimed? Those already aware of climate change don't need convincing; those who see it as a leftist fantasy will read it as literally confirming their belief that it's all a fairy story. Most of those inbetween will be put off by how wretchedly manipulative it is, from the music to the weeping cartoon animals to the big CO2 monster to the blaming of 'the grown ups' (children, of course, have nothing to do with carbon dioxide, as they subsist entirely on the ambient radiation of cuteness until the age of 12 years and ten months). A hugely complex debate becomes reduced to "Turn on a light = drown a dog." Perhaps it needs to be like this - simplistic in order to get through. But if so, show us consequences with some actual referent - news footage of real flooding, examples of declining species - not something mediated through the subjectivity of children and unambiguously meant to induce guilt. I fear that the government have wasted their money on something so unsophisticated as to convince nobody and annoy the rest of us.

My other fear is that, in writing this, I'm shoring up a conservative scepticism of climate change - certainly, many of the criticisms I've found online have come from those who believe it's all a big conspiracy (raising tax money for the government usually seems to be the justification here - not sure how my taking the bus or not leaving lights on raises tax revenue, guys, or the implication that anything cooked up by the powers-that-be would win out over any alternative put by the energy companies). But, as I've argued elsewhere, the ends of the environmental argument are so compelling that the means - any means, like those ludicrous EDF adverts made out of 'recycled film' footage (I'd like to think they're joking here, but I suspect they take the green validity of this claim absolutely seriously) or this new advert - seem to be beyond criticism. So yes, it's still propaganda even if you agree with it. And if you don't agree with me, I'll drown five dogs.