As cyberspace expands with environment-related material and blogs about sustainable living and climate change, surely a reflection of the increasing interest in the subject, more discussion and debate is also on offer. Big business is also taking heed as the purchase of the website Treehugger by Discovery seems to testify. Treehugger was founded in 2004 by Graham Hill and Ken Rother. It’s the Environment, Stupid thinks it’s a good, strategic move. We hope so too.
Over in the class-obsessed UK, The Guardian’s columnist George Monbiot aimed his brand of criticism at the economic elites and the middle classes’ embracing of green consumerism. His main point is that it has become a status symbol, a commodity fetish, when the point really is not to consume if we want to save the planet. Monbiot raises some instigating points, especially that politics is where changes must take place and that atomized action like ‘going green’ means nothing without collective efforts. It’s good to bear in mind, though, that Monbiot is speaking from and to the British cultural context, where the media has a tendency to banalize everything faster than you can say ‘next’.
Meanwhile in Canada, The Conscious Earth reported that the Surrey School Board Trustee has approved the proposal to screen The Great Global Warming Swindle in Surrey high schools alongside An Inconvenient Truth in order to ensure students are offered a “balanced perspective” on the issue of global warming. The film was suggested by trustee Heather Stilwell.
What a stupid decision. The Great Global Warming Swindle has been widely criticized for misrepresenting global warming science and the opinions of researchers.
For those who missed the debate, the director of the film Martin Durkin received a sweat-inducing grilling on Australian television. I personally thought that Durkin was so inarticulate that it’s impossible not to see him as the swindle in the title of his film. Let’s hope Ms Stilwell watches this too.
Here’s the footage:
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