Climate Change Denial

Climate change was not going to get in the way of the fun and frolics of the World Cup ski races this weekend in Kitzbühel, Austria: a fleet of helicopters imported more than 100,000 cubic feet of snow from higher up the mountain. A snip at $390,000 and just imagine how many tonnes of fuel.

To add further to the multiple ironies piling on top of this pathetic tale, the races have had to be cancelled anyway because a freak storm blew a lot of the airlifted snow off the mountain.

Snow fall has been very low and temperatures at record highs across the Alps. The snow was so thin for the Lauberhorn downhill race last week that many racers crashed or collapse from exhaustion.

According to the New York Times the president of the International Ski Federation, Gian Franco Kasper, does not accept that the chronic lack of snow is due to climate change. He says it is due to natural variation.

More bloody fool him. The ski industry is going to be ruined by climate change so it is hardly surprising that it is having a hard time dealing with the proof of its imminent demise.

Like all of the international tourism industry, it could be a strong, brave, and influential voice for change. But this would require it to come to terms with the enormous impact of the leisure flights that sustain it. And as the resorts generate ever higher emissions to create snow where it no longer exists (see my 26 Sept posting: ‘Wrap it up to go’) they are entering into an ever tighter cycle of self destructive climate change  denial.

Thanks loads to Nathalie Koerfer for alerting me to that

….and thanks too to Zoe Palmer for this excellent picture which she shot with her mobile phone in a UK high street. It says it all- but somehow the price reduction adds a particular poignancy.

It is time for another selection of images from advertising and newsmedia that respond to climate change in a bizarre and dissonant manner. Many thanks to the denial bloggers who contributed.

Here’s a cracker for a starter. It’s the front cover of Wallpaper, a design magazine for the bling encrusted show-off international rich with feature articles on which airports have the most glamourous first class lounges. I have to admit that I am a subscriber- but then I’m sick.Wallpaper themed its November issue around climate change with this bizarre image. Post modern seating for King Canute?

This new Play Station game ‘Need for Speed CARBON’ came out a few months ago. I suspect the word ‘Carbon’ was chosen with the same ‘climate change is for sissies’ mentality that we’ve noticed before in ads (see november posting)- after all, would a car racing game ever use the word carbon if we not hearing so much about climate change? I can imagine in this case that it is also aiming to add a sense of living on the edge Mad Max apocalypse to their wretched game.

Simon Cooper wrote to tell me of a bumber sticker he’d seen on a very large, very red sportscar – “Destroying tomorrow – living for today”. Sadly, he says, he couldn’t quite get the camera out of my pocket without falling off his bike.However, is was easy to get a picture of this bumber sticker because it was a freebie that fell out of my Saturday Guardian. The Guardian newspaper has been on the forefront of serious reporting on climate change and , despite the cynical decision to carry excerpts from Bjorn Lomborg some years back, they’ve been pretty good,. So what to make of this free giveaway sticker? Certainly it does not read to me like a positive message that the driver is driving as little as possible to save the climate. The whole tone and phrasing seems to be saying ‘piss off with your nagging climate change whingeing- I’m the one to make the decisions about when and where to drive my car’. As such, intentional or otherwise, it certainly qualifies for the undercurrent of reactive climate change denial mentioned in the ADS 4 LADS posting

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Peter Winters sent me this advert for NYK, a global shipping company (I reproduce only the image). The text reads ‘Feb 21 Loaded into a NYK bulk carrier in Colombia, 164,000 tons of coal. March 16 Unloaded in Hunterston Scotland, the same coal, to be transported to power stations that provide electricity to millions of homes’

Peter writes ‘this advert is less obvious than the car adverts, but, for me, just as disturbing as they are using powerful family brand values to promote a key culprit for causing global warming. (How about images of dying coral, species loss, bush fires, people starving from desert encroachment etc etc.instead!!)’. On the desert encroachments I would add that burning this much coal produced 360,000 tons of carbon dioxide. That’s twenty times more than the entire annual emissions of Somalia. And they’re the ones who are going to starve as a result.

Chris Petit sent me this advert from Shell which appeared in 14th October 2006 edition of ‘The Week’ which he says he spotted in his girlfriends bathroom – presumably during a meditative reading break. I have cropped the image and cut off text about how creative and hard working ‘John’ has to be to squeeze the last toxic fossil fuels out of the ground.

Chris says ‘ It’s their blatant posturing that appears to say ‘hey, we know the world’s resources are running low, but don’t worry we have heroes like this guy working for us to source even the hardest to reach reserves. So don’t worry your little minds about things running out, there’s still plenty of natural resources out there to be had, so keep on living your unsustainable lifestyles and keep on consuming, it is OK.’ It really saddens me.

Finally thank you Chris Smith and Mark Gater who both wrote to remind me of the disgraceful adverts produced by the Exxon and Texaco funded Competitive Enterprise Insitute with the strapline “Carbon Dioxide: they call it pollution, we call it life”. It is not exactly denial so much as unspeakable cynical manipulation.

You can see the original at link….
And a satisfying parody at link…

This will continue to be a regular feature on this blog, so please keep sending me
adverts that reveal some aberrant response to climate change (including outrageous greenwash). Please send scans to george@coinet.org.uk or snail mail me a hard copy c/o COIN, 16B Cherwell Street, Oxford OX4 1BG, UK and I will scan it for you.