Quick! Save the Planet: Stuff's Campaign

New Zealand media group, Fairfax are promoting the Quick! Save the Planet series through its newspapers and Stuff.co.nz website. It's meant to awaken concern and inform about climate change, and offer ways to effect change. In so doing, I assume they expect this will result in saving the planet from its imminent demise.

It won't do anything of the sort and campaigns like this are misguided at best, and at worst extremely foolish or even stupid. Okay, I accept they have to sell newspapers, they're largely failing and they'll all have to shut up shop within my lifetime, but the desperate will do anything to survive.

The problem with this campaign is twofold; the first is with the hysterical nature of the title. Any solution is certainly not quick, and the planet doesn't need saving. Most people intuitively know this and so when reading they're likely to skip. Only the converted will read, and so no progress is made at all.

The second problem is more serious and lies at the root. This sort of scaremongering results in polarisation of opinions and climate change extremism. Any not fully on board with the most extreme climate alarmists are instantly labelled 'climate change deniers.' Heretics in other words.

Of course there is no real debate about climate change being real, no-one with half a brain is debating it. What is up for debate is the extent to it and whether the effects are adverse at all. And if they are adverse, how bad exactly and can it be managed? What doesn't help is when someone enters the debate talking practical matters, and they're shouted down and accused of being a 'denier.'

What we are witnessing folks, is the development of a new religion; in my book Snob's Guide to New Zealand, I call the religion Eco. I describe how this new religion functions. It seems Stuff and Fairfax have adopted the faith.