Mar 17 2012 March 17, 2012 March 19, 2012 19Comments by ben

Poor branding will kill us all

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Have you ever wondered why most of the planet doesn’t give quite a big enough shit about global warming?

I mean, we can all see this huge disaster coming, we know what we’re supposed to do to prevent it, and yet we just kind of shrug and feel we can’t really do any more than a bit of recycling (which doesn’t really make any difference anyway).

But why is this the case?

Well, I’ve given it a bit of thought and come to the completely unscientific conclusion that it’s down to branding.

The main name given to the environmental problem is Global Warming, that’s where the whole thing has gone wrong.

‘Global’ just means it happens all over the world, but ‘warming’ is the real problem. Warm is good, we all like warm weather and when we see those maps that show what temperatures will be like in 2035 it seems like much of the world will be a few degrees hotter.

Nice.

Most of the people who are ruining the planet are lucky enough to live in a temperate climate, so making London as warm as St Tropez is something most of us would actually like to contribute to, just as long as it doesn’t come wrapped up with the extinction of the human race.

So here we are sitting in a bath with the hot tap running ever so slowly and few of us are feeling the need to turn it off. Well, that’s us screwed then.

I think we should have gone straight to the American Military on this one. They know that naming things properly makes a huge difference: ‘The War On Terror’ gets you right in the thick of what has to happen… we’re in a motherfucking war, fighting motherfucking terror. That sounds really serious, despite the fact that it’s about as much of an immediate threat as global warming. ‘Operation Desert Storm’? Shit… A storm in a desert! That sums it all up brilliantly, bringing the whole stupid, one-sided farting contest to vivid life in just three words. ‘Norman Schwarzkopf’ is the name of a somewhat nebbish dentist until you add ‘Stormin” to the start of it.

Anyway, we’re stuck with cute, cuddly, not-quite-worth-giving-a-shit-about Global Warming, and that’s the way it’s going to be until we all fry to death in a desert just north of Edinburgh.

(By the way, if any of you wanted to come to the introduction to the Landmark Forum I mentioned a few weeks ago but were unable to make it, there’s another one tonight at 7:30, 203 Eversholt St. Let me know if you want to come (bwmkay@gmail.com) and I’ll see you there.)