Environmental Defense Ad: Tick
Tip of the Hat
Environmental Defense
This site and the ad "Tick" both linked below pose Global Warming as a ticking clock which threaten our children. [NOTE the site is mal-functioning. This should have a values and environmental tag]
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Tick.. tick... the ad focuses on Global Warming as a ticking clock which will run out and our children will be the victims. Rather than focusing on a policy, or a stastic, the campaign (ads and website) visually and audibly frames global warming as a threat to our children, and thus to family. The solution then is a call to save our children and save our families. The site explains global warming as a threat to... Health, Weather, Economy, Ecosystems. This campaign is powerful for three reasons: it does not fall into the many traps which Rockridge outlines in Thinking Points (policy/laundry list trap etc); it focuses on values; it focuses on issues important to bi-conceptuals. When we talk about fighting global warming, many conservatives whine about the threat to our economy, yet they love to talk about protecting our families. The site appeals to the threat global warming poses to both our economy and to our families. It therefore speaks to progressives and bi-conceptuals, and perhaps even conservatives.
It tells a clear story: Global Warming = Ticking Clock = Enemy. Children = Victims. Fighting Global Warming = the only viable solution if you value our children and their future.
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Warming vs Change
That's a good point I had not considered. I had heard Bush use the idea of climate change to indicate change over time and to suggest human activity is unimportant.
Perhaps both sides use it.
Warming vs Change vs Damage
What I'd really like to see is somebody calling it Climate Damage.
New! comments....
It was refreshing to see a "What can YOU do?" section at the website. I think it is important to make it personal rather than only focusing on schemes which use political power to force others to act where they otherwise would not, or not act where they otherwise would. Al Gore, in AIT, also makes the point about personal responsibility, and I give Al Gore credit in that regard.
Perhaps a minor point, but haven't we been instructed to start using the term "Global Climate Change" rather than "Global Warming"? Since that confusing business about mainland Antarctica, with 90% of the world's ice, actually cooling and getting thicker, and warming causing cooling, and so forth, I think it's now called "Global Climate Change". It may be that climate change is very complex, and that warming does cause cooling, but I think the real plus with the newer frame is that any weather change at all can be used to frighten the public into signing off on whatever political "solution" the state's elite wish to impose.
Perhaps I've become jaded, but I was thinking that by the time a clichéd frame approximating "Won't somebody please think of the children?" gets parodied on the Simpsons, it might mean that its best days are over.