Monday, December 15, 2008

Flashback: TV Network Tells Kids How Long Their Carbon Footprint Should Allow Them to Live

Watts Up With That?
December 13, 2008

This is environmentalism jumping the shark:


Click image above to play the game

I don’t know where to begin, except to say that when we see things like this, we should complain loudly and incessantly. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has crossed a line beyond science, beyond decency, and beyond rational thought.

This is what you get after pressing “start”:

Two

The screen above says: When you’re done, click on the (skull and crossbones) to find out what age you should die at so you don’t use more than your fair share of Earth’s resources!

Hat tip to CallonJim who writes:

This “kids” games at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Tell’s kids depending on their magical “carbon footprint” how long they should live?

The actual title is “Professor Schpinkee’s Greenhouse Calculator - find out when you should die!”

The thing I find amazing is the average foot print is 24.6 tonnes of CO2, which calculates out to 9.3 years old! Where it tells the child “YOU SHOULD DIE AT THE AGE 9.3!” Guess what age this kids games is marketed to? That’s right, 9 year olds.

What is most disgusting about this is that ABC ignores their own published Code of Practice

In section 2.12 they talk about content for children:

2.12 Content for Children. In providing enjoyable and enriching content for children, the ABC does not wish to conceal the real world from them. It can be important for the media, especially television, to help children understand and deal with situations which may include violence and danger. Special care should be taken to ensure that content which children are likely to watch or access unsupervised should not be harmful or disturbing to them.

I venture that any child who takes this carbon footprint test “unsupervised” without mommy and daddy around, and who may be old enough to read, but not old enough to understand he/she is being brainwashed by an agenda, would be “disturbed” find they should die at age nine, since just clicking through with default choices gives you that age.

Here is where you can contact the ABC and give them an inbox full of your opinion. This kind of propaganda needs to be removed.

http://www.abc.net.au/contact/contactabc.htm

UPDATE: There is a row developing in the Austrailian press over this.

UPDATE2: The New York Post highlights this site on June 1st with the headline “Enviro Mental Institution