This is the followup to the earlier article about ABC’s extraordinary “Planet Slayer” propaganda for kids.
Apparently a Liberal senator is none too pleased with ABC’s fascinating exploding pig carbon calculator:
THE ABC has been forced to justify portraying the average Australian as an exploding greenhouse pig with slime oozing out of its mouth.
Managing director Mark Scott also found himself defending claims that Geraldine Doogue was a grovelling sycophant and Professor Schpinkee’s diagnosis on when to die, as senators grilled him over the ABC’s perceived bias during budget estimates.
Victorian Liberal senator Mitch Fifield was outraged by an ABC science website, Planet Slayer, which he said demonised loggers, meat eaters and farmers who grew GM crops.
The website also features Professor Schpinkee’s greenhouse calculator, which assesses how users’ carbon dioxide production compares to the “Average Aussie greenhouse pig” and estimates at what age the user should die so they don’t use more than their fair share of resources. Too many emissions, caused by gas-guzzling cars, big houses and racked-up plane miles, causes a cartoon pig to blow up.
“Sure, there’s a bit of inner goth in all of us, but this may be taking things too far,” Senator Fifield said.
Mr Scott said the website was deliberately irreverent and was designed to appeal to children. But he said the ABC would look at the content on the site.
That’s a relief. The crisis is over now that ABC are looking at the content.
Meanwhile, I’m trying to get in touch with my “inner goth” - I never realised I had one.
This takes my breath away - see if the assumptions of this “model” are not an affront to science or even logic.
In Australia, the programme “Planet Slayer” is a popular children’s show on ABC. It appears to be thinly disguised environmentalist propaganda and that “Greenhouse Calculator” took my breath away.
For some reason the less money you spent in a year, the greater the carbon footprint. Does anyone know why?
An Aussie lawyer blogger put it this way
What an evil, evil little application! Just imagine that some impressionable child comes along to the website and finds out that his family should have “died” at the age of 4.3. That is just despicable. It actually reminds me of an incident which occurred when I was 6 years old, involving a Religious Education teacher telling me that my parents were going to hell because they were heathens. (Incidentally, being a logical type, I worked out if she was right, I’d rather be in Hell with Mum and Dad, but if she was wrong, who cares, so either way, I may as well reject her religion with impunity).
These are the kinds of things which just should not be put to a kid. Or to anyone really. The notion of calculating that someone should die because they consume too much carbon is immoral and revolting in the extreme.
Incredible.
By the way, I died at 5.3 years - or at least the pig did. Apparently this means that my share of the carbon pie (this being a zero-sum game) meant that I could only consume at my current rate for 5.3 years before I would “run out”.
If I was a peasant in the third world by comparison, I could live forever!
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