Polar Love: Green hugs and kisses, U heart nature, & it hearts U!

by AdFool | November 26, 2010 at 02:31 pm

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Now hear this! I want the air on planet earth to be polluted, filthy and completely non-breathable. I pray ceaselessly for the day all available water becomes putrid and undrinkable. I hate trees, and hope they all get clear-cut and used as fuel to burn any and all good books about everything. Rocks and rivers and roots and ravens – I could not care less about them or their relatives. In fact, show me an oil-clogged ocean with birds blanketed in thick swaths of black crude gasping for air and I’ll need a drink and some popcorn to complete the show. And know that at my deepest core, my most cherished hope of all is that one day soon all, and I mean ALL, of our landfills will finally rise up to eclipse humanity as a whole and choke off this God forsaken planet once and for all.

Still with me? Obviously the above paragraph is ludicrous. I don’t want that at all. No one on earth wants that, but if you ever decide to take issue, challenge or even question any ideal or notion labelled “green” the declaration above might as well be stapled to your forehead. It’s what you’ll be accused of, whether based in truth or not, to smack you into eco-submission. I so tire of having to preface every inquiry into green theology with “Of course I love the environment but….” so let’s skip that bit of credibility tripe today and move on.

My issue is with the self-congratulatory back slapping that makes up so much of the green movement. They hector and shout at so-called enviro-H8ers all day only to retreat to their carbon-neutral loft-spaces to lavish praise on their own personal efforts to save us all. Their self-love would be offensive if it wasn’t so comical, as they seem to have an insatiable need to be reminded they really are better humans than the rest of us. As things go, it would seem Nissan Motors knows a target when it sees one, and has responded accordingly.

The commercial for the Nissan Leaf (their all-new electric vehicle), opens in the arctic. Frozen, cold – and clearly melting – we meet a lone polar bear looking sad, and dare I say it, worried? He is resting on an ice floe and looking as cuddly as The Bumble from the Rudolph cartoon (post Hermie the dentist, of course). Then our bear is on the move, swimming and coming ashore. He’s clearly on a mission. In a forest, under a highway and then shambling along some train tracks before pausing just long enough to play with a butterfly (and no, I’m not making that up). He walks a small road, approaches a city at night and continues his trek across a bridge and through almost deserted city streets. Day comes again, and our majestic beast is now in a neighborhood – your neighborhood, my neighborhood – everyone’s neighborhood when we cut to a man leaving his home and entering his car. Before he can open the door he turns and comes face to face with the giant of nature, who by now has reared up on his hind legs……so he can hug the man. Why? It because of his car, the Nissan Leaf. The man hugs back, and smiles as he buries his face in soft, warm fur. He loves nature just like nature loves him. It made me want to retch.

Look, leave aside the fact that an electric car in many cases is actually powered by coal (quite a step backwards, wouldn’t you think?). And leave aside the fact that disposal of electric car batteries is far more complex than we’ve been led to believe. And even leave aside the fact that our extreme culpability in global warming/cooling/changing is not exactly a complete slam dunk, but a snuggle-hug from a friggen polar bear because you chose the right car? Are they serious? Mother Nature will never, ever love your hemp-covered ass that much.

In a way, this commercial is mocking those enamoured with green technology – showering them with infantile “love” and promising the good feelings they require to march forward as foot soldiers in a belief system that discourages debate and suffocates dissent. “There, there Gary Greenie. Thanks to you everything’s gonna be a-ok on Planet Earth. Good work buying a Leaf. You’re so nice. And smart too”

Argue all you want for man’s inherent responsibility for any and all damages done to the planet. It’s easy enough. We do make a damn good mess of things down here. But we’ve also done a heck of a good job making them better too. My own take on this? Generally, the earth doesn’t need our help. It’ll deal with whatever we throw at it just fine. The planet itself has all the time in the world to survive man. It’s ultimately us that will suffer based on what we do. And I happen to consider that a much better incentive to reduce my waste and live cleaner than spending time worrying whether some polar bear wants to hug it out with me or not.