Do you find this funny?
Do you find this scary?
Watch it again with those questions in mind. It is no doubt absurd… Who’s going to put me in an armlock in the middle of a store because I ask for a plastic bag? Who’s going to go through my trash looking for spent batteries?
There would be an uproar if that kind of thing ever happened. It’s so outlandish that no one takes it seriously. However, we do have some real world incidents where some of those skits really did happen, just not in such an absurd form.
Remember the scene where they measure the temp of the hot tub water? Now recall when President Obama proposed the installation of ’smart meters’ into homes as a way to regulate/monitor the use of energy…
How about the scene were the guy in the TDI audi gets to go to the front of the line? Now recall the attempt of the California Legislation a few year back to get everyone to buy ‘alternative’ fuel vehicles by giving them an HOV pass with the car… They had to discontinue the program later because single driver cars were clogging the HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle, haha) lanes…
What is more alarming, even more so than these real world accounts of the absurdity in the commercial, is the thought processes behind them. Though they are trying to be funny, perhaps even trying to be satirical, this commercial is shedding light (purposefully or inadvertently) on a growing tendency of some in our society to intrude upon the personal freedom’s and liberties of the individual for the ultimate sake of saving the planet or the even more nebulous premise of the greater good.
– people who may find those obligations tiresome and constraining on occasion, who only fitfully meet them, who may be annoyed by sticklers and naggers, but who recognize that living more sustainably is in fact the moral thing to do. This basically describes every guy I know.
Anthropogenic Climate Change has been proven a hoax. The science has never stood up to actual scrutiny via the scientific method and now with the various incarnations of climate gate, the hoax is evident to any but the most zealous enviro acolyte.
So if all these actions they want us to take, are based on a premise that has been shown to be false (by way of supporting it by unfounded assumptions and the manipulation of data), what are we to think is the true purpose? The motivations are as myriad as the perpetrators, but the end goal is the same…control.
There are many in the world today that believe that a utopia can be achieved if everyone just follows a certain set of ever changing and increasingly totalitarian rules. A list of commandments per say, handed down to society by the experts or the smartest among us, each designed to incrementally limit your financial, social, religious and personal freedoms.
I have no problem with putting a plastic bottle in a bin designated for recycling. Humans have recycled material since the inception of tool making. It is nothing new, and if a market can be created from it without subsidization with taxes, more power to the market and the jobs it creates.
But, I draw the line when people demonize a material such as plastic, because some egghead claims its bad for the environment because it doesn’t break down, when the same material has saved countless human lives when used in…oh, say… a bullet proof vest. It is hypocritical to disparage a material in one use (a plastic bottle), but hail it as the savior of the planet when used in a hybrid car, or denigrate clean coal as nonexistent, but make the claim clean diesel will establish morality…
Those who wish to control, will never have enough of it.
