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BLOW THIS HOT AIR OFF OUR TV SCREENS

A grown-up discussion is needed about global warming

Saturday November 7,2009

By Richard and Judy

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MOST so-called public service advertisements are irritating to a point.

But the all-time winner in the infuriatingly patronising stakes is currently in mid-campaign on television. I’m having to
be held back from throwing furniture at the screen when it comes on.

I write, of course, of the teeth-grindingly banal commercial made on behalf of a quango called Act on Co2.

If there is a film that better exemplifies our bossy, condescending, finger-waving, treat-them-like-idiots nanny state, I’d like to see it.

Actually, I wouldn’t. This one is quite enough. A father is shown reading a bedtime story to his little girl. With nursery
music tinkling oh-so-sinisterly in the background, he shows her pictures of a puppy drowning in floods, a kitten
floating to its doom on an upturned table and rabbits weeping as drought incinerates their habitat.

In sonorous tones, Daddy explains the strange weather is caused by “too much Co2 going up in the sky” and that
the grown-ups are to blame for “driving cars and keeping houses warm”.

Death and destruction await everyone. “Is there a happy ending?” asks the round-eyed child. “It’s up to us,” the
disembodied voice of Nanny answers.

Oh, do me a favour! Global warming is happening and it’s probably happening for myriad different reasons and we need a grown-up discussion about it, not this glib, patronising milk-and-rusk propaganda.

Act on Co2 – or rather, the individuals it is composed of – talk down to us as though we were simpletons barely able to cross the road by ourselves. And they’re spending our money on this infantile drivel.

The Advertising standards Authority has received hundreds of complaints from infuriated viewers. For a quango supposed to be tackling global warming, Act on Co2 certainly generates much pointless heat.