Wednesday, 1 April 2020

Our World on a Cigarette Packet?

There has been a suggestion that climate-damaging products, like car fuel pumps and airline tickets, should carry graphic pictures, along the same lines as the images of smoking-related diseases, that are mandatory, in the UK and elsewhere, on cigarette packets (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/31/climate-killing-products-should-come-with-smoking-style-warnings). It's an interesting suggestion but I'm not sure it would work as well as the anti-smoking advertising. Cigarettes damage the health of the smoker (and those in their immediate vicinity) relatively quickly, whereas the climate-damaging effects are much more diffuse, being seen  planet-wide, and taking (hopefully) decades. It has also been pretty easy to determine what images (disease conditions) will have an impact on tobacco use but what pictures (floods, starving people?) would clearly carry the message for climate change? It is also relatively easy to put an image on to a fuel pump or a plastic bottle but where would you put it for maximal effect on a natural gas supply or food that has been transported by air freight? An awful lot of what we consume damages the environment!

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