What the flick??

The trend to save the environment grows every day. Greenpeace and the like are enjoying increasing awareness and I don't know about where you live, but there is a trend among younger people to support the cause. This should be a no-brainer as they are stuck with the consequences of our poor choices after we go. Incentive programs are out there to buy energy efficient cars and appliances and there are even giveaways of energy efficient lights year round in these parts. Al Gore's film about the environment, while being a little sensationalized is also grabbing people's attention. An Inconvenient Truth is definitely worth a look see if you haven't seen it yet.

The government in these parts is infamous for doing all manner of useless knee jerk reactions so that they'll look like they are doing something. In an effort to gain more support for the environmental awareness trends they have done one thing right that I have seen so far and it is getting a lot of attention. Getting with the folks at Key Gordon, an ad agency in Toronto Ontario, the "Flick Off" movement was launched to get the younger citizens in line behind the environment. After reading George Monbiot's book Heat and seeing An Inconvenient Truth the agency decided an approach was needed that got people's attention because let's be honest, sublety isn't doing a damn bit of good. They spent the winter assembling the campaign and picked up some strong support along the way. Environmental Defence offered to be the lead ENGO, after which Virgin Mobile joined suit. With them secured it was time to grab some of the Canadian big guns. Roots and MuchMusic signed on and the movement gained even more momentum. Soon after the House of Anansi Press agreed to publish a special FLICK OFF edition of the book Climate Change by Shelley Tanaka. With all these players in the game it was pretty much a go when spring came upon them, at which point The Ontario Ministry Of Environment jumped in . The snowball was picking up speed and Butterfield & Robinson, Bullfrog Power, Andora Graphics, NOW Magazine, Zoom Media, Clean Air Foundation and the Pembina Institute all joined suit.

With all this set up it was time to go live and while the title of the campaign is suggestive they made no effort to play down the sensationalism of it. As you can see on the left they were letting the wordplay run wild and as such are reaping the rewards that go with such an approach. Critics are blasting the program with all sorts of narrow minded approaches that probably wouldn't have even been brought up had the government signed on. NDP critic Peter Kormos is worried that the government's endorsement will anger parents concerned about the use of foul language by their children. Personally if this is a trigger for your kids to start cursing like longshoreman I think you've got to look at yourself and not the government, but that's another post all together. To aid in his point Kormos, who does whatever he can to get press, said "It's silly, it's embarrassing, and clearly it's an ad agency that has a bunch of flickin' amateurs as employees,". If amateurs can do work this effective I say hire them while they are working cheap!! Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory claims that backing of the program is "bad judgment," and that "It shouldn't be done this way. There are plenty of ways to educate kids without using language like this."

While they all seem to be worried that people will be upset that their tax dollars are being pissed away on this "juvenile" campaign and revel in trying to make it look bad, I beg to differ. I'd rather see a grass roots effort like this supported than see the hacks in office take the half a million it cost to help launch this and line their pockets with it. Worse still they could take the half a million and piss it away on some more ineffective environmental policy like the ones they have implemented to support the Kyoto Accord. You know, the actions that have resulted in the spending of millions of dollars to reduce greenhouse emissions by a target of 6% by now and has actually yielded a 24 % increase. Great use of the environmental dollars boys. I say lets piss some people off and get the attention of the blissfully ignorant out there. It's time to start making changes before we're all "flicked"!