Post-modern and green

Further to environmental tipping point: How do you preach to people about the importance of saving the planet while remaining hip, ironic and cynical, the required characteristics of any self-respecting media person today? How do you attract an audience with a scary message they'd rather tune out?

CBC Radio One's hip Saturday program Go! made a clever attempt to address what they called "Earth Day apathy" yesterday, which was Earth Day. In between various segments in which the audience did things like compete to see who could identify which items didn't belong in a blue box (on the theory that kids would do a better job at this than geezers, although the geezer won), they ran taped clips that sounded like public service announcements. Each began with lugubrious music, leading to a man intoning glumly that this was your "Earth Day Downer." The announcer stated a couple of examples of impending global doom. "If that's depressing," he'd say, "Think of this," and he'd list another one. Finally, he'd end saying something like "That was your Earth Day Downer," and the sombre music would close out the clip.

At one and the same time, the items succeeded in making fun of environmentalism and still getting across some arresting and important facts. I thought it worked, although I believe media theorists have suggested that this kind of subversiveness in the entertainment media ultimately does nothing to effect social change.