Low Impact

GetUp!, a community advocacy organisation, recently made headlines here in Australia by airing a commercial during the AFL Grand Final that parodied the Government’s current run of climate change advertisements. They accomplished this by raising $200,000 in donations in just 3 days – quite a feat!

One of GetUp!’s campaigns is to encourage the government to take more serious steps on climate change, and this parody ad forms part of it. For those who haven’t seen it, the current government ad lists some of the funding and programs the government is involved in to fight climate change, interspersed with “everyday people” quoting lines like “I don’t know much about geosequestration, but changing my light globes to more efficient ones? I can do that!”.

There has been a charge by a number of green organisations (and obviously the opposition parties as well!), that the government is only paying lip-service to the concept of climate change, and is more interested in appearing to take action (such as screening the afore-mentioned ads for instance), than actually taking serious steps to reduce Australia’s carbon emissions. GetUp’s parody ad follows the same format of the “official” government ad to make this point.

Regardless of your political leanings, or thoughts on the adequacy of the government’s climate change response, the parody is very well done. At the very least, it should put a smile on your face. At best, it will get you thinking!

Categories: community, environment, green, media

Tags: GetUp!, parody, policy, video