Path to our future

Last night I found myself in front of the T.V watching the final fleeting moments of what seems like an endless hockey playoff season, contemplating meaningless questions relating to les Canadiens de Montreal when I was suddenly awoken from my slumber by three successive advertisements on the CBC.  The first one was a message from our darling Federal Conservative party, reminding us how important jobs are to all Canadians (not to be confused with les Canadiens), the second was sponsored by Enbridge, promoting the Northern gateway pipeline as a path to prosperity for all Canadians, and the third was a message from the oil sands producers, praising the oil sands as the savior of Canadian Industry (I’ll post the links below).   AHHH!! So much green washing and values washing!  The advertisements were filled with beautiful images of natural landscapes and “working families.” The Enbridge add took the cake with its “path to our future" slogan, complete with a green oil tanker (see link below).  Just made me think, as I read through Leichenko, O’Brien, and Solecki (2010), that we are a very long way from grasping the complexity of interactions between global environmental and economic changes, at least the people with money are.  They do however provide great learning opportunities for the development of critical media skills.

Enbridge Path to our Future: http://www.youtube.com/user/enbridgepipelines?feature=results_main