ABC kids’ website shows Aussies as pigs | NEWS.com.au
AN ABC website has been accused of portraying farmers and forestry workers as evil, and telling kids how much carbon they can produce before they die. The Planet Slayer website, which can be accessed via the science section on the ABC home page, also demonises people who eat meat and those involved in the nuclear industry, a Senate estimates committee heard. The site has several features including a cartoon series, Adventures of Greena, and a tool called Prof Schpinkee’s Greenhouse Calculator to help kids work out their carbon footprint. The calculator lets users compare their own carbon output to the “average Aussie greenhouse pig” and estimates at what age a person should die so they don’t use more than their fair share of the Earth’s resources.
Too much carbon production causes a cartoon pig to explode, leaving behind a pool of blood. Victorian Liberal senator Mitch Fifield today questioned the accuracy and appropriateness of some of the imagery and content on the website. “Do you think it’s appropriate that the ABC portray the average Australian as a pig and is it appropriate for a website obviously geared towards kids to depict people who are average Australians as massive overweight ugly pigs, oozing slime from their mouths, and then to have these pigs blow up in a mass of blood and guts?” Senator Fifield said other episodes in the series portrayed people who eat meat, those involved in the nuclear industry and farmers who grow GM crops as evil.
You really have to see this site to believe it. My favorite section is called “This is Your Lifestyle- See how much you suck”.
Some people are just not happy unless they can point out what is wrong with you and why their way is the only way to live.
I leave them to their joyless existence.
There’s a fine line between the righteous religious right and the agnostic but still wacko left. Both sides want to tell everyone how to live their lives.
This statement scared the hell out of me:
“…and estimates at what age a person should die so they don’t use more than their fair share of the Earth’s resources.”
Someone has decided a “green” calculator is the basis for your death? Thinly disguised euthanasia?
If this doesn’t illustrate the dangers these Global Warming fanatics pose then I don’t know what else will. I would hate for my 5 year old to see this and use the calculator to determine that my death is long overdue because of the Carbon Footprint I’m leaving behind. I worked as an SAP consultant traveling weekly via airplane for over 5 years. I guess that, along with the fact that I’ve been in the Military for over 15 years means I’m one fat, slime-spewing, long overdue to die pig I guess. What nut-jobs!
But, once again I say to Global Warming evangelist, use the current price of oil-based energy as your perfect push to convince people to think alternative energy. Might as well go green while we figure out the alternative too. Give the Global Warming a break and focus your attack on prices at the pump. I’m sure you’ll get a lot more people to follow your cause rather than pulling stupid stunts like that website above. Really, I’m not being sarcastic here. Those Green thinking people reading this website, change your strategy a bit and attack your greatest enemy, barrel of oil, while it’s at it’s weakest — high prices at the pump. I’m sure a large number of the US population is pretty pissed right now, having to pay over $4/gallon of gas and double the heating oil prices of a year ago. I’m sure they, like me, are wondering why the hell we are still so dependent in century old transportation technology (gas powered, internal combustion engine). Tell us which politicians actually care about going green and dumping oil so we might support them in November. Not guaranteed I would necessarily vote for them but it would help in my decision in choosing the right candidate.
What will be really scary is when the religious right and the fundamentalist environmentalist (those wishing to go back to man’s natural state) join forces in order to bring about their vision of a new world. Wait… never mind, it has already happened. We’re screwed.
This is just another example of the poorly orchestrated push by the IPCC to eliminate CO2 by-production. If they had concentrated on government policy using convincing science and kept the doomsday talk and public alarmist tactics to themselves, this type of reaction wouldn’t be happening. It’s only going to get worse. The earth is doomed, if only for the prediction.
Since when is it politically correct to blow up a pig in a shower of blood and guts? It seems the term ‘politically correct’ has become a general-purpose swear-word for the ‘Average Aussie Pig’. Well, McCullough is probably not an Aussie, but you get the drift. 😉
Seriously though, you guys are way too serious. I found this website to be fun and informative, and wouldn’t give a second thought to letting my son explore it.
I should have died 35 years ago! I mean, I didn’t even drive a car back then :'(
I agree with JimR,
Instilling fear is the primary tool of politicians, stock traders and terrorists. People using it as their main selling point should be rightly be written off as crackpots. It is not the primary tool of serious science.
hee…. I see no problem with introducing kids to a little valid self-criticism, as opposed to the usual self-congratulation…
#4
Someone has decided a “green” calculator is the basis for your death? Thinly disguised euthanasia?
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thanks. i have had my goddaughter on this site since i’ve seen it. nothing wrong with teachering people to be aware of how they affect the world around them.
It made me laugh. It’s not for kids, unless you want them warped and scared. For the creators of the site the only good human is a dead human, cause by living even and digging around the ground for grubs humans have a impact on the environment. I agree with #6 the best way to make a change is hit people in the pocket book.
I agree with #2. This could be humor, of a Saturday night sort. But if its directed to kids, then I’d say to the authors, “Go play in traffic and stop using resources! Lead by example!”
“When one believes in nothing, one believes in everything”.
Green is the new religion of the atheist, and a ugly one it is.
Here’s another thought. My son and I saw a special on The Science Channel not too long ago where they showed what would happen if the Earth were struck by a Dooms Day Meteor. I mean a meteor twice the magnitude of the hypothesized Chicxulub Asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs, kind of like the K-T one.
Now, okay, I enjoy watching that stuff because it’s very informative but my 5 year old was freaked out. He was still asking me when we were all going to die two weeks after that show.
You know, when I was a kid all I worried about was playing, having fun, and learning fundamental stuff in school like Math, English and the like. I think websites like these, being made to attract the attention of kids, is a bit beyond. I wouldn’t blame the movement if they used the Captain Planet approach where it’s informative and encourages kids to love the planet and not pollute, etc. But to give them a calculator of when people need to die because of their consumption of natural resources? It’s silly. Try it yourself. According to that website, I should’ve died at age 4.1 Poor taste all around. It’s why they lose credibility in my book and change my opinion of them to be more stressed-out alarmist not unlike the ones in PITA. Although I also appreciate some of the work PITA is doing, it’s when they go to extremes like this that they end up losing my support.
Seems like you americans all have your sense of humour surgically removed at birth.
The site is a great way to humerously get kids to think just a bit more deeply about the way in which we all affect our planet in a small way.
Its certainly NOT supposed to be taken seriously, and I question the intelligence of anyone who believes otherwise.
BTW, I should have died at age 13.5, possibly due to being hit by part of an exploding pig.
Exactly how does anybody think this is positive?
#19 – It’s a shame you didn’t die, then we wouldn’t have to listen to your bullshit.
If you have half a brain, you’d know kids can’t derive humor from these comments. Especially in the country you’re from.
#19, read #18 for your enlightenment.
As far as raising the price of gas, that was/is a welcomed reaction by the global warming activists. On the surface it seems like a good thing, but in reality it is callous, irrational and irresponsible. The poor are getting hit the hardest and many wealthy sons of biatches will continue to guzzle oil and gas as if it were bottled water.
A more fair solution would have been to go directly to government with good science and work on legislating the eradication of gas guzzlers and over powered passenger cars. That way the many uncaring wealthy can remain insensitive assholes without damaging the environment (in that way), fuel efficient cars would become more affordable through volume, the poor would benefit in savings, gasoline use would drop conserving resources and the environment would with little economic harm done.
Apparently alternative ideas like that are too complicated for our esteemed governments to comprehend and implement, or for the oh-so-brainy IPCC to suggest. We look to our leaders, our governments for problem solving on such a massive scale as this, and so far they have proven once again to be the impotent , wishy-washy, self-serving, asshats that we have come to know. Public education is still necessary, but the time for it to be the primary solution has long since gone. But to put out dire warnings without any leadership of proactive remedial… to just let market forces and human nature take over is just mental.
Basically what we have now is a free-for-all pile on, with the poorest and weakest on the bottom. The IPCC couldn’t foresee that reaction, but they can tell us all exactly what is going to happen in the next 20 years, and the exact causes down to the littlest detail from a million years ago.
#22 – Better than being petrified growing up under the constant threat of some drunken moron in the White House or Kremlin destroying all life on earth on the press of a button.
Far better to be frightened (rightly so) about a situation which we can actually do something about, yes? But I forgot, you’re probably american, and taking responsibility for your own actions has never been something a lot of americans have ever been very good at.
So just keep driving your polluting SUVs, keep dumping crap into your waterways, keep on consuming consuming consuming, because jesus and his invisible dad will save your sorry ass, so why bother even thinking about cleaning up the small part of the world you inhabit because only the dumb animals and atheists will have to live there in the future anyway while you’ll be up on some silvery cloud laughing your backside off at all the suffering you caused and then left behind (just like Jesus would do).
#23, Zybch:”you’re probably american, and taking responsibility for your own actions has never been something a lot of americans have ever been very good at.
… were you perhaps referring to some other post, or are you on mind altering drugs?
I can’t believe that some of my taxes paid for this crap?
#23 – Jesus hates the environment?
Instead of a website, I’m more concerned that this sort of thing happens in schools. When I was in school, I was being taught that global warming was heating the planet up by about a few degrees every decade, which I now know is absurd.
Here’s something from Iowa’s new education standards:
instructs students to use what they’ve been taught “and other research, [to] write a letter to your legislator arguing against the sale of DDT to Third World countries when it is banned in the U.S.”
For a lot of younger kids this site is not going to be funny. Others could care less. They’ll have a blast blowing up the pigs. Most of the posters seem to find it over the top which pretty much says most people aren’t going to like it.
The planet is getting warmer cause the ice is melting. If it was getting coulder the glaciers would be growing and the sea ice at the poles would be hanging around longer. That simple. Ice melts faster when it is warmer.
Some people are the worst enemies of any cause they support. This is not new.
deowll, the ice is growing. It’s only a small part of Antarctica that is thinning. Overall, the ice is getting thicker and growing in volume.
#23 I guess you have covered the list of leftist hates with that rant.
This is what you get when HIPPIES rule the world
Maybe they show the pig blowing up in blood and guts to demonstrate they aren’t being PC.. I think it’s funny – especially all so called “anti-PC” types getting all outraged about it and hot under the collar in perfect PC nazi style. Hyprocrites.
Interestingly according to the game you can be as much of a pig as you want but spending a chunk of your filthy lucre in ethical investments makes it all OK.