The Unsuitablog

Strange, how I almost never seem to get responses from people who have gone to all the effort of sending me an email, telling me all about the special green ideas that their special green employers have asked them to send to hundreds of special green blogs, to which I have kindly sent back a response giving a heartfelt and honest critique of these special green ideas.

Take this response I sent out:

“Aah, how lovely. Is that one tree for every thousand children Disney have brainwashed into living the synthetic hyper-consumer dream?”

It’s got a question attached to it — you would have thought they would be kind enough to respond…

Before I show you what was in the original email, I want you to click on the thumbnail picture above. You might recognise the place; may even have been there. What do you think?

[thinking time]

A few years ago I might have thought: “Well that’s nice, aren’t there lots of trees, and look at the big lakes.”

Now I think: “What is that f****** great concrete hole doing in the middle of the Florida Everglades?”

Here’s the email:

Dear Keith

Please see below. Wonderful news for Earth Day!

Let me know if you are interested in covering this or would like any interviews or artwork?

Hope all is well.

Kind regards,
Warren Betts

—–
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

STRONG ADVANCE SALES FOR “EARTH” MOTION PICTURE

BOLSTER TREE-PLANTING INITIATIVE:

500,000 TREES TO BE PLANTED SO FAR

DISNEYNATURE EXPECTS NUMBERS TO CONTINUE TO GROW

EARTH Motion Picture Opens on Earth Day, April 22

Burbank, Calif. (April 18, 2009) – “EARTH” won’t open till Wednesday, yet moviegoers have already snapped up half a million tickets to catch the movie in its opening week and have a tree planted in their honor. Disneynature’s commitment to plant a tree for everyone who sees the motion picture between April 22-28 means that already 500,000 trees will be planted—and that number is still growing with advance ticket sales on the rise and the April 22-opening just a few days away.

“With half a million new trees committed so far, Disneynature’s first film is already making an impact on the world—and ‘EARTH’ hasn’t even opened yet,” said Mark Zoradi, president of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Group. “We’re so pleased that moviegoers have embraced this film and our tree-planting initiative to this degree and we expect the numbers to keep climbing.”

Disney’s goal is to ensure that it plants trees in areas that conservationists have identified as critical areas of biodiversity. Disney will oversee the planting of the trees in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, which is considered one of the most endangered rain forests in the world. Today, only seven percent of the Atlantic Forest remains. Disney is committed to ensuring the trees are planted to provide the greatest long term benefit for the planet.

ABOUT THE MOVIE

Narrated by James Earl Jones, “EARTH” tells the remarkable story of three animal families and their amazing journeys across the planet we call home. “EARTH” combines rare action, unimaginable scale and impossible locations by capturing the most intimate moments of our planet’s wildest and most elusive creatures. Directors Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield, the acclaimed creative team behind the Emmy Award®-winning “Planet Earth,” combine forces again to bring this epic adventure to the big screen.

Moviegoers need only purchase a ticket to see “EARTH” opening week to automatically have a tree planted in their honor. To find a theatre near you and to purchase tickets, go to www.disney.com/earth.

There were all sorts of alternative images I could have put at the top of this article: sweatshop workers sewing together Disney branded clothes or assembling Disney branded toys and other consumer goods; container ships full of Disney goods, crossing the oceans with wares destined for every nation touched by the rank hand of industrialisation; airports full of people waiting for their departure to one of the Disney resorts dotted around the world, or aircraft in the air pumping out greenhouse gases directly created by the desire to travel to a Disney resort; landfill sites full of Disney goods, slowly leaching their toxins into the ground; queues of gas-guzzling traffic and hyper parking lots outside shopping malls replete with Disney Stores full of toxic, climate changing, sweatshop produced consumer items; children goggle-eyed before the latest saccharine-sweet, consumer-friendly, merchandise-linked version of the world brought to you by your friendly corporation; fast food stores full of obese families drawn towards the counters by the offer of Disney toys with every Happy Meal; a globe full of brainwashed humans, on their knees, praying in the direction of a Magic Castle, that sits at the centre of a vast concrete, brick, chrome and plastic complex that used to be a swath of pristine, wildlife-rich Everglade.

Take your pick.

500,000 trees. Actually, according to the New York Times, about 3 million tickets have been sold for “Earth” so far, which is 3 million trees. Sounds a lot? If we assume there are 500 trees per hectare of rainforest, then that’s 6000 hectares, or 23 square miles of rainforest.

Every year, approximately 8 million hectares of forest is cut down globally, with at least the same amount being degraded in the same period of time.

Disney will be planting enough trees to offset 0.0004% of that destruction.

At the same time they are responsible for sweatshop workers sewing together Disney branded clothes or assembling Disney branded toys and other consumer goods; container ships full of Disney goods, crossing the oceans with wares destined for every nation touched by the rank hand of industrialisation; airports full of people waiting for their departure to one of the Disney resorts dotted around the world, or aircraft in the air pumping out greenhouse gases directly created by the desire to travel to a Disney resort; landfill sites full of Disney goods, slowly leaching their toxins into the ground; queues of gas-guzzling traffic and hyper parking lots outside shopping malls replete with Disney Stores full of toxic, climate changing, sweatshop produced consumer items; children goggle-eyed before the latest saccharine-sweet, consumer-friendly, merchandise-linked version of the world brought to you by your friendly corporation; fast food stores full of obese families drawn towards the counters by the offer of Disney toys with every Happy Meal…