PRESENT TENSE:THE DEPARTMENT of the Environment is running a television ad proclaiming that this generation will be defined by how we tackle climate change.
As examples of previous generational challenges, it includes images of emigration, an aid worker in Africa, and the North. To illustrate the Independence era, it features both Éamon de Valera and Michael Collins, so hinting that someone in the Department felt it was best that the issue of switching off unnecessary lights was not split along Treaty lines.
But each time this "Change your world. Change the world" ad runs (to be followed by a commercial for bottled water or some attractive product wrapped in unnecessary packaging) you have to wonder: what's the point? Yes, it is trying to help us take personal responsibility for a global issue. And it directs us to a website that has handy tips, a map informing us that Westmeath will some day be a haven for exotic wildlife, and that promises it will soon feature a carbon calculator.
But is it really worth spending millions to raise awareness of an issue that the public is possibly more aware of than any other? It's a message that is already being hammered home in schools, that's been seen in an Oscar-winning documentary, and that pops up in regular news reports. And we're still fresh from the Power of One and the Race Against Waste ads, also funded by the Government. Surely anyone on this island who hasn't already got the message is, at this stage, never going to get it, no matter how snappy the ads.
At the same time, there is also a television ad informing the viewer that Transport 21 is a "work in progress". Given that a third of it is already behind an original schedule that the Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey has described as both "indicative" and "unrealistic", the viewer might well wonder if that should be "progress in slow motion". With arresting animation and happy children (hinting that we'll take the pain, but they'll benefit), it offers an attractive vision. But, again, it's worth asking: what is the point of this ad exactly? Perhaps it is just to tell us to "hang in there, folks", a little like those Irish Rail ads of recent years that reassured us that "we're getting there", even as you waited for the late arrival of your suburban cattle wagon.
This is the problem with public-awareness campaigns. They raise awareness, but whether they solve anything is another matter. The Transport 21 ad isn't trying to fix anything, of course, only reminding us why the road is lined with abandoned traffic cones, but the "Change" ad is in the very spirit of campaigns that actively attempt to alter our behaviour. Yet, the truth is that punitive measures work in a way that flashy ads don't. The TV licence fee collectors have stopped telling us what we get for our cash and have reverted to threatening us. The graphic warnings on cigarettes have had nothing like the impact that the smoking ban has.
And road safety ads, despite having become more deliberately horrific, are still of debatable influence. Recently, some safety ads have moved from being shocking to instead focusing on straightforward rules of the road that people should have learned - and remembered - when they were passing their test. But with both types, those who are most likely to pay attention may be those who are most likely to drive carefully anyway. There may be little to be gained from telling people how to be good drivers, when even bad drivers believe themselves to be safe in the first place. It is not that such campaigns are pointless but, ultimately, penalty points and increased breath-testing impacted on road death figures in a way that the graphic ads simply did not.
The "Change" ad is likely to be the same in that it will speak only to those who are already acting on the message. Minister for the Environment John Gormley insists the campaign is part of a wider effort, by no means the only weapon in the fight against climate change, but it's probably a blunt one as it is. He may point to the Government's survey that this week claimed that 81 per cent of people are in favour of carbon taxes on certain fuels. However, people do not vote for higher taxes. Not in boom times, and not when a recession looms and the cost of living is rising. What people say to a survey-taker may well be a response to what they want to be seen to believe in, rather than what they actually believe.
And public awareness campaigns can be like that. The Transport 21 and climate-change ads may have different objectives, but ultimately they fit into a pattern. They say they are about acting, or encouraging us to act. But they are as likely to be about Government departments and public relations people being seen to be doing something.
