Environmental issues have been a hot topic for decades, and on the whole, they have centred around issues like air, water and land pollution with consecutive governments taking steps to prevent it. This has been a good thing. Ditto the phase-out of plastic bags in supermarkets and the like, and Council depots providing recycling points at rubbish tips and encouraging people to use them, which is also a good thing. No one really has an excuse not to separate and recycle their rubbish anymore.
If it all goes toward preserving the planet, it’s a good thing. Trashing the place until it is no longer habitable is definitely not. People are a lot more aware now, which is another good thing. Many good things here. Which is good, yes? Basically, yes.
The problem with good things, however, is the potential for them to be exploited (very bad thing!) and the “environment” word pushes a lot of emotional buttons with a lot of people, which leaves it wide open to exploitation. It can be a money train if you manage to milk it the right way. A few years back, one of the electricity supply companies in Australia began promoting “green” power; electricity from sources such as wind turbines and solar power plants. The television ads were very people-friendly, the smiling woman in the ad all sacharine and vaccuous (I just wanted to swat her) in her pitch to encourage people to switch to electricity from “green” sources, as a positive step towards reducing one’s “carbon footprint” (if I hear that one more time I’m going to spit!) etc, etc, etc. Well, yes, it would be a little more expensive than the electricity supplied via the coal fired power stations, but what’s a little extra cost when it comes to “saving the planet”? Firstly, it was not a “little” extra cost to the consumer (it was designed to make a nice profit for the power company after all) it was a rip-off. At the time of airing, there were insufficient alternative energy plants to guarantee the power people would be paying more for would be “green” because the availability of alternative power was only so-so during off-peak periods, and during peak periods would more than likely be supplied via a coal fired power station, as the alternative sources could not meet demand. And there was no way to check either way what they were using. People signed up for it though, not realising they were just paying more for the same thing they’d been using all along. There’s no absolute guarantee of it’s supply even now, unless you are using the power generated via the solar panels on your own roof.
This was a very deliberate exploitation. The power company knew the supply of “green” power was sketchy but they promoted it anyway.
But why stop at a small deception designed to bring in some extra cash if you can pull off something a lot bigger, with the potential to make billions? If greed is your god then you would have already cottoned on to that potential and if you are smart enough, you will have mapped out a plan to fool the masses while making yourself very, very wealthy. If you can pull it off.
You may need a few powerful allies with credible backgrounds to assist with the launch, but you’ll keep the number within reason as you don’t want to have to split the potentially massive profits too widely. There will be kickbacks, of course, which will be nice little earners for those assisting you in your ruse and the payouts will be generous enough to keep them on-side, but no matter, because the money will come rolling in. If you can pull it off…
Well, someone did cotton on, and while they haven’t quite managed to pull it off to their satisfaction just yet, they have certainly managed to lay the groundwork. They just need to convince us all now that there is a genuine threat to the planet. That’s proving to be a little easier said than done, because some of us are not buying into it, but they are not letting it go because of the potential it has to generate more wealth than they can poke a stick at. This one’s a global exploitation and it’s a biggie.
Do you know where I’m going with this?