For a company that actively promotes ethics, using climate change to sell its programs is dead wrong.
Ever since I took my first NOLS course in 1991, I've had ambivalent feelings about NOLS as an organization. Basically, I think NOLS has promoted the idea of nature as a museum more than anyone else. It is also a giant jellyfish of a corporation with its tentacles in almost everything outdoors. With that said, I have known a number of excellent NOLS instructors over the years, and count myself lucky to call a few of these fine folks friends. I have also taught a lot of students technical skills that I learned from NOLS. Basically, my own NOLS experience was solid, but not life-changing. Hence, I'm a proud alumni, but not a supporter. There's not quite the heart to NOLS that Outward Bound has.... At least the Voyager Outward Bound (of yore) that I am most familiar with.
After seeing this ad in NewWest.net I am absolutely livid, however. I would have expected this type of corporate insensitivity to the environment from Exxon or Northwest Airlines, maybe... But NOLS?? It really does show how far from the grass roots NOLS really is. Unfortunately, we will probably see more of this type of thing... From both NOLS and others as climate change accelerates.
I wonder how many other distasteful, before-it's-been-destroyed ads we could come up with??
3 comments:
How about, "come see the rainforest, before its in your neighbors living room." Okay, that was pretty bad I know. Distasteful at best. I think your post raises a very important question though Tom, and that is this. Evolution is just that. We know that things change. We know we are speeding those changes at dangerously high rates, but that the general trend to a warmer climate would likely still be happening without fossil fuels. So my question is this, what amount of change are we, the environmental movement, willing to accept and embrace? If extinction is as natural as, and essential too, evolution, are we prepared to let species go extinct? And to what extent should that be discussed and advertised? I agree the NOLS ad is a little distasteful, but it won't be the last, as I think you note. Anyway, like with so many things, I think there is an important conversation here that should be happening, but sadly is not.
Matt's comment on extinction reminded me of a very cynical joke: The best thing for the environment would be for humans to become extinct. Maybe we are causing our own extinction through global warming (or as the Repubs call it: climate change).
Yeah, another likely candidate for a bad taste ad would be whale watching trips sponsored by the Japanese Whaling Commission: Come See the Last of the Humpbacks, before we Harpoon Them!
Seriously... Matt, I think to key to the answer to your question has to do with rates of change, as you say. This is another example of why getting back into the cycles and circles of nature is so important for human beings. It is simply THE elegant solution. (And I think that the climate change issue, more than anything else, really does away with these sexed-up, 1990s, b.s., armchair philosophical discussions about whose nature? and aren't humans always natural? and isn't nature just a conception? etc.) If we found ourselves living within nature circles and cycles (and not dominating them as we currently are) then we can let things (species) go, that go. Of course, some will be affected by us (as part of the system), but our affect would be one of multiple factors and not the only factor.
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