Raising a Tantrum About Climate Change
Climate change is a heavily opinionated topic that has been very prominent in the media recently. This piece of propaganda is “an illustration from the children’s book The Tantrum That Saved the World by Michael Mann and Megan Herbert.” (Showstack, 2018). This was published on eos.org, a science news magazine published by the American Geophysical Union, consisting of earth and space scientists who study climate change. This piece of propaganda came out in June of 2018 in response to Donald Trump withdrawing from the Paris climate control agreement. With this information in mind, the authors appear educated on climate change, but most likely are also biased as they have chosen to study climate change as basically a full-time job, and were anti-Trump leaving Paris climate control. This shows that mostly liberal and pro-climate change values are emphasized in this piece of propaganda.
This propaganda is aiming to address the topic of climate change. I would argue that this propaganda is beneficial to society, as it may make people more aware of the climate change we see every day, but don’t necessarily notice. In the image, all of the people are facing away from the fumes filling the air behind them, showing unawareness. In addition, the children are riding the back of a polar bear which is an endangered species because of climate change, which is causing their habitats to melt away (Kruger, 2022). This propaganda mimics how we are all looking away, or ignoring, the climate change we can see happening to us today. It will be a snow storm one day and the next day will be a beautiful 55 degrees. We have all noticed how the summers are hotter, which is causing wildfires everywhere. This information is all over the media, yet we look the other way, which this propaganda emphasizes.
This propaganda intends to draw the audience in based on the activation of emotions. I think this propaganda’s main target audience is younger generations. Through the use of children and younger teenagers in this propaganda, this may catch someone’s eye that says they look like me, and in return relate to the propaganda, and even further activate emotion. A secondary target audience for this propaganda could be parents of children. If a parent were to see this propaganda it may remind them of their children and the world they are going to grow up in. These two different audiences may interpret the message differently, from different perspectives, but will both end up with the same message that climate change is ruining the planet.
As previously mentioned, this piece of propaganda is quite clearly pro-climate change. And being a piece of propaganda responding to Trump withdrawing from the Paris climate control agreement, this is heavily political. Within that article, in response to Trump withdrawing from the Paris agreement, the author stated it would be difficult to “weather one term of Trump” (Showstack, 2018). Or in other words, climate change would get increasingly worse if we have Trump as president for two terms. While reading the article it became increasingly clear how biased and one-sided this piece of propaganda is. Being a political piece of propaganda, this will most likely cause backlash and a population that does not agree with the messages being presented.
The use of younger children riding the back of a polar bear with their air filled with fumes may instill fear about what the future environment holds. Reminding the audience of the people and animals who will live through and will be affected by climate change, increasingly influences the audience’s attitude. This propaganda holds the audience’s attention by offering the short, yet loaded, language of “There is no planet B”. The inclusion of children, a polar bear, and loaded language all attracts the audience’s emotions, pulling on the strings of a cute child and polar bear then reminding the audience both are threatened by climate change just hovering in the air behind them.
An aspect omitted from this piece of propaganda is what to do about climate change. There are signs showing “protect what you love” and “I want to do something about climate change”, but what is that “something”. I think this may be omitted in hopes of influencing the audience to read the article on eos.org that came with the piece of propaganda, which could further influence the audience’s beliefs, opinions, and fears.
All in all, this piece of propaganda pulled at my emotions and caught my attention enough to read the whole article that came along with it. Even being educated and aware of digital and media literacy I still fell for it, so I would consider this an effective piece of propaganda.
References
Showstack, R. (2018, June 1). Raising a Tantrum About Climate Change. eos.org. Retrieved from https://eos.org/articles/raising-a-tantrum-about-climate-change
Kruger, E. (2022). Polar Bear Facts. WWF. Retrieved from https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/polar-bear
