BY: JESSICA BEUKER
Winter, in my humble (yet not so popular) opinion, is the greatest season. Despite all of its shortcomings – the days are shorter, the trees have lost their leaves, it’s cold as fuck – it’s still the most magical time of year. Christmas celebrations take over the city, rum and eggnog or a hot toddy is the acceptable drink of choice, adventurists can skate, ski, snowboard or, best of all, toboggan, and let’s not forget that soft, sparkly flakes gently fall from the sky. Most importantly, we get to see our snowmen friends again.
But things are changing. Because of climate change, every year more than 4,000 species of snowmen are threatened. Realizing the weight of this tragedy, carbon reduction non-profit organization, Cool Effect has come up with a campaign to “save our snowmen.”
This is a joke right? Not exactly. While the entire campaign is satirical in nature – the campaign video follows the president of a snowmen sanctuary – the idea behind it is not. Instead it is meant to be a light-hearted attempt to “foster the growth of projects that verifiably reduce greenhouse gas emissions and cool the planet” through raising money to fund forest protection, waste-to-biogas, and fuel-efficient cookstove projects, among others, according to Treehugger.
The video takes viewers on a tour of the snowmen sanctuary, which offers snowmen things like a cooling sauna and accepts donations in the form of carrots, tree limbs and coal – which the president quips “isn’t that what got us into this mess in the first place?”
The video goes on further to show the people who are most affected by the lack of snowmen – an organic carrot farmer who’s losing money due to low carrot nose sales, and a family whose snowman, Mr. Flakes, disappeared this year. “Things are different for my daughter and her friends,” the father in the video says as his daughter jumps in a murky puddle. “They might never know a real winter.”
The mockumentary is not trying to dismiss the issue of climate change – an issue of severe importance. Instead, it simply makes us look at the issue from a different angle, one that is more light-hearted and relatable than some of the fear-mongering tactics that have become ubiquitous in today’s news.
Watch the entire video here.
