The ‘tck, tck, tck’ campaign
The latest activity dreamt up to make both politicians and large business look like they are doing something has hit the street with the ‘tck, tck, tck’ campaign. Here’s how it works:
Kofi Annan, ex-Secretary General of the United Nations, has recently written to 100 global leaders urging them to join a campaign for an ambitious global climate deal. The global leaders have made positive cooing noises and have passed the request on to a top 100 business leaders in their localities, urging them to join the campaign and asking that they, in turn, pass the plea on to their own top 100 business connections… like some fluffy chain letter.
If this were happening on Facebook or some other frivolous social networking web site, this would be ‘nice’ - even ‘worthwhile’.
If, however, this is the best that the political sphere and business community can come up with in the light of the immediacy of climate change impacts and the self-evident emerging energy poverty crisis (not to mention the alarming recent figures published on fresh water availability and stocks), in addition to the looming Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in less than 3 months which, because of its build up thus far, will attract the attention of the global media, then we have a problem, Houston!
Ed Miliband, Climate and Energy Secretary, said of the campaign: “I’ll be pushing at every opportunity over the coming 80 days to get a deal, but we need leaders from across the UK to lend their support too. It’s in everyone’s interests to back a deal to help make Britain a centre for green and low carbon jobs, and make our communities and homes greener.”
Peter Mandelson, Business Secretary, added: “Britain’s world-class businesses are global leaders in low carbon manufacturing. The ‘tck tck tck’ campaign is an excellent catalyst for galvanising support from the sector and leading the way towards a low carbon economy.”
In other words, “pass it on”. We’ve heard these exact same words from both Ed Milliband and Peter Mandelson for the last 6 months or so; and 6 months down the line, we are no closer to seeing either our political ‘leaders’ or big business actually do anything meaningful.
What is so ironic is that neither the politicians nor business leaders seem to have cottoned on to the fact that the campaign condemns them all with its very title. Kofi Annan either has an extremely highly developed sense of humour or genuinely understood that, with nothing to lose, personally, he can actually make world leaders look impotent and ineffectual by having them ‘tut’ themselves and be ‘tutted’ in return by their peers and the business community, all the while not actually doing anything to turn the ‘tsk, tsk, tsk’ into a round of applause.
If the subject matter were not of the gravest concern to every citizen of the world – not just political and business leaders – it would be funny. But this does affect us all… and it’s not.
