Protest the Energy Hog Campaign

Christopher Barden, my not-so-evil twin whose life path is startlingly like mine, sent me his letter to the Ad Council to protest the Energy Hog Campaign. Naturally this type of advertisement makes me cringe, and I’ll write a letter of my own.

Check it out . . .

Dear Ad Council,

The ironies in this "energy hog" Ad Council campaign for the USDE are rife.

1) Hogs are far more energy efficient than humans.
2) Hogs share energy resources with their surrounding ecosystem far more readily than ANY human you’ll ever meet.
3) Re-inforcing hog/pig=dumb/greedy/criminal stereotype only makes it that much easier for kids to think of bacon and ham as something that comes without any price — which in turn will just continue to drive consumption of these meat products, which — as any agricultural scientist or energy expert will tell you — is an incredible waste of energy!
4) Responsibly turning off the light after a big chow-down of baby back ribs will have zero net effect on our energy problems.

The simplest way to increase energy efficiency also happens to the be smartest and most compassionate way: Stop eating cows, pigs, sheep and chicken, and get our basic energy needs from a far more varied plant-based diet.

Is this kind of 1950’s-era consciousness the best the Ad Council can do?

This kind of stereotyping is really harmful to the energy consciousness of the younger generation, and it makes me think of how much I resent the way government agencies like the USDA used the school system to feed us a pack of lies about nutrition in school: junk science like equating meat with protein, as if meat were pure protein or that plants aren’t also sources of protein, or that no human can survive without literally hundreds of thousands of gallons of cow milk throughout one’s childhood and adulthood and old age. (Gee, how did our ancestors survive all these millenia without cow milk?)

Anyhow, I’m so disappointed to see this kind of ad plastered all over the place. It’s not going to help solve any energy problems, but just misinform.

Please consider an alternate way to advertise your ideas about energy efficiency that doesn’t harm the one species on the planet that, in its natural state, has done nothing to waste Earth’s energy or pollute its environment.

A friend of all hogs and pigs and any other mammal the USDE or Ad Council despises based on ignorant medieval stereotypes,

Christopher Barden
Writer/Filmmaker/Vegan

Go to the website and check out the particularly offensive children’s section, which begins:

Energy hogs are nasty critters that hide all over your home and pig out on energy. To outsmart the Energy Hogs, you have to beat those nasty oinkers at their own game . . .

Then there’s the PSA where the kid "gets the Energy Hog out of [his] home" by tossing a stuffed-animal pig out the front door and it crashes against a car window (while everyone smile and laughs). I wonder if they’d do that with a stuffed kitten or puppy. Finally, there’s the Teacher and Student Guides, which utterly demonize pigs and even have them loitering in your house playing poker. I wonder how the gambling association feels about that one.

Visit the Ad Council while you’re surfing around this issue. A current "featured campaign" of theirs is called, "GetGoodKarma.org," which gets the idea of karma somewhat right with "you’re responsible for your actions."

Hmmm.

Note to Ad Council: Check out GetGoodKarma.org.