EARTH

5.9 septillion kilograms of igneous rock, rocketing at break-neck speed around a blinding nuclear furnace.

71% of Earth’s surface is covered with water, which makes the name Earth slightly questionable.

It gives Earth a stunning blue tint, which you can see when you approach it from space, preferably from inside a air conditioned vehicle.

loosing the blue marble?
Src: www.universetoday.com

WATER

is a silly little molecule.

It’s hydrogen atoms attach themselves to other water molecules in a rather interesting angle. We call it the hydrogen bond. Because of this strange attraction, water stays liquid at temperatures that most people perceive as relatively enjoyable, but still complain about it when it falls from the sky.

Water is arguably the source of Earths biggest problem:

LIFE

Life probably started as an infection in some unknown aqueous environment, which we call abiogenesis.

Some of us guess that this happened some 3.7 billion years ago. Others guess it was 6000 years ago, based on their interpretation of  a good book, but that’s a different story.

We don’t know how this happened, some think it happened on raindrops, others in the primordial soup, and others think it was Ancient Aliens. At least those have great Haircuts.

That’s not out of the question.
Src: urania-josegalisifilho.blogspot.co

Relatively undisputed is, that this infection spread all over the globe, and today you face immense difficulties to find a place without life. In fact it’s pretty expensive for computer manufactures to build rooms that keep all this pesky life outside.

It’s everywhere.

Drill a hole in the Earth’s crust, maybe for some liquid fossils for your antique Vespa, and you will find life. Take a deep breath,  and you have a good lungful of viruses and bacteria. Dive deep into the Ocean, and you will find life, clinging to a small source of geo-thermal energy.

Since we haven’t found any other places with life yet, it looks like this planet is pretty special.

Life, as we know it

One of the many reasons that make Life so awesome, is it’s ability to adapt to new situations.

We call this evolution.

Feel free to call that “Just a Theory”, and here’s the link to the Flat Earth Society. You’ll love it.

Generally speaking, evolution strives to create the best possible solution for any given situation.

Instead it strived to us.

Is this where we’re headed?
Img: Marc Heuser

We have a breath-taking record of exterminating all life in this isolated oasis. Human, and non-Human alike.

We have difficulties understanding this, because we’re really busy.

You can see how busy we are on Facebook: the change of the logo of Lucky Strike cigarettes created millions of interactions and “likes”, the announcement of the first more serious marine conservation network (GLORES) pretty much zero.

So obviously, Life on Earth needs a better marketing plan.

We call it green marketing, and it’s just as bad as SHELL’s.

How dare I compare the beautiful people of Greenpeace’s marketing department with a capitalistic harbinger of death?

Well, you can relax, it was a lie. To get your attention

We do this quite a lot in green marketing, lying to get your attention. Usually, we need to do this when the truth is to complicated to fit on a poster or bumper sticker (Honk if you love sharks!).

Sometimes we even do projects that are actually destructive to the cause, but that’s a different story.

We could call this AIDA:

AIDA is an acronym used in marketing and advertising that describes a common list of events that may occur when a consumer engages with an advertisement.

• A – attention (Awareness): attract the attention of the customer.
• I – interest: raise customer interest by focusing on and demonstrating advantages and benefits (instead of focusing on features, as in traditional advertising).
• D -desire: convince customers that they want and desire the product or service and that it will satisfy their needs.
• A – action: lead customers towards taking action and/or purchasing.

Using a system like this gives one a general understanding of how to target a market effectively. Moving from step to step, one loses some percent of prospects.

AIDA is a historical model, rather than representing current thinking in the methods of advertising effectiveness.

(from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDA_(marketing))

Unfortunately, the guys at SHELL know this too, so green and “evil” marketing are sort of the same, at least if you want to be bit cynic about this.

You, and I , know that SHELL is a misogynistic killing-machine from hell, because the media tells us.

If you research yourself (google is fine for that), you will also find that SHELL has a Environment & Society Program, which is spending a few million Euros (they’re Dutch) per year on sustainable development. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

conspiracy Keanu might have a point

If you scrutinize some of the pages that sport “insider-information” about these evil, greedy companies, you will find very little references, which means there’s a certain chance that they’re just making this up.

You will have noted that this article also contains very little references, so I basically also just made this up.

Maybe we should form our own opinion.

But then, what do I know.

Kind regards

H.S