{"id":7616,"date":"2020-01-05T17:49:27","date_gmt":"2020-01-05T17:49:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7616"},"modified":"2020-01-05T17:49:27","modified_gmt":"2020-01-05T17:49:27","slug":"greta-thunberg-gives-the-bbc-permission-to-pollute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2020\/01\/05\/greta-thunberg-gives-the-bbc-permission-to-pollute\/","title":{"rendered":"Greta Thunberg gives the BBC permission to pollute"},"content":{"rendered":"

I see that Greta Thunberg edited the BBC's fading flagship radio news programme, Today<\/a>, on December 30th. \u00a0I didn't tune in as I abandoned listening to Today<\/em> long before it became fashionable to do so, preferring my own prejudices in the morning to the BBC's. \u00a0The usual editor of Today has gone on at some length about the awful dilemma the organisation faced in going to visit Thunberg in order to facilitate her editing, explaining that boats 'n' trains would have taken too long for busy folk such as themselves. \u00a0So they (I'm not sure how many 'they' were) flew. \u00a0But that was ok the editor said because Thunberg doesn't expect everyone to live up to her own standards. \u00a0Phew! \u00a0Let off the hook by a 16 year old.<\/p>\n

The question I have is why they had to go to Sweden at all, given the top quality international IT connectivity the BBC has. \u00a0Thunberg could surely just have popped into a Stockholm TV studio and had a long chat by seriously good video link. \u00a0Perhaps it was the romance of travel, an overnight in a nice hotel, air miles, duty free, ... . \u00a0Who knows, but what is clear is that the BBC missed a good opportunity to make a point, had they been serious about making it.<\/p>\n

All this was an exercise in two things: the BBC's desperation to appeal to young people, and its determination to be ahead of the pack on climate change \u2013 and maybe to atone for when it used to be accused of giving too much time to climate sceptics 'n' deniers to argue their case.<\/p>\n

Good luck with the youth audience. \u00a0As a long piece in the Economist Seize the memes<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>argued over Christmas, they get their news from other sources, many of which I'd not heard of.<\/p>\n

Mind you, if Today ever invites Bjorn Lomborg<\/a>\u00a0to edit the programme I might listen as that would be an unusual departure. \u00a0Lomborg is awkward for the BBC as he thinks climate change is real but says we are wasting both money and time on our approach to it. \u00a0There are no easy answers from Lomborg, the\u00a0sceptical environmentalist. \u00a0<\/i>Here's a taster<\/a> from his website:\u00a0Empty Gestures on Climate Change\u00a0<\/em>which I'll write some more about in a few days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I see that Greta Thunberg edited the BBC's fading flagship radio news programme, Today, on December 30th. \u00a0I didn't tune in as I abandoned listening to Today long before it became fashionable to do so, preferring my own prejudices in...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7616\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}