My kid loves nature. It didn't happen entirely by accident. While he comes by it honestly, surrounded by interesting Canadian landscape, flora and fauna, I've also done a lot of work to encourage this interest. By getting a kid to understand nature, you build an understanding of the more practical issues behind environmentalism.
That's why I think this Toys 'R' Us ad (from last summer) is really unfortunate:
If I had seen this on The Simpsons, I would have appreciated it as ironic commentary on how we teach our kids to want an endless supply of stuff. That's what made that show great — that it showed us our bad side with humour and understanding. But it acknowledged that it was, indeed, bad.
This, on the other hand, is not satire. It is an ad for a toy store. That tells kids (and parents) that buying a bunch of foreign-produced plastic shit destined for our landfills is better than learning about trees that just stand around making oxygen.
I'll take my Christmas spending somewhere else.
h/t Huffington Post
