Blog chat that is building about the brilliant satire on carbon offsetting, Cheat Neutral seems to have been stimulated by the Cheat Neutral video being uploaded onto YouTube on 22 July (although as yet, it has had just 3,758 views).
The campaign was launched back in February by Christian Hunt and Alex Randall, who work for an environmental charity, the Centre for Alternative Technology, in Machynlleth, Mid Wales. It has generated some blog comment in the period since (68 posts in Technorati) and was covered in the New Statesman in April.
But Google News isn’t throwing up anything – although the video shows a BBC interview (nothing found on its website), and also a question by MP Alan Simpson in parliament (no luck searching in Harsard).
With the current blog-juice it will be interesting to see if this jumps back offline – which will undoubtedly stimulate more online discussion and hits.
This is a great spoof and deserves a much wider audience.
I’ve never been a fan of carbon offsetting, and the idea is an excellent exposure of the flawed logic that you can continue polluting, but pay for a few trees to be planted to salve your carbon guilt. The Cheat Neutral analogy is:
When you cheat on your partner you add to the heartbreak, pain and jealousy in the atmosphere.
Cheatneutral offsets your cheating by funding someone else to be faithful and NOT cheat. This neutralises the pain and unhappy emotion and leaves you with a clear conscience.
The website also provides useful alternative environmental actions to reduce your carbon footprint rather.
Interestingly the guys behind this campaign hit the headlines back in October 2005, with the idea to spell out Machynlleth in Hollywood-style letters to promote a local film festival.
How long before they also get snapped up by a big PR consultancy on the back of presumably low budget creativity like this?
