Attack of the Audi Green Goons

The Audi Super Bowl commercial showing the "green police" arresting everyone who doesn't kowtow to the environmentalist message may be the most polarizing piece of advertising since the anti-Goldwater ad showing a little girl's petal-plucking morphing into an H-bomb countdown.

  (screenshot from Audi
  commerical/YouTube)

The Audi ad glorified environmental cops manhandling a customer asking for a plastic bag, invading private homes of people who throw flashlight batteries or orange peels into the trash instead of recycling or composting, arresting an incandescent bulb user, and invading a backyard hot tub party because the water is 105 degrees.

Reactions by libertarians and others opposed to militant greenism have flooded blogs and websites all over the Internet. A few of the printable comments:

"a foreshadowing of things to come unless people wake up and keep the environmentalist extremists under control."

"control freaks hiding their Puritan impulses behind a green facade."

"It's time for people to call out eco-fascists."

"welcome to the future of America."

"I'm telling everyone to boycott Audi and to buy more guns and ammo."

Meanwhile, environmentally concerned viewers are claiming the ad is a rightwing plot to discredit the environmental movement:

"people will equate environmental consciousness with douchieness, causing a backlash."

"I do not, by any means, support authoritarianism, which this commercial portrayed hand in hand with environmentalism."

"There's really no way in his right mind a person could watch it and take the environmental message seriously."

"If they actually wanted to do something for the environment, they'd make sure that no one saw that commercial ever again and quit reinforcing stereotypes about people who are environmentally conscious."

Only a very few wrote:

"I thought it was funny."

"I think it was in good fun."

"the ad just offended me by being so stupid"

"The scariest thing about this commercial is how seriously many people will take it."

It's hard to tell exactly what the Audi "buy-our-green-car" ad got for their Super Bowl-inflated money, unless this comment nailed it:

"It worked though. Everyone is watercoolering it to death."

Still, following the hacked IPCC email scandal, this commercial can't be good for militant environmentalism.

It's time for left environmentalists to learn that if they reject coercion, legislated and otherwise, they'll have most conservative and all libertarian environmentalists on their side. After all, many people care as much about their freedoms on this planet as they care about this planet.

Coercively mandated environmentalism must go.

(Audi commerical/YouTube)
 

 (YouTube)