The German Magazine Der Spiegel as much as the environmental activist group B.U.N.D. used a melting globe for expressing climate change. Now critizism is at hand; scientists and journalists alike find this topos of describing climate change to tough. The world is not melting apart, and cities like New York and Venice will not be flooded until 2500 A.D.
"Help! The globe is melting!" Cover of last week's Spiegel
Ad of B.U.N.D, a German NGO heading in the same directionMarco Jaeger, top scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research however pointed out during an event of BUrda Publishing House, Climeaid, that it would be barbarianism if this would happen. "What would our successors say, if they got to see New York in a submarine in 3000 A.D? They'd say to themselves: Why did they let this, their own culture go down?"

The critics say - as they did when the Diesel advertisment that for instance shows a flooded Rio de Janeiro came out - seeing parts of the earth flooded - people would get used to that image and would do nothing to comabte climate change.

Climate Cool From DieselWell if Climate Change has got you down you should consider if you are 'Global Warming Ready.' Its a different take on the subject than Al Gore's but Diesel, the fashion label named after one of our favourite hydrocarbons has a new ad campaign which shows that Climate Change not only offers new leisure possibilities but can also be cool too!Nothing focuses the mind like the endless possibilities for publicity that even impending doom can offer. In a consumption sourced society even disaster presents opportunity. In the words of one blogger:

"Besides the obvious flooding of NYC in the first photo, I doubt that the average joe will recognize the climate change in the other scenes -it’ll simply look “cool."

The Diesel Ads photographed by Terry Richardson may even convince Manhattanites to go for the high waisted jeans look this spring and who knows, could even spawn a new class of outerwear.