If you find yourself sitting in front of the telly at 8.10 tonight watching Harbour Lives on ITV1, I suggest you don't go and make yourself a cup of tea in the ad break. The world premiere of the new RSPB Giving Nature a Home advert will be screened.
Why are we doing this?
We and many others continue to fight many battles for wildlife but it is clear from State of Nature that we are not winning the war. Unless we deliver major societal change then we will oversee a slow but inevitable decline in the diversity and wonder of wildlife on our shores.
Part of our response must be to inspire more moral, practical and political support from all parts of society and that includes those armchair conservationists: people who have a passing interest in wildlife but do little about it.
Our advertising campaign is our attempt to excite and activate the enthusiasm for wildlife that is currently dormant in a large part of the population. Get this right and we'll have more people doing good things for wildlife in gardens and more people calling for more wildlife in their communities and more people intolerant of loss of the colour and diversity from our countryside and seas.
This is just the start of a new approach to wake up the public. I outlined our mini manifesto when we launched the campaign two weeks ago (see here). Recent announcements on CAP reform, public spending and the review of Natural England and the Environment Agency reinforces the urgent need for a new deal for wildlife.
So if you've had a busy week, get yourself a drink, sit down, put on the telly, watch a couple of ads and then go and get active this weekend.
I congratulate the RSPB for this initiative which is evidence of a first step to truly reaching out to the masses of people needed to make a real difference to protect the environment that sustains us all. It also appears to show the RSPB to be responsive to criticism. Very encouraging indeed.
The strategies needed to counter the thoughts of the proponents of the status quo such as Lord Lawson describing "Greens" as the new "Reds" in last Saturday's Telegraph needs to be carefully thought out and executed. I just hope other environmentally concerned organisations get their acts together and take a lead from the RSPB and start to present their compelling "reasoned" arguments for a balanced form of capitalism that the likes of Lord Lawson with his cynical and dangerous use of pejorative phraseology just don't seem to understand.
In his book "An Appeal to Reason: A Cool look at Climate Change" Lawson essentially suggests mankind adapt to an increasingly hostile environment while we pursue more of the same in economic system terms! Sounded like a vision of hell to me!!
Noting Peter Crispins views and having some sympathy with the need for a harder edge I say good luck to the RSPB and look forward to an evolution in this type of environmental awareness campaigning.