The Date You Should Die

What do the miles you fly per year, the number of roommates you have, and exploding pigs have to do with each other? Well, in a new kids’ game produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, if you’re on the wrong side of the first two items, you suffer the fate of the third.

Professor Schpinkee’s Greenhouse Calculator is a new web-based animated quiz that helps kids determine whether their lifestyles are environmentally friendly or environmentally foolish. The user is represented by an adorable mid-sized pink pig between a fat (irresponsible) pig and a tiny (green, as in enviro-friendly) pig. As the user answers each of the eleven questions, the user’s pig changes size and appearance to based on the sustainability of the answer given. Owners of big cars get fatter. Bicyclists get skinnier. (Sound familiar?)

The quiz compares the user’s answers to a “sustainable” life and calculates the number of years it would take—at the user’s rate of consumption—to exhaust all of the user’s allocated resources. The game cheerfully explains at the end “You’ll use up your share of the planet in X years.” Unless, of course, the user happens to be living within the allocated amount of resources. Then the pig floats up to heaven. The rest of us, however, explode in a wash of blood and bone.

Too crude? Too scary for kids? I think not. I think it’s wonderful. These are scary times, and kids should be aware of the fact that their window for survival is shrinking. If it takes an exploding pig cartoon to create a new environmentalist, so be it. Kids need to be aware that the modern lifestyle is not sustainable. The average modern human uses up his/her share of the earth’s resources in less than ten years of life (often far less). Presenting the number of years that each individual deserves to be on the planet is a great way to drive the point home. “You will use your share of the planet in 9 years.” speaks pretty clearly to a nine year old.

(To over-generalize) Australia understands—if its support of this game is any indication—that:

• kids are not so fragile as to be scared by an exploding cartoon cat;
• kids need to understand that their parents’ lifestyle cannot be copied;
• kids need to be the change that saves the world.

When the stakes are so high, tiptoeing around the issue only slows the solution.

My only nitpick with this game is that some of the questions aren’t aimed at kids at all. “How much money did you spend last year?” “What percentage was for work?” What? I’m nine and a half! 

Now: Go Explode A Pig!