By Eloise Gibson of RNZ
Mike King’s mental health charity I Am Hope is being accused of greenwashing after handing out a pamphlet to children presenting a trucking company and a coal-burning electricity company as climate heroes.
A parent of a Wellington child who was given the pamphlet says she was concerned and disappointed when her child brought home the “grey and dystopian” booklet, which features a truck owned by trucking firm TR Group and Genesis Energy – one of New Zealand’s biggest coal users – helping a little boy who is experiencing anxiety about climate change.
The booklet is called TR and Mack, Genesis for a New Tomorrow.
The story features a truck owned by trucking firm TR Group and a dog called Mack, helping a little boy who is feeling sad about pollution. The boy apologetically tells the truck it is part of the problem, and the truck decides to convert to an electric engine.
The boy and the truck recruit others to fight climate change, saying “Genesis and TR Group are coming too”.
The last page is filled with company logos, including TR, Genesis, campervan company THL, UBCO and others.
Climate advocate Tim Adriaansen complained to the charity after seeing the booklet. He also raised concerns about the charity’s Ride for Climate Hope, raising awareness of climate anxiety, being sponsored by Fonterra, the country’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter, as well as Genesis, campervan company THL and car company Ford.
Other sponsors include electric motorbike company UBCO and an EV charging network.
Adriaansen said King should be commended for raising awareness about climate anxiety, but the sponsorship by some of the country’s biggest emitters looked like “greenwashing”.
“Climate anxiety is something that has a known cause, which is climate change, which is caused by the pollution, so for these companies to turn around and say well we are also concerned about the impacts seems a little cynical,” he said.
“I have a short fuse for greenwashing but it’s even shorter where children are involved.
“The best way to prevent our youth from experiencing climate anxiety is to reduce climate-damaging pollution as much as possible, as quickly as possible. This should be the first objective of any organisation working to tackle climate anxiety in a meaningful way [and ] animal agriculture and road transport are New Zealand’s two largest sources of climate-damaging pollution.”
Genesis, Fonterra and THL all strongly defended their sponsorship of the climate anxiety ride, saying they were open about their emissions and their efforts to address them, and being greenhouse gas emitters should not disqualify them from supporting raising awareness about climate anxiety.
King said the booklet handed out in schools was fully funded by I am Hope and not by any of the companies whose logos were featured in the booklet.
He said the ride for climate anxiety was a separate initiative.
In a response to Adriaansen, which King shared with RNZ, King said the booklet was not about aligning with major polluters or greenwashing but validating young people’s negative feelings and listening to them.
King acknowledged the charity was not an expert in environmental solutions, but told Adriaansen his letter of complaint reflected division in society.
“We’re seeing too much judgment and division in how people address issues, including climate, with a lot of ‘naming and shaming’ ...
“I’ve come to realise that one of the greatest challenges we face is tribalism ... Rather than pointing fingers, we all have the potential to contribute positively.
“Your message, though kindly written, illustrates this challenge. It frames certain sponsors as ‘bad actors’ while positioning the letter’s stance as morally superior.”
The parent of the child who received the booklet, who did not want to be named, said the booklet did not appear to reflect the evidence on what helped children with climate anxiety, or what helped to combat climate change.
She was disappointed it did not feature children doing any of the positive activities they could do to make a difference, such as safely riding bikes or public transport, volunteering, or engaging with their local MPs.
“It seems to be free promotional material for companies who are causing a lot of the climate damage,” the Wellington mother said.
“It looks like greenwashing.”
She said it was given to pupils aged 5 to 12 at her children’s school.
“It’s full of very grey, bleak and polluted images, with this dystopian concrete city full of trucks and cars [and] featuring a trucking company that has a few electric vehicles and thousands of high-emitting ones.
“I was expecting to see pictures of our precious natural landscapes which we’re all concerned about trying to protect.”
TR Group’s Brendan King – who is no relation to Mike King – confirmed the truck hire company did not fund the booklet specifically, but said the firm had a long relationship with the charity because of its interest in suicide prevention.
“TR Group is a very values-based organisation, who believe in doing the right thing. Two very important areas of focus for us are mental health and climate change,” he said.
“TR Group are a big supporter of I Am Hope and the work they do. We were not a sponsor of the climate ride per se, but support I Am Hope more generally.”
Brendan King noted that the TR truck also featured in other stories written by Mike King for schoolchildren.
As for his company’s climate efforts, Brendan King said TR’s 55 electric trucks and one hydrogen fuel cell truck made the company a climate leader in the “hard to abate” sector of heavy transport, even though most of its fleet remained fossil fuelled. The company had more hydrogen trucks in the works, he said.
The reason the firm could not do more to electrify now was cost, he said.
“It’s very cost prohibitive, the technology isn’t there, if we managed to magically swap every diesel truck out for a zero-emissions truck today the inflationary impact on us as a society would be enormous, we couldn’t afford to buy bananas at the grocery store.
“Zero emission trucks, they cost three times as much as a diesel truck.”
An expert in climate communication, Dr Jess Berentson-Shaw, said it was clear that Mike King was genuinely concerned about climate anxiety.
However, she said I Am Hope could be damaging kids by raising concerns that were not necessarily already present among young children aged just 5 or 6.
The charity could also be misinforming children about the best ways to alleviate worry, by taking small steps that actually made a difference, she said.
The I Am Hope webpage suggests alleviating young people’s climate anxiety by taking “small steps such as recycling and saving water”, two of the least effective actions for averting climate change, according to research.
The most effective, according to research, are typically reducing vehicle use, eating less meat and engaging in political action.
Berentson-Shaw said the climate ride being sponsored by major polluters was like the tobacco industry sponsoring information on stopping smoking. She questioned whether the charity was checking that the information it was supplying was not adding to children’s anxiety.
“Concern doesn’t make you an expert in how to do this in a way which is actually helpful and doesn’t harm people, and then there’s the ethics around are they actually contributing to more misunderstanding in young people about the causes and solutions of climate change.”
Fonterra said its Farm Source stores hosted some of the climate anxiety meetings.
It sent a statement from Farm Source director Anne Douglas, which said the business supported “mental health and wellbeing in rural communities” and had “supported the I am Hope Tour since they started the Tractor Trek in 2020″.
“We continue to be transparent about our emissions, and we have targets, actions and plans in place to reduce these,” Douglas said.
“It is unfortunate that some believe that because of this impact we shouldn’t be supporting another critical issue for rural New Zealand.”
Genesis said it was “proud to support an event that not only highlighted an important issue among our young people, but offered solutions”.
“We were able to provide evidence to young people who might be suffering anxiety about climate change that companies like ours are doing something to address it ... Genesis is working to establish a sustainable local supply chain of biomass that will gradually replace coal at Huntly Power Station,” it said.
The date to close Huntly’s coal burners has been shifted several times.
THL said it was approached by Mike King’s Ride for Hope to supply an electric support vehicle and was “very happy to do so”. The ride was a great trial for its e-motorhome, it said.
The company said it acknowledged its “substantial carbon footprint” of just over a million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year and was open about the challenges.
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