Photo: Screenshot

Mike King’s mental health charity I Am Hope is accused greenwashing after handing the kids a brochure that touts a trucking company and a coal-burning power company as climate heroes.

A parent of a Wellington child who was given the pamphlet says she was worried and disappointed when her child brought home the “grey and dystopian” pamphlet, which features a truck owned by trucking firm TR Group and Genesis Energy – one of the most New Zealand coal majors. users – helping a little boy dealing with climate change anxiety.

The booklet is called TR and Mack, Genesis for a New Tomorrow.

The story features a truck owned by the trucking company TR Group and a dog named Mack who helps a little boy who feels sad because of pollution. The boy apologizes to the truck for being part of the problem, and the truck decides to convert to an electric motor.

The boy and the truck are recruiting others to fight climate change, saying “Genesis and TR Group are coming.”

The back page is filled with company logos including TR, Genesis, THL caravan company, UBCO and others.

Climate advocate Tim Adriaansen complained to the charity after seeing the brochure. He also raised concerns about the Ride for Climate Hope charity, raising awareness of climate anxiety, being sponsored by Fonterra, the country’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, as and by Genesis, caravan company THL and car company Ford.

Other sponsors include electric motorcycle company UBCO and an electric vehicle charging network.

Adriaansen said King should be praised for raising awareness of climate anxiety, but sponsoring some of the country’s biggest broadcasters looked like “greenwashing”.

“Climate anxiety is something that has a known cause, which is climate change, which is caused by pollution, so for these companies to turn around and say we’re also worried about the impacts seems a bit cynical,” he said.

“I have the short fuse for greenwashing, but it’s even shorter where children are involved.

“The best way to prevent our young people from experiencing climate anxiety is to reduce climate-damaging pollution as much as possible, as quickly as possible. This should be the first focus of any organization working to address climate anxiety in a meaningful way (and ) animal agriculture and road transport are the two biggest sources of climate-damaging pollution in New Zealand.”

Genesis, Fonterra and THL have strongly defended their sponsorship of the climate anxiety trip, saying they are open about their emissions and their efforts to tackle them, and being greenhouse gas emitters should not -disqualifies them from advocating for increased awareness of climate anxiety.

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The booklet is not funded by issuers, King says

King said the pamphlet distributed in schools was funded entirely by I am Hope and not by any of the companies whose logos were featured in the pamphlet.

He said the climate anxiety ride was a separate initiative.

In a response to Adriaansen, which King shared with RNZ, King said the pamphlet was not about aligning with major polluters or greenwashing, but about validating young people’s negative feelings and listening to them.

King admitted the charity was not an expert on environmental solutions, but told Adriaansen that his letter of complaint reflected the division in society.

“We see too much judgment and division in how people approach issues, including climate, with a lot of ‘naming and shaming’…

“I have come to realize that one of the biggest challenges we face is tribalism…Instead of pointing fingers, we all have the potential to contribute positively.

“Your message, while kindly written, illustrates this challenge. It frames certain sponsors as ‘bad actors’ while positioning the letter’s position as morally superior.”

“disappointed” parent

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 tackle climate change.

She was disappointed that they did not feature children doing any of the positive things they could do to make a difference, such as riding bikes or public transport safely, volunteering or engaging with their local MPs.

“It looks like it’s free promotional material for companies that are causing a lot of climate damage,” said the Wellington mum.

“Looks like greenwashing.”

Photo: Screenshot

She said it was given to students aged five to 12 at her children’s school.

“It’s full of very gray, bleak, polluted images, with this dystopian concrete city full of trucks and cars (and) with a truck company that has a few electric vehicles and thousands of high-emission vehicles.

“I expected to see images of our precious natural landscapes that we are all concerned with trying to protect.”

TR Group a “big supporter”

TR Group’s Brendan King – who is no relation to Mike King – confirmed the truck hire company had not specifically funded the brochure, 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 organization that believes in doing the right thing. Two very important areas of focus for us are mental health and climate change,” he said.

“TR Group is a huge supporter of I Am Hope and the work they do. We were not a sponsor of the Climate race itself, but we support I Am Hope in general.”

Brendan King noted that the TR truck also appeared in other stories written by Mike King for school children.

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 “hard to mitigate” heavy haulage, even if most of its fleet remained fueled by fossil fuels. The company had several hydrogen trucks in the works, he said.

The reason the firm couldn’t do more to electrify now was the cost, he said.

“It’s very prohibitive, the technology doesn’t exist, if we could magically swap every diesel truck with a zero-emission 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 cost three times more than a diesel truck.”

Photo: Screenshot

Charity could be misinforming children

Climate communications expert Dr Jess Berentson Shaw said it was clear Mike King was genuinely concerned about climate anxiety.

However, she said I am Hope could harm children, raising concerns that weren’t necessarily already present among children as young as five or six.

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 website I Am Hope suggests alleviating young people’s climate anxiety by taking “small steps like recycling and saving water”, two of the least effective actions to prevent climate change, according to research.

The most effective, according to research, are usually reducing the use of vehicles, eating less meat and engaging in political action.

Berentson Shaw said climate travel sponsored by big polluters was like the tobacco industry sponsoring information about quitting smoking. She asked if the charity checked that the information it provided did not increase children’s anxiety.

“Worrying doesn’t make you an expert on how to do it in a way that’s actually helpful and doesn’t harm people, and then there’s the ethics around it that actually contribute to a greater misunderstanding among young people about to causes and solutions. climate change”.

“An important issue among our young people”

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 supports “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 have targets, actions and plans in place to reduce them,” Douglas said.

“It is unfortunate that some believe that because of this impact we should not support 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 youth, but provided solutions.”

“We’ve been able to provide evidence to young people who may be suffering from anxiety about climate change that companies like ours are doing something to address it… Genesis is working to establish a sustainable local biomass supply chain that will gradually replace coal at Huntly. Power plant,” he said.

The closing date for Huntly’s coal burners has been pushed back several times.

THL said it had been approached by Mike King’s Ride for Hope to provide an electric support vehicle and was “very happy to do so”. The trip was a great test for the e-motorhome, he said.

The company said it recognizes its “substantial carbon footprint” of just over one million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year and is open about the challenges.

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