This has nothing to do with comic books but I thought it was too funny not to comment on. The new James Cameron sci-fi epic Avatar at it’s core is a movie raging against corporations who rape mother nature for a profit without care to damage to the environment or indigenous people. It’s a very pro-environment movie, advocating in protecting the forests and living in harmony with the nature that surrounds us.
In something that shouldn’t be a shock McDonalds’s has teamed up to promote the movie through Happy Meals and advertisements in hopes to draw more people to their restaurants. But isn’t this pairing a little odd?
McDonald’s may or may not be the best on environmental issues. Though they promote themselves as an environmentally conscious, organizations like McSpotlight raise issues with the corporation’s practice of destroying rain forests to make way for farms. Much like the military depicted in the movie, both are destroying trees and forests for their corporate masters and stockholders.
There’s also the issue of the massive amounts of waste generated from their packaging every year. I’m sure the plastic of the Avatar action figures in the Happy Meal are environmentally friendly too.
McDonald’s has definitely tried to change their once wicked ways (much like the corporation in the movie once they see the error of their way). Greenpeace praised McDonald’s agreement to stop selling chicken fed on soya grown in newly deforested areas of the Amazon rainforest. But that was after Greenpeace also called them out on the practice.
As recent as November 2009 people were calling on McDonald’s and other restaurants to cease purchasing beef raised on grounds that used to be the rain forest. Every one quarter pound of beef is equivalent to 25 square feet of some of the most precious land on Earth. Destroyed to raise the cattle for the beef.
The pairing is humorous and the above is something to chew on.
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