Well, he did ask.

I don't like excessively negative criticism, but in this case it was hard to find much to be positive about.

The previous effort, while flawed by a massive agenda overload and some rampant breaches of the principles of practicing what one preaches (or, in the case of the BBC, finger-wags), at least did have some information worth having.

This one, on the evidence of this piece... not so much.

The first Ethical Man film

And I felt the urge to explain why.

OK, I have given you my 17 minutes. Now for the 2 cents.

It's a mixture of questions and thoughts, the latter as requested.

First up, this is the first of how many? What for? To whom? Where and when? Here on the blog to show all the guys back in the USA who you met? What's the anticipated audience for all that has been consumed... with what intended message?

Top of line while fresh in mind, there seemed near zero by way of any information worth much. It was also hardly cutting edge documentary. How many of these have we seen before, and will get again? At what cost... to licence fee and planet? Lugging star and entourage and kit does not come cheap.

The original EM had some value; I learned a lot and got some nifty links. And why on earth would a (genuine) experiment in ways and results of trying to reduce GHG's on a personal level be bizarre?

Odd to mention the giving up flying, and then fly to the USA next. And then make a point about not flying whilst there (except back here when it was necessary).

This was billed as what America could teach us. I am struggling to think of one thing in this first piece that taught anyone anything, though there was a Brit telling some Americans how their lives are measured in Hershey bars. Looking at the audience I think that may have sunk in.

Whilst engagingly acknowledged, the whole asking folk what they thought of 'Global Warming' at every turn, during a blizzard, was... quaint. I thought it was now 'climate change', and in The Guardian even this is being deemed so last year before records stopped. And the BBC has a spotty record on reporting science at best.

Whilst obviously a very nice family, I fear the time with the Howards is time I will not get back. But I must say Dad's powered driveway shovel looked waaay cool. I'll get rid of the spade right away. Did it run on coal?

Because I think I did get the message that this is bad stuff, and the USA has lots more bad stuff than anyone. So President O's efforts in ditching their primary energy sources in favour of others will be an interesting one to watch. Environment vs. economy can be a tricky one. A bit like PM Brown's latest wheeze (frankly he spins so much on green issues each month we could run the National Grid on him) on making us all buy as many electric cars as we can is novel, without seeing certain ironies in steel mills cranking out more cars to run on a fuel produced, currently, how? And later on, how? And how distributed?

It was great to see that even in the snow you got a nice audience at the show, but let's get real. If Fox advertised an event with cameras in our town hall, half the town would turn up to get on the telly. Hope they thought it was worth it.

Without knowing where this is going, I can only hope that if I am to invest more time in these pieces, there will be something in there of more value to help me with making tough choices on climate-related issues, and better yet with proactive solutions for the future. Flying to the USA to make a telly show on high consumption Americans isn't really spinning my turbine. But I hope it was fun.

It's personal, and subjective, but I hope still polite and fair. And I really hope that it might make such as the BBC think a bit before concocting a trite TV show, with all that entails, and tries not only to sell it as something a lot more than it is, and in content serve the cause they claim to espouse so poorly. How, in any way, did this show 'save the world from climate change'?

There was also some response in the main blog, but I sense even linked from here a few did not actually watch the piece being promoted, which does rather beg the question as to who it was being made for. The ROI as a broadcaster would be as interesting as the enviROI.