These apocalyptic narratives fulfill a very direct view held by radical environmentalists . First , everyone must act . Those who don ' t help with the environment are an enemy . Everyone must fight for the environment . Further , since defending the planet is a moral imperative , then not taking action can be seen as a crime . And Finally , the villains responsible for creating these disasters on these episodes are thoroughly wicked and irredeemable . To destroy them is not a crime because there is no hope of redemption . These are telling lessons to show children about differing environmental views . Violence against someone who disagrees with you on the environment is not only moral , it is expected .
The writers of the show were attempting , as Weisser further elaborates , to build a “ green ” sense of identity . Weisser points out that “ our current conceptions of identity are pre-ecological ( emphasis in original ); we have not yet recognized that the whole spectrum of the nonhuman physical environment is embedded in each of our identities ” ( 81 ). In watching Captain Planet , the words and images are creating a palate which will green the identities of the children watching the episodes-- to make them consider the nonhuman and the anthropomorphized elements in their conception of the environment . Thus , when the environment is being damaged , they might consider their identities under attack as well . I believe this was the intent of Turner ' s in the conception of the show .
In the Afterword of Ecosee , Killingsworth and Palmer sum up the totality of the collection . In the concluding remarks , “ Morey notes , the institutions that ' control what the images “ say ,” the pictorial manipulators that give picture-speech acts their illocutionary force and perlocutionary effects are hegemonic structures that
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