Climate alarmism’s massive own goal
A couple of weeks ago, I posted on the way gentry progressives tend to be “tone deaf”; to simply not hear themselves, to not see how their “self-evident”, their “reasonable” pronouncements really seem to others.
It is not hard to find examples: the 2009 speech by Obama Communications Director Anita Dunn praising Mao is a classic (historian Victor Davis Hanson has the correct response).
I feel the same way about someone praising Mao as one of her “favourite political philosophers” the way I would of someone praising Hitler as one of their favourite political philosophers - this person does not inhabit the same moral universe as me. It is an example of how Mao’s crimes go down the memory hole, that somehow Mao is different because he killed (tens of) millions and tyrannised hundreds of millions with “good intentions” while Hitler killed millions and tyrannised hundreds of millions with “bad intentions”. Or something.
The example I used in my post of the juxtaposition of the fervid sensitivity to Muslim sensibilities over an obscure Florida preacher announced his intention to burn the Qur’an with the contemptuous dismissal of mass American sensibilities over building a mosque on land available only because of the 9/11 attack, provided quite a revealing contrast. But little did I know that a far more egregious example was about to enter online infamy.
This is the (now infamous) 10:10 movement’s short propaganda film about reducing carbon emissions by blowing up adults and children who express catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) “denialism” or otherwise show indifference to the moral urgency of carbon reduction.
The Guardian, naturally, thought it a:
highly explosive short film … most definitely striking … it's pretty edgy
The comment:
I'm certain you'll agree that detonating school kids, footballers and movie stars into gory pulp for ignoring their carbon footprints is attention-grabbing. It's also got a decent sprinkling of stardust - Peter Crouch, Gillian Anderson, Radiohead and others
is, in its way, a gem. Massive gentry progressivist tone deafness for all to see.
If some conservative group had thought it “effective advocacy” to produce a film where pressing a button blew up Jewish, black or queer folk, the Guardian would, no doubt, have been leading the hue-and-cry about how vile it was and what it told you about the mentality of those who produced it.
Indeed.
Let us consider this for a moment. People wrote, acted in, filmed, produced and (in the case of the Guardian) viewed a film of people (children and adults) being blown up for expressing a point of view or not toeing an environmentalist line and apparently none of them felt that there was something deeply problematic about this. Apparently, “good intentions” make all the difference.
It demonstrates just how not-worthy-of-moral-consideration such folk think people who express the “wrong” opinion and break environmentalist taboos are. Error has no rights! (The fundamental principle of totalitarianism: let us not forget some CAGW advocates think the issue of climate change is far too important for the constraints of mere democracy or freedom of speech. Then again, climate alarmism has been full of overheated rhetoric.)
This is where the tone deafness becomes so stunning. Anyone can have a point of view: not anyone is Jewish, black or queer, but anyone can have a point of view. So everyone, without any act of imagination or projection, can look at the film and think “that could be me, that could be my child”.
Anyone, that is, except the people who made the film and the moral giants at the Guardian.
Consider the original statement from 10:10 withdrawing the film, which says in part:
Many people found the resulting film extremely funny, but unfortunately some didn't and we sincerely apologise to anybody we have offended.
As a result of these concerns we've taken it off our website.
We'd like to thank the 50+ film professionals and 40+ actors and extras and who gave their time and equipment to the film for free. We greatly value your contributions and the tremendous enthusiasm and professionalism you brought to the project.
In other words, they really, really did not get it. Their more recent statement has a quite a different tone.
Some sort of moral realism (or, more likely, PR disaster realism) may have dimly set in.
Others could see the PR disaster involved immediately. Even display a certain brutal wit over it:
it's good to discover that Richard Curtis, long-time purveyor of smug, self-satisfied tripe, has produced this ad for something called the 10:10 campaign. Watch it and see if you don't feel like starting your own oil company or burning anything you can just because you can...
Active critics of CAGW are, of course, having a field day.
There are some marks of just what a spectacular PR disaster it is:
Worst of all from Armstrong's point of view, the film went viral on websites run by those who regard the whole climate change agenda as fundamentally misguided and its proponents as misanthropes motivated as much by hatred of humanity as love for the planet. As often as 10:10 tried to pull the film off YouTube, their critics re-posted it.
This, at least, proves what a cataclysmic misjudgement Curtis had made. When you try to satirise the critics of your campaign, and it turns out that those very critics embrace your film as demonstrating exactly what they find unbearable about the climate-obsessed eco-lobby, then you know that you have kicked the ball into your own net. Unfortunately, just as a star footballer who scores a spectacular own goal must now endure his foolishness being viewed endlessly on the internet, so Richard Curtis will have this hanging round his neck, like a stinking fish, for as long as he is successful enough to be worth mocking.
While some comments about it are just savage.
Let us leave aside the science, what really gets up my nose about climate alarmism is the contempt for other views, the ad hominem attacks, the self-righteous certainty, the heresy-hunting; all the abusive, self-righteous intolerance.
Now so powerfully expressed in one, massive PR own-goal propaganda disaster.
All the creators’ own work: not even a forced error, and all the more revealing for it.
It is not hard to find examples: the 2009 speech by Obama Communications Director Anita Dunn praising Mao is a classic (historian Victor Davis Hanson has the correct response).
I feel the same way about someone praising Mao as one of her “favourite political philosophers” the way I would of someone praising Hitler as one of their favourite political philosophers - this person does not inhabit the same moral universe as me. It is an example of how Mao’s crimes go down the memory hole, that somehow Mao is different because he killed (tens of) millions and tyrannised hundreds of millions with “good intentions” while Hitler killed millions and tyrannised hundreds of millions with “bad intentions”. Or something.
The example I used in my post of the juxtaposition of the fervid sensitivity to Muslim sensibilities over an obscure Florida preacher announced his intention to burn the Qur’an with the contemptuous dismissal of mass American sensibilities over building a mosque on land available only because of the 9/11 attack, provided quite a revealing contrast. But little did I know that a far more egregious example was about to enter online infamy.
This is the (now infamous) 10:10 movement’s short propaganda film about reducing carbon emissions by blowing up adults and children who express catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) “denialism” or otherwise show indifference to the moral urgency of carbon reduction.
The Guardian, naturally, thought it a:
highly explosive short film … most definitely striking … it's pretty edgy
The comment:
I'm certain you'll agree that detonating school kids, footballers and movie stars into gory pulp for ignoring their carbon footprints is attention-grabbing. It's also got a decent sprinkling of stardust - Peter Crouch, Gillian Anderson, Radiohead and others
is, in its way, a gem. Massive gentry progressivist tone deafness for all to see.
If some conservative group had thought it “effective advocacy” to produce a film where pressing a button blew up Jewish, black or queer folk, the Guardian would, no doubt, have been leading the hue-and-cry about how vile it was and what it told you about the mentality of those who produced it.
Indeed.
Let us consider this for a moment. People wrote, acted in, filmed, produced and (in the case of the Guardian) viewed a film of people (children and adults) being blown up for expressing a point of view or not toeing an environmentalist line and apparently none of them felt that there was something deeply problematic about this. Apparently, “good intentions” make all the difference.
It demonstrates just how not-worthy-of-moral-consideration such folk think people who express the “wrong” opinion and break environmentalist taboos are. Error has no rights! (The fundamental principle of totalitarianism: let us not forget some CAGW advocates think the issue of climate change is far too important for the constraints of mere democracy or freedom of speech. Then again, climate alarmism has been full of overheated rhetoric.)
This is where the tone deafness becomes so stunning. Anyone can have a point of view: not anyone is Jewish, black or queer, but anyone can have a point of view. So everyone, without any act of imagination or projection, can look at the film and think “that could be me, that could be my child”.
Anyone, that is, except the people who made the film and the moral giants at the Guardian.
Consider the original statement from 10:10 withdrawing the film, which says in part:
Many people found the resulting film extremely funny, but unfortunately some didn't and we sincerely apologise to anybody we have offended.
As a result of these concerns we've taken it off our website.
We'd like to thank the 50+ film professionals and 40+ actors and extras and who gave their time and equipment to the film for free. We greatly value your contributions and the tremendous enthusiasm and professionalism you brought to the project.
In other words, they really, really did not get it. Their more recent statement has a quite a different tone.
Some sort of moral realism (or, more likely, PR disaster realism) may have dimly set in.
Others could see the PR disaster involved immediately. Even display a certain brutal wit over it:
it's good to discover that Richard Curtis, long-time purveyor of smug, self-satisfied tripe, has produced this ad for something called the 10:10 campaign. Watch it and see if you don't feel like starting your own oil company or burning anything you can just because you can...
Active critics of CAGW are, of course, having a field day.
There are some marks of just what a spectacular PR disaster it is:
Worst of all from Armstrong's point of view, the film went viral on websites run by those who regard the whole climate change agenda as fundamentally misguided and its proponents as misanthropes motivated as much by hatred of humanity as love for the planet. As often as 10:10 tried to pull the film off YouTube, their critics re-posted it.
This, at least, proves what a cataclysmic misjudgement Curtis had made. When you try to satirise the critics of your campaign, and it turns out that those very critics embrace your film as demonstrating exactly what they find unbearable about the climate-obsessed eco-lobby, then you know that you have kicked the ball into your own net. Unfortunately, just as a star footballer who scores a spectacular own goal must now endure his foolishness being viewed endlessly on the internet, so Richard Curtis will have this hanging round his neck, like a stinking fish, for as long as he is successful enough to be worth mocking.
While some comments about it are just savage.
Let us leave aside the science, what really gets up my nose about climate alarmism is the contempt for other views, the ad hominem attacks, the self-righteous certainty, the heresy-hunting; all the abusive, self-righteous intolerance.
Now so powerfully expressed in one, massive PR own-goal propaganda disaster.
All the creators’ own work: not even a forced error, and all the more revealing for it.