Editors' note: to watch the worldwide premiere of Not Evil Just Wrong, tune in here on Sunday night at 8pm EST.
"We live in an age of fear."
The first line of Not Evil Just Wrong: The True Cost of Global Warming Hysteria reverberates throughout the documentary as an indictment of the modern environmental movement. The film delves deep into what the heart of environmentalism is: creating an artificial crisis and devaluing ordinary human worth.
Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney’s production, being released worldwide on October 18, takes global warming alarmists head-on with a convincing narrative of the methods of environmentalist panic. The movie’s principle action consists of a series of interviews from a wide-ranging group of voices, from scientists to journalists to environmental activists to expose how the environmental left manipulates the media and public opinion to propagate the anthropogenic global warming farce. Along the way, the filmmakers introduce us to leading lights in the environmental movement while highlighting some of the inexcusable fallacies the green leftists have foisted upon the world.
Over the course of the last fifty years, the modern environmental movement has attempted to turn every minor concern into an imminent crisis. One of the first major successes that they had was the worldwide demonization of the pesticide DDT. Used to great success in the United States in controlling the mosquito population and virtually eliminating malaria, environmentalists engaged in a smear campaign that led to the outlaw of the pesticide’s use in the developing world, where over one million people die every year from malaria. Exploring the DDT slur marks one of the film’s many high points, laying out the blueprint for how environmentalists will engage in an anti-science ideological campaign.
This system of crisis creation has been endemic to the modern environmentalist left. To them, every crisis needs a centrally-planned and government-administered solution. Every crisis requires a dramatic reorganization of society and the outlaw of new, useful technologies. These leftists see these crises in absolute moral terms. Conservatives take a far more reasonable approach: disagreements stem not from morality, but misunderstandings. Roy Innis, chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality and a major contributor to the film, says
“These people [environmental activists] must be forced to consider the pragmatic consequences of what they hope for or what they believe. I don’t believe that the people… are evil people. But they’re people who are just wrong.”
Not Evil Just Wrong parallels the anti-DDT campaign with current activities being undertaken by environmentalists. The playbook remains the same: the pseudo-science, the exaggerations, the personal smears and the utter lack of compassion for humanity.
The filmmakers are in their element using music and stock footage to create a contrast with statements made by their interviewees. Many of the alarmist activists interviewed are wealthy Americans who will have to sacrifice nothing in order to implement their carbon reduction goals. Actor Ed Begley is shown to admire the “happy” way of life of Fiji while footage rolls portraying the poverty of most of the inhabitants of the small island nation. Testimonials urging the Earth to give up carbon clash with images of hardworking middle-Americans that rely on cheap coal energy to power their humble lifestyles. A particularly convincing segment of the film deals with the famous debunkers of the global warming “hockey stick” graph while interviewing an academic mathematician in the middle of a hockey game.
At its heart, the film extols the virtues of a modern society and the triumph of ordinary humanity over elitist alarmism. The leading advocates of global warming, the film teaches, are its biggest hypocrites. Jet-setting politicos like Al Gore who yearn to destroy cheap energy sources won’t be harmed as a result of the policies they endorse. They never stop to consider the consequences for Americans who may not be able to afford energy that comes from windmills.
Not Evil Just Wrong is both a lesson on environmentalists’ method of crisis creation and an expose on their disregard for basic humanity. McAleer and McIlhenney are accomplished filmmakers who put an important message into an easily-digestible package. This film is an important step to breaking the false elitist consensus on global warming and arming skeptics with important ammo to ward off the hypocrites. While the film does not break ground with people who have done their homework on the global warming mythos, it’s an indispensible introduction to the real debate that needs to occur.
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