Scary Political Ad of the Day

Um . . . does Greenpeace really want to be suggesting that they're planning on unleashing some kind of youth-driven terrorist campaign if congress doesn't act swiftly on climate change?

I could, however, see this as a promising movie concept. It's 2011, there's still no carbon tax or cap-and-trade system in place, so a bunch of 16 year-olds band together to sabotage the global economy gleefully killing oldsters wherever they find them. For ideological balance, you could work a Social Security angle into it.

Comments

It's 2011, there's still no carbon tax or cap-and-trade system in place, so a bunch of 16 year-olds band together to sabotage the global economy gleefully killing oldsters wherever they find them.

Ooh, and then the youngsters found a society where everyone has a rigorous lifetime carbon output maximum, and when it's reached, the gem in your hand starts blinking and you're euthanized. And one of the enforcer Gasmen goes undercover and joins the rebels in searching for the mythical land of limitless carbon dioxide emissions, known as Subdivision.

Posted by mds | September 5, 2007 2:47 PM

Um...does Greenpeace really want to be suggesting that they're planning on unleashing some kind of youth-driven terrorist campaign if congress doesn't act swiftly on climate change?

I'm going with yes.

Posted by Christopher M | September 5, 2007 2:52 PM

for a terrorist, that kid sounds awefully canadian

Posted by Winnipeg Liberation Front | September 5, 2007 2:52 PM

re: this kid

Only a Sith deals in absolutes.

Posted by Cain | September 5, 2007 3:05 PM

Greenpeace is notoriously loose with the facts, and is interested in publicity and raking in the dough as much as anything else. We used to refer to them as the people who put the "ego" in "ecology."

I was working on a West Coast student newspaper around the time they got started up, and our anarchist editor, pissed off by their posing and begging, ran a mock "Save the Smallpox Virus" ad from "Green,please." God, they were mad. Threatened to sue but the little blowhards didn't dare in the end.

Posted by sunsin | September 5, 2007 3:09 PM

Is Greenpeace really caling for teenage ecoterrorism? Or is the organization predicting it if nothing changes? A subtle distinction, but not unprecedented:

Cæsar had his Brutus; Charles the First, his Cromwell; and George the Third [shocked cries of "treason" from the audience]—may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it.

Posted by rea | September 5, 2007 3:12 PM

How cute! A baby unabomber!

Posted by blah | September 5, 2007 3:16 PM

What a sour kid. Where are the anti depressants when you need them?

Posted by shecky | September 5, 2007 3:17 PM

Fuck y'all. I'm joining up.

"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!"

Posted by brooksfoe | September 5, 2007 3:20 PM

This ad reminds me quite a bit of "Mosh."

Also, it is terrifying.

Posted by SDM | September 5, 2007 3:20 PM

This summer's Arctic ice melt has produced an expanse of ice 900,000 sq km less than the previous record with 2 weeks to go in melt season. And recent melting has been dramatic. That wasn't forseen by the let's-be-cautious crowd.

The video clip is ludicrous, melodramatic, and entirely characteristic of the ludicrous, melodramatic jackasses in Greenpeace.

DIYDADIYD, eh?

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | September 5, 2007 3:22 PM

a terrorist with an Irish accent? how original!

Posted by Chris | September 5, 2007 3:44 PM

Disgusting. Doesn't Greenpace realize everything changed on 9/11? You shouldn't make those things anymore.

Posted by anxious pious middle-American | September 5, 2007 3:45 PM

@ brooksfoe

The real question is: are you quoting Mario Savio or Battlestar Galactica? :)

Posted by Cain | September 5, 2007 3:54 PM

Dear God mds - you've just given out a "reasonable" update for a remake to Logan's Run.

Quick, someone scrub these comments before someone in Hollywood finds out that there's a way they can remake Logan's Run!

For the love of GOD please do it quickly! Won't someone please THINK OF THE CHILDREN?

Posted by NonyNony | September 5, 2007 4:06 PM

Quick, someone scrub these comments before someone in Hollywood finds out that there's a way they can remake Logan's Run!

Too late.

Posted by mds | September 5, 2007 4:12 PM

Shorter Greenpeace: Stupid grups.

Posted by eck | September 5, 2007 4:39 PM

This ad reminds me quite a bit of "Mosh."

But without the nonviolent punchline at the end.

Posted by KCinDC | September 5, 2007 4:54 PM

We're talking about the same Greenpeace that had a ship specially equipped for ramming other ships on the high seas, IOW for committing piracy? Of course they're threatening terrorism, it's right up their alley. Why would you find it even the slightest bit implausible given their history?

Posted by Brett Bellmore | September 5, 2007 5:05 PM

I'm a big environmentalist, but that is such an unbelievably, phenomenally shitty add, I hardly know what to say. Who the fuck is its target audience? What am I supposed to feel after I see it? Why is it so lame? Who the hell is that kid? Why does he look so weird?

Posted by Sam L. | September 5, 2007 5:09 PM

A sullen teen with a voice dripping with contempt lectures directly into the camera in a weirdly-lit unappealing close-up. What a great way to win people over to your cause!

The kid looks like a younger version of the guy who played Death in the Seventh Seal.

Posted by tworivers | September 5, 2007 5:35 PM

Because being lectured by some snot-nosed 13 year old usually causes adults to reexamine their priorities!

Posted by blah | September 5, 2007 5:38 PM

i thought that animal rights and environmental activists are, already, the domestic terrorist threat number 1?

Posted by Hugo Pottisch | September 5, 2007 5:48 PM

Put me down for decidedly _against that kid's future.

Posted by berger | September 5, 2007 6:22 PM

God, what an annoying kid. Can't the US please launch a pre-emptive strike against him?

Posted by Magnus | September 5, 2007 6:29 PM

This only goes to show what little people can do!

Posted by Hugo | September 5, 2007 6:53 PM

God, you people are idiots. I just watched the actual ad expecting to see whatever horror had terrified Yglesias (a suicide bomb? a call for Bush's assassination?) but instead there was just some shrill language... and shrill only if you fail to comprehend that climate change is a threat to the survival of the human species.

It's been obvious for a while now that Yglesias doesn't "get" environmentalism. He seems to think the utility of the Endangered Species Act, for example, extends merely to preserving plants and animals for the sake of sentiment, and has stubbornly refused to educate himself about the critical importance of biodiversity to the survival of homo sapiens. Similarly, climate change is only as important to him as it is to mainstream liberalism. Now that people like Al Gore have made it okay to take global warming seriously, Yglesias feels obligated to post on global warming and energy policy from time to time - but he doesn't actually see it as a planet-scale threat to the human race. There is nothing disproportionate whatsoever about an ad like this, but as long as liberal punditry is represented by centrists like Yglesias who aren't capable of actually dealing with environmental threats at face value, Americans are never going to take global warming seriously enough to make the changes we need to make to save our civilization.

Posted by Christmas | September 5, 2007 7:08 PM

I'm a big environmentalist, but that is such an unbelievably, phenomenally shitty add, I hardly know what to say. Who the fuck is its target audience? What am I supposed to feel after I see it? Why is it so lame? Who the hell is that kid? Why does he look so weird?

That's pretty much how I saw it - thoroughly unappealing. Nor was it even scary. It's just a creepily awkward and inauthentic fake rage act out.

I'm also a big environmentalist, but if I were exposed to that ad for any extended period of time, I'm sure I would end up wanting to fuck up the environment on purpose just to spite this kid: send him to bed without his polar ice caps until he unknits his brow and stops throwing a tantrum.

And if Greenpeace really wants to go with this "you're either with us or against us" line, then perhaps they should change their name to "Greenwar"

But I imagine the ad is not intended to appeal to someone like me. Although the kid is purportedly addressing adults in the spot, I suspect the ad is really aimed at young people, who might be energized in some way by angry anti-authoritarianism and open lippy defiance of screwed-up grownups.

Posted by Dan Kervick | September 5, 2007 7:24 PM

It really amazes me how many people just don't get this. If things go on around here as they have been, in 30 years this place will look like Brazil- and don't count on being one of the rich ones. And that's if you're lucky.

Now, I've smoked a pack a day for 45 years, so I'm not too worried about being here 30 years from now. Anybody who might be here in 30 years should be very worried and mad as hell.

It's not a specific prediction, but the performance of the past that looks so glum. If, starting in 1970, we had spent one percent of GDP on renewables and conservation, the nation would have been running on solar and wind for about 15-20 years by now. If the money spent on Starwars (the anti-missile defense, not the movie) had been spent researching renewables something would be a heck of a lot better than it is.

Do you see any of the Big 3 Democratic presidential wannabes talking realistically about this?

Well, as I said, I probably won't be here, and it's time to eat some artery-clogging meat and watch some horror movie about the future. 'Cause the movie won't scare me as much as reading a science blog about the real future.

Posted by serial catowner | September 5, 2007 8:16 PM

you fail to comprehend that climate change is a threat to the survival of the human species.

I do fail to comprehend this, because it's not true.

The ad is hilarious.

Posted by Korha | September 5, 2007 8:43 PM

I do fail to comprehend this, because it's not true.

Like I said, you people are idiots. Humans have most likely already kicked off the next great extinction; with half the species on the planet wiped out over the course of the next hundred years, do you actually think humans will just continue on unaffected? The fact that liberals can get so riled up about something like, say, the minutiae of Iraq policy - which, while important, is comparatively petty next to the possible extinction of humanity - while remaining rather blase about environmental and energy policy is utterly mind-boggling to me.

Posted by Christmas | September 6, 2007 2:36 AM

Christmas, there's a huge gap between "threat to the survival of the human species", and "unaffected". Outside of the nutty "Earth will become like Venus!" predictions, global warming is NOT, repeat, NOT a threat to the survival of the human species.

We're a technological species. We already live over large parts of the planet which are utterly uninhabitable for months at a time without the aid of technology. A change of climate which is equivalent to moving a few hundred miles closer to the equator is no threat to our survival. Ocean levels rising 10 or even 100 feet is no threat to our survival. If it annoys us, we're perfectly capable of resorting to geoengineering to restore temperatures to something more pleasant.

Why, the threat hasn't even risen to the level that most environmentalists would be willing to set aside their objections to nuclear energy. How much of a threat to our survival could it be?

Posted by Brett Bellmore | September 6, 2007 6:20 AM

We're a technological species. We already live over large parts of the planet which are utterly uninhabitable for months at a time without the aid of technology.

And what powers this technology? From reading your comment I can only assume it's the sheer, unlimited power of the human will!

A change of climate which is equivalent to moving a few hundred miles closer to the equator is no threat to our survival. Ocean levels rising 10 or even 100 feet is no threat to our survival.

Really, this is the problem: liberals who think that climate change just means a few changes to the coastlines. Once again, climate change doesn't just mean rising ocean levels, it also contributes to massive die-offs and population changes in a host of species that interact with us. Some of those species include deadly strains of bacteria that will better be able to spread in warmer climate. Some of those species include phytoplankton in the ocean that produce the vast majority of the planet's oxygen, and need a stable environment to thrive. If those disappear, humanity is fucked, and no amount of neat little gadgets can save the day.

If it annoys us, we're perfectly capable of resorting to geoengineering to restore temperatures to something more pleasant.

This is absurd. First of all, we are most certainly not capable of doing this. Geoengineering on the scale you're talking about is an utterly unproven technology, and certainly none of the proposed "solutions" in that area that've been floated - from large-scale tampering with the atmosphere to large-scale tampering with the ocean to giant mirrors in space - are free of potentially catastrophic unintended consequences (like sterilizing vast portions of the ocean). See Pat Mooney for more on this. There is no quick technological fix here. There are, however, actual solutions to this, involving conservation and the gradual elimination of dependence on fossil fuels. These are harder to do, but they have the added benefit of actually working.

Posted by Christmas | September 6, 2007 8:12 AM

Re: Once again, climate change doesn't just mean rising ocean levels, it also contributes to massive die-offs and population changes in a host of species that interact with us.

While I'm sure tehre's going to be some serious upheavals and adjustments why is this always portrayed apocalyptically? It very much reminds me of the way the Right protrays terrorism: not just as a grim and nasty problem, but as The Ultinmate Atrocity, the End Of The Civilization.
And yet, we've had global warming episodes in the past, most notably the end of the last Ice Age, which raised ocean levels enormously and totalling changed almost every ecosystem on the planet even the tropical ones. Yet humankind came through that without a glitch, as did much (albeit not all) of the planet's fauna and flora. And if the biosphere was going to collapse and life go extinct every time the climate shifted wouldn't that have happened a long, long time ago?

Re: There is no quick technological fix here.

Quick technological fixes? No. But technological changes that will ameliorate the problem. Yes. Indeed, your point that we need to move away from fossil fuels (which are in limited spply anyway) requires exactly that: new technologies utlizing non CO2-producing (and hopefully renewable) energy sources.

Posted by Jonf | September 6, 2007 3:10 PM

LOL, I laughed so hard. As soon as that kid was done he went back to thge sofa to drink a coke, eat cheetos, and play video games. What a joke.

Posted by halloween | September 7, 2007 8:22 PM

I'm an environmentalist, but the eco-fringe here is nuts, Greenpeace included. Global Warming is a huge problem and we need to work against it, but portraying it as some apocalyptic extinction struggle for mankind is just plain absurd, mendacious and ultimately counterproductive. Will people die? Yes. Will we die as a species? Barring a nuclear war, no. Personally I think nuclear weapons are more of a threat than climate change. Will phytoplankton stop working? No. That's the most ridiculous, baseless statement, and any retard that believes that needs to read less science fiction. We're dealing with an extremely complex planet that-- believe it or not-- may be beyond the comprehension of the self-certified geniuses at greenpeace. no one knows with precision what is going to happen, but there is an abudance of evidence what the range is going to be, and none of that includes Doomesday.

Can't it just be bad enough that the world is going to suck and millions of species will go extinct and we will lose many of the world's treasures? Or that people will die from disease and flooding and economic distress? Isn't that strong enough of an argument for the eco nuts? It works for me and anyone with an IQ above 85.

But no. It has to be human extinction. Because you really can't get any higher than that. Greenpeace wants to scare you into donating to them, so they can run more pointless ads and sideline any campaign, however effective, that is any bit slightly to the right of them. The good is the enemy of the perfect. Ever since the whale campaign succeeded-- due to international consensus and a broad coalition, not from the radicals-- Greenpeace has been dying for a chance at relevance.

Greenpeace is saying hey folks, don't give your money to the people setting aside land, or working to promote sustainable forests and fisheries, or people working with hunters and fisherman to perserve habitat, or organizations developing new technologies to help us leave a lesser footprint. Instead give your money to Greenpeace so they can run more ads that alienate people and hire more smug little pricks to tell you that you are stupid. Why be effective when you can be elitest?

It's their way or the highway. There is no room for dialog except into the stratosphere of absurdity. Hence the world is going to end!! humankind is doomed!! and anyone who doesn't parrot the same hyperbolic line "just doesn't get it." "We don't get environmentalism. We drive an SUV. Fuck, we're 4 inches from being Joe Lieberman."

If you really care about the environment and climate change, avoid Greenpeace. You can wear a hoodie without being one of them. They are the clowns of the environmental community that believe ideological purity is better than constructive solutions.

You can be hip and active and eco-cool. Just find an organization that matters, kids.

Posted by Evil | September 11, 2007 3:36 PM