Misanthropic Warming

Global warming activists are famously impatient with critics who question either the solidity of the scientific case for climate alarmism or the policy prescriptions of the alarmists. “The time for debate is over” is their rallying cry. Not that they were ever big on debate to begin with. Anyone who read Al Gore’s 1992 schlockbuster Earth in the Balance will remember that it was long on apocalypticism and short on the arts of persuasion.

"No Pressure"

So what comes after the time for debate? Apparently, the time for agitprop. Last week, the 10:10 campaign, a British-based group that aims for “voluntary” 10 percent reductions in carbon emissions every year beginning this year, released a much-anticipated four-minute film. The group was launched a year ago by director Franny Armstrong, whose magnum opus was a 2009 climate-change documentary bearing the prescient title, The Age of Stupid.

The new short film, No Pressure, was a labor of love by a host of British celebrities and P.R. professionals. It was written by Richard Curtis (Bridget Jones’s Diary, Notting Hill, Four Weddings and a Funeral, etc.), directed by “top advertising director Dougal Wilson,” with name actors donating their time, and Radiohead music for the soundtrack.

The good liberals at the Guardian ran a puff piece for “our friends at the 10:10 climate change campaign” heralding the release of the project, although even they wondered whether “detonating school kids, footballers and movie stars into gory pulp for ignoring their carbon footprints,” while certainly “attention-grabbing,” might risk “upsetting or alienating people.”