Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Buzzfeed reporter Alison Willmore invites her audience to empathise with the desperation which drives fictional and not so fictional greens who commit atrocities the sake of the planet.
Climate Change Fiction Is Rethinking The Ecoterrorist
We don’t need to be on board with the extreme actions of characters in First Reformed and The Overstory to feel some empathy for the desperation that drives them.
Alison Willmore BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on April 28, 2019, at 9:59 a.m. ETToward the end of Paul Schrader’s most recent film, First Reformed, the main character straps on an explosive vest with the intention of blowing himself up — along with a church full of other people — driven by an inarticulate but intense desire to strike a blow on behalf of the environment.
The character’s name is Ernst Toller, he’s played by a dyspeptic Ethan Hawke, and he isn’t an ecological radical when the film starts. He’s a minister at a small church in upstate New York that’s more of a historical tourist attraction than a functional place of worship, and when we first meet him, he seems to think about climate change the way a lot of us do, or used to — as inexorably dire but also still distant enough a concept to not cast a shadow over our day-to-day lives.
That changes after he pays a visit to a troubled parishioner named Michael (Philip Ettinger), an activist for whom the effects of global warming are not abstract at all, and who’s in the grip of an existential crisis prompted by his wife Mary’s (Amanda Seyfried) pregnancy. How can it be justifiable, he demands of Ernst, to bring a child into a world you believe is going to crumble within their lifetime? He’s not being dramatic or alarmist. It’s a real question, one he shores up with all the data he’s accrued about sea levels rising and land mass shrinking, which he follows to logical conclusions about catastrophic change and civilization being shaken at its foundations. “The bad times will begin,” as he puts it. “This isn’t some distant future. You will live to see this.”
Ernst is the preacher, but Michael is delivering his own fire-and-brimstone sermon. Their conversation echoes the first chapter of journalist David Wallace-Wells’ best-selling climate change opus The Uninhabitable Earth, which opens with the assurance that our situation “is worse, much worse, than you think,” before pondering the question of children and whether having them signifies optimism or just “willful blindness.”
While Ernst goes into the meeting intending to talk Michael down from his hopelessness, he emerges, instead, infected with dread himself. And that dread begins blossoming, compounded by guilt, when he discovers Michael dead in the woods from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. By the time Ernst puts on that explosive vest, which he took from a box hidden in Michael’s garage, we understand his intentions as both extremist and an attempt at a logical response to an impossible problem: How are we supposed to behave in the face of the possibility that there is no future for us, because of our own choices as a species?
…
It’s interesting too to think of the young fandom that the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, has accrued, as profiled in New York magazine back in December. They’re kids who found themselves nodding along to his manifesto about how we need “a revolution against the industrial system,” creating “anti-civ” reading lists, and participating in open-air survivalist workshops in preparation for the end of civilization. The subjects of the article prefer the term “ecoextremism” and act cagey about their commitment to violence, but they do feel like real-world relations to all these fictional characters. The same feelings of quiet, constant panic in the face of an inevitable future that come through in this fiction are also bubbling up in our lives, and in these subcultures whose affiliations and actions may be beyond the pale, but whose desperation feels very familiar.
Read more: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alisonwillmore/climate-change-fiction-is-rethinking-the-ecoterrorist
Mocking the church, building audience sympathy for eco-terrorism, and empathising with people who praise the madness of the Unabomber, all in one article.
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The only thing the world need saving from is eco-lunatics.
Trouble is – they’re multiplying like an un-contained virus.
And an un-contained virus is probably the biggest threat to humankind.
A circular cause-and-effect argument I know, but how am I wrong?
You’re not too far off there. Super bugs and bacteria that is resistant to antibiotics is a much bigger threat to humanity than climate change.
You’re right to mention “resistant to antibiotics” as a threat to humanity. I recently vacationed in Iquique, northern Chile, and contacted bacterial pneumonia. Researching whether or not my doctors were doing the right thing for treatment (they were) I discovered there are two types of bacterial pneumonia, that contacted inside a hospital and that contacted outside of a hospital. The type contacted inside a hospital, an environment of anti-bacterial and sterialization, is much worse than that contacted outside. I was cured quickly by anti-bacterial medicine, but that would not have been the case if contacted inside a hospital. It seems to be only a matter of time before bacteria evolves everywhere to be resistant to medicines, leaving us to hope for concurrent advances in new medicines.
Actually the scientific term is positive feedback. It causes things to spiral out of control to a collapse. This is what the warmists say is going to happen in our climate and why they forecast 3+C of warming. Unfortunately (for them) natural systems all exhibit negative feedback unlike humans which frequently exhibit positive feedback. Hence the quote – people go mad in masses but only regain their sanity one at a time. (well something like that).
“I am convinced that exploration of the psyche is the science of the future… This is the science we need most of all, for it is gradually becoming more and more obvious that neither famine nor earthquakes nor microbes nor carcinoma, but man himself is the greatest peril to man, just because there is no adequate defense against psychic epidemics, which cause infinitely more devastation than the greatest natural catastrophes.” – (C.G. Jung 1944)
Nietzsche announced the death of God. He said the result would be the horrors of the twentieth century with hundreds of millions of deaths at the hands of the ideologically possessed. link
Similarly, Jung grappled with the problem for the individual to buttress himself against the spiritually corrosive effects of Godless ideology.
The basically Marxist postmodern SJWs have taken over the universities and are taking over the legal system. We are in peril just like the Russians after the revolution.
And what is not obvious to the afore stated …. Marxist postmodern SJWs …. that have taken over the public schools, universities and the legal system is that they are in great peril of ….. “being reaped by that which they have sown”.
psychic epidemics, that is a very accurate description of the current hysteria.
Unfortunately, a lot of these eco-lunatics hold political offices.
That’s Slimeworld for ya!
Killing people that have no clue what you’re on about….
…yeah, that’ll work…and a sure way to endear your cause
This is the “Age of the False Victim” – too many delusional fools mistakenly think they are Victims of some fictional or minor harm, so now they have a (false) Righteous Cause.
In general, these self-proclaimed Victims are self–indulgent imbeciles who know nothing of history or the state of the real world outside their privileged Western existences. In reality, False Victims are among the most dysfunctional and repulsive forms of humanity.
Some False Victims turn to violence, and harm innocents in their desire to be heard – the adult equivalent of a spoiled child’s temper tantrum, with violence added for effect.
These spoiled brats should travel to the third world to see what real victims look like – people who have been slaughtered, kidnapped, enslaved, and otherwise horrifically abused because of their religion, culture or race.
There can be no justification for violence – even for real victims, who do exist, the tendency is for violence to be mid-directed and strike innocent targets. No violence is justified.
Global warming alarmists are among the worst of the lot. First, their alleged grievance is fictional – there is no real global warming crisis / wilder weather crisis, so they are truly False Victims. Next, their “green solutions” have done more harm than good to humanity and the environment– enormously so. Some have turned to violence. Details in Sections 5-8 at:
HYPOTHESIS: RADICAL GREENS ARE THE GREAT KILLERS OF OUR AGE
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/04/14/hypothesis-radical-greens-are-the-great-killers-of-our-age/
Regards, Allan
typo:
mis-directed
As much as I do not like the idea of a military takeover, I sometimes think
that as the Father of Modern Turkey,, Kemal Attaaturk, said, prior to its
present ruler, that when the politicians have made a big mess of things, then
its the duty of the Army to take over, clean things up, and then hand
back the country to civilian government again
The film “Seven days in May” was very thought provoking.
MJE VK5ELL
or as Jefferson said:
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
This threat poses a serious challenge to the existing mitigation tactics, schemes and logistics as it’s potential perpetrators might have a serious technical, scientific and IT background and seamlessly dissolve in the usual flow of seasoned frequent flyers.
I’m just concerned for his voting rights.
Buzzfeed is aptly named. You need a good buzz before swallowing what they feed you.
Lifted right out of Wikipedia…
Ted also said leftism is “one of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of our world.” He said leftists were “mainly socialists, collectivists, ‘politically correct’ types, feminists, gay and disability activists, animal rights activists and the like.” He said, “a movement that exalts nature and opposes technology must take a resolutely anti-leftist stance and must avoid all collaboration with leftists.”
I remember the case. A serial killer, murdered 3 people, came close with a bunch of others.
The FBI spent a million bucks taking his cabin apart and moving it somewhere to search for minute bombing clues, which they found in abundance. Open and shut case. Dead to rights, the dude had a surefire date with “Old Sparky.”
Then Clinton and his henchman Janet Waco figured out the guy was a lefty, so they cut a plea bargain with him. 3 squares and room.
This is wrong.
He was declared by the court to be not competent to stand trial, or, for that matter to be executed. He said very clearly that he WANTED to stand trial, and risk execution.
Try: people who do not have the capacity to succeed, (or make enough of a name for themselves to satisfy their ego ) in the real world so they define, adopt and seek to impose an alternative world where they are the bigshots telling the real successful people why they are despicable failures.
I’m not sure Mike,
I was leftish myself, and I even participated in a protest for governnment to act for climate !!! Forgive my youth…
I think the leftist ideology is preventing people from being successful mostly, rather than the other way around. Leftist are afraid that anything they could do would benegative and they unknowingly, for the most part, end up on the side of evil anyway.
People are being preached to about an … “existential crisis”, but where is it?
The American Lung Association’s latest master work of science fiction describes a crisis in the state of the air we breathe, and yet the cover of it’s report has a picture of a family apparently enjoying the air of an outdoor recreation area. The only hint of doom in this photograph is the blood-red overcast. Even the visual is contradictory — a family enjoying the outdoors, and yet this picture of pleasure is colored red to suggest catastrophic warmth or the blood of suffering, I suppose. A sense of disaster, thus, is forced onto a scene where there is NO disaster!
This speaks to the fact that the so called “existential crisis” is like the photograph — an okay situation falsely colored in an exaggerated way, in order to create an emotional impact about a crisis that exists only in creative minds.
While I have touched on this sort of thing before, I wonder at which point ‘acted’ and ‘real’ become so blurred that those ‘on the brink’ will see this sort of thing as a script or manifesto to act out in the real world.
God forbid this would happen, but were it to do so, COULD this and other films like it, point a very accusatory finger at the common theme?
Yes, a long bow to be drawn for sure, but as a topic of discussion now, it may be a topic for litigation tomorrow.
The thin line between fiction and fact in a balanced society, may well be inflammatory in an unhinged one….
just which society we currently live in at the moment, is questionable…..
Crying FIRE in a crowded venue is illegal for very good reason, and just plain stupid for other reasons, and the loony extremists out there certainly don’t need encouragement.
Am I being a touch too sensitive?
Probably, but complacency can end up bighting you in the rear-end.
I also wonder how much prime-time TV shows influence the weak-minded and shape their outlook on society. Can’t help but think there might be a few twisted souls out there with a desire to commit a crime they saw on a cop show without making the mistakes that the villain on TV did, thereby evading the police.
I have always wondered that myself. Starting in the 70’s, there were several TV shows about a single mom raising her kids on her own. She struggled but it always turned out OK in the end. Feel good TV for sure. Did this implant the belief that it was noble to be a single mom and that life would work itself out for them? But reality has been a harsh lesson for those. Going forward, many TV shows become the blue print for life of far too many people. Now, back in the 50’s and 60’s the opposite was true. Too many shows with the perfect family, headed by the perfect mom and dad. The perfect house in the perfect neighborhood. That was equally destructive. So what’s to watch now? For me it is mostly NHL hockey from Oct to June. Otherwise it is “First 48”.
Just watch any recent episode of “Madam Secretary”, and you’ll see not much else than CAGW alarmism, and so many falsehoods. Even though it’s fiction, it deals with many real world issues. Gullible people could take the falsehoods as fact.
“Crying FIRE in a crowded venue is illegal for very good reason…”
This is an example often used by people arguing that ‘Free Speech’ is Not A Good Thing, and is flawed because it places Free Speech in isolation.
What people usually forget in this argument is that Freedom of Speech does not automatically remove Responsibility for your own Actions.
Yes, you are actually completely free to shout FIRE where ever you want, but you are also completely responsible for whatever happens as a direct result of your shouting. You are an adult. Adults are responsible for their own actions because it is assumed at a social and legal level that adults are capable of thinking things through properly.
This is the bit usually ignored by all those trying to argue/counter argue Freedom of Speech. Protestors blocking entire streets like to claim this is their Freedom of Speech moment and Righties can’t complain because they are all for FoS, and, if speaking were their only action then they would be correct.
Problem is their other actions include blocking public access and occasional violence.
Core point – Adults are responsible for their actions. That includes the words themselves (FIRE! in a crowded area) and the actions taken while saying said words.
Say what you like, but remember, you have to take ownership of it as well.
Yes Craig, you may be correct, to a point.
You may well shout fire in a crowded place and take the consequences, BUT you have no inalienable right to do so.
I agree that you CAN shout what you want, but not the ‘right’ to do so.
Free speech is one thing, but exercising it judicially, is another.
The ‘right’ to free speech which we would both agree upon as important and to be strongly defended, isn’t to be used in a manner that could/would DIRECTLY result in harm….hence the reason the Law in many countries is structured in the manner it is.
I’m not advocating that this film be banned, but with it ‘out there’ I would be keeping a wary eye on this sort of potentially inflammatory product in a sensitive period as seems to be occurring at the moment.
Here’s where your parsing fails, mr David:
could/would
That’s the subjunctive mood for discussing what is not and it translates directly to:
didn’t.
No damage, no claim.
The main logic fail, however, is context dropping. As any ethical matter can be resolved by the determination of ownership and damage, you should specify whose place. Otherwise any proposition you make is unreasonable.
If you are on your own property you certainly have the inalienable right to yell whatever you want to yell. If you are on my property, your rights may be abridged without resort to logical fallacy.
Beware: ‘public property’ is a self contradiction.
🙂 – Yes, TruthMatters, what you say is correct as far as I can follow it (my limitations) and I gave a quick and abridged ‘quote’ for a point I thought would be understood.
Calling FIRE in a crowed placed ANYWHERE when there is none, incites a level of panic – or at a minimum, attention or, if on my own property, then said attention may become the ire of the neighbours when found to be false.
My clumsy use of the “could/would” words was simply for two possible paths or outcomes, either of which could be a result of calling a false call to alarm.
MY context was that make enough noise and attention is gained – make enough incorrect (false) noise and the outcome is directed in a manner potentially harmful to those responding in good faith, to that call to action.
The ‘Courts’ DO find willful intent to be sufficient cause to allocate a guilty verdict, but treads that fine line between the ‘right’ to an action and the responsibilities for exercising that ‘right’.
Am I wrong? Possibly
Do I think I’m wrong – not at this point.
“Crying FIRE in a crowded venue is illegal for very good reason,”
But it isn’t, in particular if you smell smoke it is your civic duty to do that very thing. Those words are remarks in a SCOTUS judgement regarding enforcement of the Espionage Act of 1917 where expressions which in the circumstances were intended to result in a crime, and posed a “clear and present danger” of succeeding, could be punished. It’s not entirely clear that US vs Schenk would be decided the same if tried again today…. And Oliver Wendell Holmes later regretted the jusgement see his dissent in Abrams v. United States
https://youtu.be/X3Hg-Y7MugU
“Crying LOUDLY outside of a crowded theatre will also get you hurt.”
‘Avengers’ fans rough up man who ‘loudly’ spoiled the ending
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/avengers-fans-rough-up-man-who-loudly-spoiled-the-ending-report
Sigh!
You may well be correct Michael Ozanne, but the point I have made was perhaps a little too obtuse and insufficiently clear.
As I responded to TruthMatters above, my admittedly clumsy and curtailed point was that if you call FIRE in a crowed place, when there is none, then you will ‘legally’ and morally be held to account.
Suggest there is a bomb in your luggage at the security check points at an airport, then you run the understandable and real risk of arrest and prosecution for that indiscretion.
Yell that you are going to kill someone and you again stand a jolly good chance of finding yourself being held to account.
Make a point of principle while being arrested, might just see you be treated in a different manner than had you complied first, then entered a conversation.
Repeatedly promoting a falsehood, allows those most susceptible, to follow a course of action ultimately destructive to themselves AND others.
This is not a frivolous matter, as showed via a discussion I had just last night with a friend.
She stated a series of ‘facts’ all too well known to those of us here at WUWT – and did so in full confidence that they were irrefutable fact.
Where did she develop her understanding and belief?
From repeated and varied sources, all of which carry the sticker of authenticity.
They then become no better than an ‘urban legend’ and as such, so very difficult to correct or give an acceptable argument for a better take on the underlying subject.
Why then do people use Hollywood films to bolster the narrative for – in this case – climate change?
For me, its pure entertainment, but for others, it acts and reinforces their belief and understanding of the dialogue used to promote the AGW/CAGW theme.
This perspective is an extreme example of the Amity-Enmity complex of human behavior. Humans need one or more enemy groups. It’s in our nature, and having such outside threats brings internal group cohesiveness. If no outside threats are available (i.e. no threats from war, criminality, disease, want, etc.), some humans will invent a threat and vilify it with great vigor. So fear over ‘climate change will destroy Earth’ arises.
Humans don’t need an enemy. Politicians do.
“constant panic in the face of an inevitable future” a pretty good definition of PTSD Syndrome.
It use to be associated with combat troops who have witnessed some form of emotional trauma, images of which remain and/or re-occur disturbing everyday functioning. More recently, PTSD is associated with trauma real and imagined. Some people are traumatized by some imagined event that has little to do with themselves personally.
The armed forces are now administering tests prior soldier’s going into combat and observing if, based upon their testing, they can be predicted to develop PTSD. Surprisingly, about 1/3 of the tests are predictive. In civilian life, there are seriously depressed people who do acknowledge their mental health issues who go on to develop PTSD.
Maybe Alison Willmore is giving us a preview of the depressed being drawn out by figments of their own imagination. Adding to the trauma is Buzzfeed itself, publishing assertions of calamity just around the corner, and: “you better watch out!”
Would those who think there is no future please stop having children so those of us who think the world will still be standing in a generations time can get on with fixing what needs fixing without a constant background drone.
Phil’s Dad April 28, 2019 at 6:52 pm
Would those who think there is no future please stop having children
——————-
This leads to Idiocracy and brawndo
It’s the idiots that think there is no future having kids and instilling them with that same stupid notion that leads to Idiocracy and brawndo. Phil’s Dad suggestion is what helps avoid that fate.
“This leads to Idiocracy and brawndo”
Of course the opposite is true.
I’m totally for suicide bombers against global warming. Not so much if they want to commit homicide at the same time.
As for Ted Kaczinsky (or whatever) – just a homicide bomber – no support whatever.
Indeed. If the idiots want to remove themselves from the gene pool, as long as they aren’t trying to take others with them than I say let them go for it. It’s when they try to take out others that there’s a problem.
Eric Worrall needs to stop dragging up any, and all, the bilge that the internet offers.
Give me something I can use.
Preferably the location of the vacuum leak that makes my SUV run rough at idle. 🙂
Have you tried using a climate model to locate the leak? 😉
Go for a diesel SUV next time, no vacuum to worry about.
UK(us),
Have you tried using a propane torch (unlit) to ‘sniff out’ your vacuum leak? Start your engine. Open the valve on the propane torch but don’t light it. Slowly pass the propane gas coming out of the torch tip along the edges of the intake manifold and all vacuum hose connections to the carburetor or throttle body injector. When the propane gas gets ‘sucked in’ at the leak location, the engine rpm will increase notably.
If I knew where any of those parts were, I would be SO EXCITED about this diagnostic tip. How very often over the years I have regretted not taking an auto shop class… (Yeah, I know I could learn it now – I did just learn where my McPherson struts are, so maybe I’m not completely irredeemable.)
Please, people who Know How To Do Things, DO have children, and pass along your knowledge to them!
This is now starting to make sense.
The left’s love of Islam and willingness to forgive the endless acts of terror are because they share a common desire to blow up the west.
However, there is a better alternative for the lefties. Rather than to take out innocent people along the way, if you travel to a remote area and blow yourselves up in a safe place, you can escape the misery that you believe awaits and allow the rest of the world’s population to enjoy the warm beach weather in peace and tranquility.
I spent the weekend watching flat earth videos. Fascinating stuff. They go to extremes to believe their own story and make the most ludicrous reasons as to why the earth can not be flat. After watching many of these, I’m not surprised at CAGW refuses to die. They truly will not believe anything but what they want to believe, the flat earthers have proven that beyond a shadow of a doubt.
The best set of vids that I watched was posted by SciManDan, so I’ll happily give him a plug.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRtsZ5Iak9wSLsQLQ3XOAeA/videos
Well it is Buzzfeed.
MSNBC and CNN political reporting looks honest and sane compared to a typical Buzzfeed story.
Burn down the village to save it.
Quoting Janet Reno about the Branch Davidians, of course.
Terry Nichols is in the same cell block as Ted Kaczynski. Small world.
I think Mayor Goode may have said something similar in 1985. Something like bomb the rowhouse to save the neighborhood. (ok, that was probably in poor taste, mea culpa).
Cultists gotta’ do what cults do.
Gang Green effects the body politic(civil society) in the same manner gangrene acts on a living body.
I am starting to wonder; Is madness contageous?
The Cult of Calamitous Climate is most strange,for good news,makes them ever more strident.
Now as the planet fails to warm as they predicted,catastrophe has failed to arrive..Are they relieved?
Are they happy?
Apparently not.
Instead the likes of Buzzfeed want to encourage the delusional and easily gulled to blow themselves up,taking as many of us “unenlightened ones” with them as they can.?
Shades of “State of Fear”, Michael Crichton’s prescient novel about environmental extremists.
Alison at Buzz makes one major rookie mistake with this article.
Namely no one actually went and saw First Reformed.
It only received theatre release in the US and apparently as of Feb 2019 had earning figures of $3.8 million worldwide. The film exists at the ends of the cinematic bell curves and only goes to show that if you sample enough movies you will find an example of everything. Sharknado, for example, not only exists but exists as a franchise but does in no way imply we should be spending extended time discussing the social-political implications of slicing your way out of a massive shark with a chainsaw.
A better example, and one that Alison the Buzz is for obvious reasons ignoring, would be the slightly better known Marvel movie, Infinity War. Here, a well meaning ‘man’, having observed first hand the destructing caused by uncontrolled population growth, sets out to solve the problem by removing from existence half of every creature in the universe (or words to that effect).
Now I think I can be safe in saying that a few more people saw this movie compared to Alison’s example, and hence we have a reasonable sample of the population with which to judge public opinion.
Hence, did the movie going public relate to the moral and ethical problems our character faced and ultimately sympathise with the somewhat extreme actions taken… OR… see him as a villain who destroyed everything that held meaning and must be Avenged?
Learn to code, Alison, or start watching movies the public actually relate to.
I must admit, I’ve wondered how the far-left view Thanos. Surely he’s a hero in their books, doing what they themselves can only dream of doing. Did they not wonder why all the heroes were fighting against him and his plans?
It wasn’t a good secret. Just sayin…..
These apocalyptic minded pests have always been with us and their list of faceplants is endless. That said they are far from harmless. This moment of insanity will pass but it’s up to us to shorten it’s hold on the popular imagination. Our children and Grandchildren will thank us.
Hang on: wasn’t that supposed to be the evil, violent ravings of ultra-right neo-nazi gun-totin’ rednecks? Ah, but it’s OK if it’s the left: silly me.