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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I recall the optimism of the 1950s when there was a feeling that science would produce unlimited cheap energy, make lives better for all and eventually lead to global population stability and a benign rather than authoritarian world government.
Then the authoritarian left exaggerated the risks of nuclear power so as to keep energy expensive and took over the UN so as to build global authoritarianism anew.
The process continues via the use of apocalyptic scenarios in order to destroy confidence and optimism so that authoritarianism can prevail.
I’d like to see mainstream movies describing the venality of those who spread such nonsensical fears rather than the media using its power to give succour to those who would destroy us and thereby acting as useful fools.
Stephen Wilde April 28, 2019 at 11:55 pm
if nuclear power generation is so cheap how come the new build is going to cost twice the price of current mixed generation £92/MWh index linked cf £65/MWh.
Or are you suggesting that nuclear power regulations should be relaxed (no more inspections that have kept some -4- offline for over a year due to “microcracks of 1mm – that after 2 years become 2mm, no more backup generators, simply store spent fuel in ponds, etc.)
That’s been answered for you many times before, and no doubt you will ignore this one as well.
1) Constant delays during construction due to lawsuits by eco-nuts.
2) Constant redesigns caused by ever changing regulations due to lawsuits by eco-nuts.
if nuclear power generation is so cheap how come the new build is going to cost twice the price of current mixed generation
You note that the new build will cost twice as much but you don’t think as to why that is.
A few weeks ago this happened in real life.
An eco-activist shot up a mosque in New Zealand to promote the need for lower population.
No. A right wing extremist murdered 50 innocent lives in NZ recently. He was trying to
promote white supremacist viewpoints.
It seems that both of these things are true, based on the evil nutjob’s manifesto.
He was a right-wing environmentalist. Did you not read his manifesto?
He equated climate change and population growth. And he set about reducing population amongst those races that he saw as breeding too fast.
He is a self-proclaimed eco-fascist.
Why doubt his claims into his own beliefs? He actually acted on them.
He is a Green.
Fascism is a form of socialism, which is a left wing philosophy.
And why do you suggest that “white supremacist viewpoints” are not Green?
Raising energy prices, banning DDT and diverting action from poverty relief to climate change are all Green policies. And they are all targeted at killing poor people in the Third World.
Do you think it’s a coincidence that the victims are generally not white?
And here we go again. The belief that racism is a trait of the right. In my experience, by far the biggest racists have all been left wingers.
That is a non-sequitur. Which of the policies I mentioned was right wing and why?
Of course, conserving the status quo and supporting tradition does tend to permit a bias towards racism. But that was not what I claimed here.
Racism is certainly not inherent in right wing policies. There are other reasons to not be right wing than the strawman that all right wingers are necessarily racist. They are not.
Perhaps you have a guilty conscience?
First you make the erroneous claim that the killer is right wing, then you point out that his victims are non-white.
I leave as an excercise for the reader to draw conclusions.
PS: Your “Of Course” is as ridiculous as the rest of your nonsensical rants.
PS: The belief that conservatives are wedded to the status quo is just another myth that liberals tell each other to explain why conservatives reject the nonsense liberals keep trying to peddle.
Conservative: The Definition according to Websters.
” tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions”
Arguments may seem non-sensical if you do not speak the language but that does not mean they are non-sensical.
Communication needs a sender and receiver. There is nothing wrong with the message I sent.
Now kids, embrace the power of “and.” Actually, the eco crap isn’t white supremacist and that guy had a lot of contempt for everything. Which is altogether consistent with Malthusian eco crap.
And last week, muslim extremists killed a bunch of Christians to take revenge for those killings.
Compare 2019 to 1019. One thousand years ago.
You live in a hut with a dirt floor. No running water. No sewage system. No electricity. No idea what causes disease. You can’t read or write. You work 16 hours a day and in winter you often go many days without food. The land you work is not yours and you cannot leave the land. Many crimes are punishable by death and miscarriages of justice are common.
I expect the average person from 1019 looking at our world would be amazed that we are the least bit worried about climate change. I expect the average person from 1019 would welcome trading their problems for ours.
Yet I can’t imagine anyone in 1029 saying the uncertain future is a good reason to not have children. In 1019 you had lots of children because 1/2 of them died before age 5. You needed to have lots of spares just in case.
Don’t underestimate old Romans. That would be two thousand years ago, not one.
“I guess a rattle snake aint risponsible fer bein’ a rattlesnake, and ah ken iven feel sorry foh dat snake, but Ah still puts ma heel on um if i ketches ’em around mah chillun, jess the same”
The great thing about being simple minded is that the BS arguments don’t baffle your brain…
Empathy for pure unadulterated evil. Whatever next? Worship the devil?
You could be on to something.
Remember Faust?
It get’s to even otherwise respectable notables. See below….
You know that some people do that, right?
Wouldn’t bombs contribute to “Global Warming” by releasing heat and CO2 when exploding? Green logic?
I find it extremely disturbing that anyone would go to the trouble of dragging some bad movie out of its forgotten dusty corner, and publicize it as if it’s new and we should all look at it. (It isn’t and we shouldn’t.) If this starts her essay with “we don’t need to be….”, then why is she condoning it by reviewing it?
People who are going to commit suicide will do it for any reason at all. We saw that last year with that lost soul in New York City’s Central Park. They don’t need an excuse but they will look for one, and now we have a movie about it? What kind of sick wacko IS this Allison Willmore that she even reviews a movie that condones it, by trying to explain it away?
Buzzfeed is listed as a friendly outlet by Britain’s Integrity Initiative. Oddly enough Ms May’s new Internet Harms Bill would shut down such reports as inciting harm.
Difficult enough to figure out what’s going on in Westminster these days….
Bill Joy, Sun co-founder defended Kaczynski in Wired, 2000,
“Kaczynski’s actions were murderous and, in my view, criminally insane. He is clearly a Luddite, but simply saying this does not dismiss his argument; as difficult as it is for me to acknowledge, I saw some merit in the reasoning in this single passage. I felt compelled to confront it. . . . “I started showing my friends the Kaczynski quote from The Age of Spiritual Machines . . . [and from] Hans Moravec’s book Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind.[4] Moravec is one of the leaders in robotics research, and was a founder of the largest robotics research program, at Carnegie Mellon University. Robot gave me more material to try out on my friends–material surprisingly supportive of Kaczynski’s argument.”
Note the Faustian sympathy there – it is based on maths and information theory.
SNIP Should I start feeling empathetic towards Anders Behring Breivik next? How da SNIP (profanity, no matter how misspelled , is still not allowed – Mod we should feeling empathetic towards mindless cruel murderers, who destroy the village ‘to save it’?
The green-left. Always planning to start the thirties again. Always calling out others for hate speech.
My apologies. As we talk about persons who m***** people, I thought some expletives fit in. I’m Nordic and I speak English non-natively, so my emotional response to mother******s and similar is low compared to those Americans who have Italian background, let alone arab.
I will change my habbit. Thanks for your patience. And hugs.
If you want to control people one of the things you need to do is teach people to disregard the opinions of old people. All too often it is the old who have ‘seen it all before’. I remember the sixties and the seventies: “Three billion people! What will we ever do?”
I think the disease threats that will become the most lethal and bring devastation across large swaths of humanity will be either prions or viruses. Or both. And in particular, will cross the blood/brain barrier before you even know you are sick.
Anthony, please note Britain is preparing new internet regulations with consultation ’till June. I wonder if even mentioning this would fall under their purview?
Buzzfeed apparently is exempt from from any kind of integrity initiatives /sarc
A lot of people are really concerned that full censorship is on the way.
There is something in the liberal psyche that the desire to kill those who disagree with them is never far from the surface.
Like the 10:10 video. How warped does a group of people have to be to make and release that video without someone in the group ever at any point in the process standing up and saying “hang on, this is probably a pretty bad idea, is this really the message we want to send?”
They stood up and said yes, this is the message we want to send. Like so many supporters of totalitarian systems.
Hate speech, not racist but hate speech anyway.
Another science fiction wannabe author using colorful inflammatory words that are improper where the author uses them.
“desperation noun
des·per·a·tion | \ ˌde-spə-ˈrā-shən \
Definition of desperation
1 : loss of hope and surrender to despair
2 : a state of hopelessness leading to rashness”
Alison tries desperately to paint the bomber as acting under desperation caused by “climate change”.
Except, “climate change” dangers are all surmised or theorized.
There are no current signs of dangerous or catastrophic climate change caused by anthropogenic CO₂ emissions.
Nor are there any proven historical examples of “climate change” as defined by alarmists.
There are, instead, many examples of benefits from higher CO₂ levels.
Alison’s deadly anti-hero may be desperate, but that desperation is driven by pure delusion, not reality.
“will begin” and “This isn’t some distant future” are polar opposites statements that contradict each other in the activist’s sentence. Sloppy thinking for anyone, though not unusual in many activists.
The modeled or predicted dooms are “some distant future”; and have been for over thirty years. “will begin”, is emotional opinion; a belief, or worse a desire for the world to suffer.
Starved of the deadly justice due to civilization advancement, the activist “Michael” kills himself. Which somehow convinces the preacher “Ernst” to fall into Michael’s delusional claim; causing the preacher to strap on the vest and bring climate change punishment to himself and many innocents.
Innocents they were, innocents they are and innocents they remain while gullible deluded fools kill them because their deity CO₂ should will dooms upon them. Thus the innocents are murdered upon the CO₂ altar for alarmist infamous glory.
The word Alison Willmore should have used instead of desperation is delusional.
Here is my problem. Global warmists can do and say everything they want because they are good people and they’re simply trying to save the earth. If I disagree, or say “yes, but” or offer evidence to the contrary, I lose my friends and alienate family members because I am then an evil agent of Big Oil. So I keep my mouth shut among people I know and only argue with strangers on Facebook.
Exactly, what is your problem?
– It certainly isn’t honesty.
– Nor is it a willingness to defend truth.
– You apparently prefer to mingle with people who despise science and truth while impugning and ridiculing anyone who disagrees. One would expect family members to know that “evil agent of Big Oil” are absurd accusations.
It appears your problem is an unwillingness to push back against peer pressure, in fear that friends and family will lose their good opinion of yourself. And as many others have discovered, those given to alarmism tend to be especially vicious in their vituperous personal attacks.
That is not solvable by any of us. Some very famous knowledgeable scientists have failed to escape the situation in which you find yourself.
Good luck with your problem and may it somehow amicably solve itself.
I can see accordionsrule’s dilemma. Not so much with friends, because if your friends view you that way because of a difference of opinion then they were never your friends to begin with. But rather with family. While you can choose your friends (so find better friends and dump the crazy ones), you can’t choose who you are related to. And if you are living with relatives that have such diametrically opposed views that can make life rather difficult. The simplest solution for peace on the home front sometimes is to avoid the topics that cause the most friction. Relatives you aren’t living with/seeing on a regular basis on the other hand can just lump it if they’re that unhinged.
Being gulled by the Fear Meme is an intelligence test.
Climate Change is a wonderful version of The Emperors New Clothes, as it is never defined.
Check for yourself,ask any fearmonger to define this CC of which they speak.
The beauty of allowing this popular meme to run unchecked is that so many self expose their stupidity.
“I believe in science” being one of those glorious moronic statements.
“Unprecedented” Since yesterday, being another.
The bureaucrat signature of CAGW/CC is unmistakable.
Every sanctified solution does nothing to solve the claimed problem.
But every one of these “solutions” expands bureaucratic power and theft by government.
A Carbon Tax.
Taxing air.
The ultimate dream of ever parasite infesting the “state”.
As I said an Intelligence Test,proving that most of the fools and bandits who seek to “lead us” should never be allowed to rise above street sweeper or dog catcher, in elected office.
The Calamitous Climate Meme has hit a crescendo with this springs floods, do these “experts” ever wonder what a Flood Plain might be?
Spring Floods..unprecedented!
If we see weather conditions like those that lead up to the 1926-27 Mississippi Flood, will that too be “evidence of climate change”?
Is mass hysteria catching?
Some wise man once said the enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy. That’s exactly what we see in this article and it reminds me of college discussions about overpopulation in the 1980s that caused some men to commit to never having children. In each decade it has been a different shame-inducing issue. Leftists want people to feel hopeless, helpless, and guilty of the worst atrocities just for breathing. We understand the logic of the characters choice? No, it sounds like the minister lost faith and hope, and decided to join the forces of evil. We also understand he had cruddy probabilistic reasoning – pick sure destruction and murder over only the potential for destruction. What we see is death cult.
Every single one of those eco-murders should be charged against Micheal Mann, Gavin Schmidt, Phil Jones, Kevin Trenberth, and all the rest of the AGW purveyors, who cynically stoked the feelings of the foolish and mindless into rage and desperation. They should all be charged and imprisoned for inciting murder.