Green Billionaires Press Hollywood to Promote Armageddon Climate Messages in Movies
Green billionaires are pouring money into discreet campaigns to persuade Hollywood writers to catastrophise the climate in future film and television scripts. One of their main vehicles is Good Energy, which tells writers that showing anger, depression, grief or other emotion in relation to the climate crisis, “can only make characters more relatable”. Los Angeles-based Good Energy is funded by numerous billionaire foundations including Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Sierra Club and the Climate Emergency Fund; the latter operation is part-funded by Aileen Getty and is one of the paymasters of the Just Stop Oil pests.
Good Energy aims to weave climate alarm into all types of film-making, “especially” if it is not about climate. With the support of Bloomberg, it recently published ‘Good Energy – A Playbook for Screenwriting in the Age of Climate Change’. It claims the Playbook is “now the industry’s go-to guide to incorporating climate into any storyline or genre”. As with almost all green campaigning groups, Good Energy would not exist without the support of billionaire funding. These operations seek a supra-national collectivist Net Zero solution to a claimed climate emergency. Good Energy acknowledges it would not exist without this funding, adding, “as collaborators and champions, each has provided a unique contribution for which we are endlessly grateful”.
Announcing the launch of the ‘Playbook’, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the tax-efficient ‘charity’ channel for distributing the wealth of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, noted that “accurate and relatable storytelling about climate impacts and solutions can grow public support and motivate decision makers”. As regular readers of the Daily Sceptic will recall, billionaire foundations are grooming populations around the world by funding a variety of press, political and academic operations. Most significant non-profit bodies seeking to stop the use of hydrocarbons are funded from these sources. Few green campaigns arise from ‘grass roots’ these days. Put to the vote, for instance, the Green Party in the U.K. loses most of its election seat deposits.
Since this is La La Land, Good Energy has some relevant advice for writers to normalise climate friendly actions. “Let’s reimagine what it looks like for a character to eat a plant-rich diet (Michelin Green Star restaurant, yes!), attend a protest or upcycle vintage clothes. And if your story requires a yacht, why not make it solar powered.” That last idea might appeal to super-yacht lover Leonardo DiCaprio, but private planes, the preferred method of transportation for many high-end Hollywood stars, might be a problem. Hypocrisy a problem with all this? Not according to the Playbook, which quotes climate activist Bill McKibben that “hypocrisy is the price of admission in this battle”. For plebs, gammons, fly-overs and deplorables, this of course translates as “you do what you are told and radically change your lives – we don’t give a flying flamingo”.
Needles so say, a mere climate crisis is not enough for über-woke luvvies. It is not separate from other critical social issues like racism, sexism, economic injustice and war. The Playbook notes that “indigenous people are the first climate scientists, and indigenous people are leading us through this climate crisis”. Climate can be a “generative lens with which to view any subject or character”, the Playbook helpfully notes. For scripted entertainment, observes Good Energy, “the emotional truth is as important as the literal truth”.
Good Energy was started in 2019 and its influence and services seem to be growing within the U.S. west coast film industry. Rolling Stone recently profiled the operation in an article titled ‘How Hollywood is Crafting A New Climate Change Narrative’. One of Good Energy’s “standout” projects last year was a collaboration with Scott Z Burns on the series Extrapolations for Apple TV+. This was said to be the first mainstream show centred entirely around climate. It starred Meryl Streep in eight interconnected stories over 33 years and was said to explore how the planet’s changing climate will affect family, work, faith and survival. Rolling Stone reports that the operation is “dedicated” to ensuring that within three years, 50% of contemporary TV and film acknowledges climate change.
It is unsurprising that the power of film and TV to influence large audiences is being captured to promote a political message. During the 2021 COP 26 meeting in Glasgow, seven soap opera programmes in the U.K. including Coronation Street and Eastenders joined forces to highlight climate change. Most of the plot lines were clumsily inserted into existing storylines and in an era of declining audiences, the experiment does not appear to have been repeated.
Nevertheless, elite billionaires are pulling out all the stops to insert climate Armageddon messaging into all forms of media. As I write, the BBC climate disinformation reporter Marco Silva is possibly learning how to improvise on the theme of a mango during his six-month sabbatical at the Oxford Climate Journalism Network. Past funders of the course include the European Climate Fund, which is supported by Extinction Rebellion funder Sir Christopher Hohn. Previous course attendees were told to pick a fruit such as a mango and discuss why it wasn’t as tasty as the year before due to the impact of climate change.
Truly, La La Land meeting the make-believe world of BBC Verify.
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Apple kills its electric car after 10 years development
Apple has canceled its plans to release an electric car with self-driving abilities, a secretive product that had been in the works for nearly a decade.
The company told employees in an internal meeting on Tuesday that it had scrapped the project and that members of the group would be shifted to different roles, including in Apple’s artificial intelligence division, according to a person briefed on the discussion, who requested anonymity because the announcement was not public.
As part of the restructuring, Kevin Lynch, an executive who had been involved in the car project, will report to John Giannandrea, the company’s head of artificial intelligence strategy, the person said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/27/technology/apple-ends-electric-car-plan.html
***************************************************Nearly half of young US voters won't pay more than $10 per month to fight climate change
Nearly half of all young voters are not willing to pay more than $10 a month to fight climate change, despite Joe Biden claiming it's an 'existential threat' and making it the center of his re-election campaign.
Less than half (45%) of the youngest crop of voters aged 18-34 would be willing to spend $10 or less per month to combat climate change, according to a recent survey by CRC Research for 85 Fund obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com.
And one out of five (20%) in the same age bracket responded that they would not pay anything at all, according to the poll results.
The results were similar among voters aged 25-34, which may be a wake-up call for President Joe Biden who continues to call climate change the most pressing threat facing America today.
The findings are surprising considering younger voters site climate change as a top political issue and it is expected to be a key motivator heading into the 2024 elections.
President Biden is putting climate change at the center of his re-election campaign - calling it the 'last existential threat' to a small group of donors at a California fundraiser last week.
The Biden administration has worked to position itself as a champion of climate initiatives since day one - which generally appeals to younger voters.
But the CRC Research poll shows that although younger voters may be passionate about the topic, they don't want to spend their own money to fix it.
'Despite claims they are leading the charge on climate change, it turns out young people are actually just sheep in wolves clothing. They demand 'climate action', but demand someone else pay for it,' said Steve Milloy, a lawyer who briefly served at Donald Trump's Environmental Protection Agency.
'They disguise their rank hypocrisy by posturing as 'climate activists.' Their refusal to put their money where their mouths are just underscores how unserious they are as citizens and voters,' he told DailyMail.com
The CRC Research survey also found that 26 percent of 25 to 35 year old voters would not be willing to pay anything to combat climate change.
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Australia: Victorian blackout has lessons
When the lights went out last week for 500,000 Victorians, it wasn’t all bad. Most still had natural gas to turn to for cooking and some for hot water.
But gas connections to new homes are banned in Victoria from 2024. Clearly, the great fortune of being part of the Lucky Country, blessed with dual energy supplies, was too great a first-world burden for the socialist-left Allan state government to handle.
It means that for these new homes, the next time the lights go out, everything goes out.
However, Victoria’s diabolic blackout might be the best double-edged sword the state’s future could have ordered.
What happened last week may have been the first time many youngsters couldn’t charge their mobile phones, laptops, or other electronic gadgetry. Their lives and their lifelines also went flat.
Until then, they had been removed from reality. Until then, it was someone else’s problem…
Only now might they think about the importance of the essential service of electricity, and better still, the importance of cheap and reliable energy. One day they will have to pay the bills.
And so it is that there may be more power in a flat phone battery than we think.
Only now might the Net Zero zealots begin thinking about the real world, just as theirs shatters into texting and tweeting oblivion.
The blackouts, with the promise of more to come, might just be the real-life lesson in understanding the old saying that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.
Schooled in Net Zero nonsense, the younger generations and their educators have largely applauded the direction of phasing out coal and pursuing a renewables nirvana.
With eyes wide shut, they believe they are saving the world one poppycock plan at a time. They have skipped school and rallied for the cause. They have spent school hours making placards and writing letters to Ministers. Some have voted for the cause and more will follow.
Little might they think that their increasingly battery-led lifestyle, pumped up by power, is not the life that their childhood counterparts in the Congo are living.
Little might they think of the trees being pulled down in order to put up wind farms, or the interruption to whale migration at sea. Little might they think about what a romantic sunset could look like in years to come with industrial love on the horizon.
Little might they think of the increasing plethora of coal-driven power, mining, and industrial operations elsewhere in the world, while Australia’s decision-makers pull the plug on ours.
They are in the dark more than they might want to realise.
For first-time power blackout sufferers, it won’t be the temporary death of their fridge or freezer worrying them. These days, most order-in a solution to their food problems or go to a local supermarket – backed up by diesel generators – to get a tub of ice cream on demand.
No, it is only the absence of mobile phones, iPads, and the like that might make the younger generations understand what nobody else is telling them: reliable energy is really important.
When they can recharge their phones – and their lives – they should google the following: nuclear energy, reliable energy, low-cost energy, and underground powerlines.
Then they should google future job prospects in Australia.
But it’s a bit hard to find the buttons in the dark.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/02/switching-on-reality
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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