A Few Things Ill Considered

1010.org misses the mark, Denialosphere jumps many sharks

Posted by coby on October 5, 2010
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A few days ago, an environmental organization from England released what can charitably be called an appaling video in support of their campaign to reduce carbon emission 10% per year starting now, in 2010. The group is called 10:10 and the page originally containing the video, now containing an apology, is here. It was removed very quickly following very negative reactions from across the spectrum of environmental ideologies.


The video is a very graphic depiction of various people chosing not to go along with the 1010 campaign being blown to bits, replete with blood and gore spattered on bystanders and the casual indifference of the executioners. I won’t embed it here but it is still available all over the place on YouTube (eg. here).

As I said, I find it appalling, though it is clearly intended to be funny, ala Monty Python. No one could possibly think that this group of environmental activists actually wants to murder school children, right? Right??

Enter your not so friendly neighbourhood Denialosphere, trying to be appalled, but actually being kind of funny!

This isn’t, of course, the first time green propagandists have inadvertently revealed the murderous misanthropy which lurks behind their cloak of ecological righteousness.

Eco-Fascists in England Want You Dead Unless You Agree With Them

I’m seeing other people branding this ad campaign “Epic Fail”. I’d rather call it a Freudian Slip.

With No Pressure, the environmental movement has revealed the snarling, wicked, homicidal misanthropy beneath its cloak of gentle, bunny-hugging righteousness.

forget about eco-gulags for deniers — it might be necessary to just blow them up, kids and all. … here’s some salacious eco porn that Al Gore and the incredibly insane White House Science Czar might enjoy watching … I’d be able to laugh off that video as an unfunny Monty Python-esque attempt at dark humor if I didn’t know so much about the visions and goals of the people peddling this particular scam.

it was the choice of the 10:10 movement to openly promote genocide. They are not just promoting it: much like in the case of The Fate of the World PC game, they are planning it. They are genuinely planning ways how to reduce the global CO2 emissions by 10% a year. And indeed, genocide similar to what they present in the video (or in the game) is the only plausible way how something of the sort may be achieved.

10:10 produced a star studded sicko fantasy of what their real Christmas gift wish is for the world. When you can’t convince people with reason, mark anyone who disagrees, blow up their children.

Their true nature is so on display… softly, softly, quietly under the guise of “nice”: trick them, decieve them, say “No Pressure”, and then be judge, jury and executioner in gratuitous orgasmic revenge….Spot the difference with green terrorism and Islamic Extremists. At least the jihadi’s are not pretending to hide their greedy egotistical self-interest by pretending to “care” about the planet.

The enemy, in this Eco-jihad video, is revealing its true face. And above is that face – Richard Curtis producer of the film and director Dougal Wilson, with the 10:10 gang. The scene looks normal and the Greenshirts look human, but they are not. This is the face of evil.

As I said here:

The two possible explanations for [this video] that pop to my mind are:

1. Environmentalists are malignantly dangerous totalitarian eco-fascists who want to murder you and your children if you stand in the way of their greedy egotistical self-interest, or
2. Some environmentalists have terrible PR skills and a lousy sense of humour.

Hard to know where reality lies, isn’t it?

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Comments

  1. #1 Chris S.
    October 5, 2010

    Is it not just a pastiche of the denialosphere’s views on “eco-nazis”? Poorly done I grant you but I guarantee that once the initial backlash is spent there will be a lot more people signed up to 10:10 than would have been the case with another wishy washy “no pressure” advertisement.

    Good to see my team is on board (and better footballers than actors), though David G. gave me too many good memories to want him blown up, whatever the cause…

  2. #2 Christian
    October 5, 2010

    An interesting case that was also debated on ScienceBlogs.de over the last few days. No doubt that the whole thing is nothing more than a terrible PR stunt, still, the question is how a similar video made by a denialist group in which e.g. climate scientists are being executed would be received by the scientific blogosphere. So even though we find the silly claims of planned mass murder well, silly, we still have an obligation to clearly condemn this campaign, if only in order to not make this kind of “funny PR” acceptable in the climate discussion…

  3. #3 Mary
    October 5, 2010

    Actually, no:

    Poorly done I grant you but I guarantee that once the initial backlash is spent there will be a lot more people signed up to 10:10 than would have been the case with another wishy washy “no pressure” advertisement.

    This ill-conceived stunt has people fleeing this, including the charities and corporate sponsors. These groups, and government funding, are going to be harder to come by in the future because of this. Bill McKibben had to distance himself from it very far.

    The damage is much wider than a lot of people want to tell themselves.

  4. #4 muteKi
    October 5, 2010

    Maybe I’m just psychotic, but I thought the video was hilarious, honestly.

  5. #5 skip
    October 5, 2010

    http://vermontloonwatch.wordpress.com/

    Your link made me do some logon/enrollment bullshit, Coby, so I found it on this quasi-Tea Party screed site if anyone prefers it.

    Actually, mute, I could forgive it for being vile if it really was funny, which it really isn’t to my American, non-Monty Python taste.

    Its so dumb, so un-funny, so obnoxious, that it looks like it was planted by anti-science deniers to discredit calls for action on climate change.

    We can’t disavow these clowns enough, even if we agree in principle with carbon emission reduction.

    60s radicals made the same mistake in allowing progressive action such as rational foreign/military policy and social justice to be associated with the image of lawless fringe hippies and crackpot revolutionaries.

    Christ, this is all we need . . .

  6. #6 NL
    October 5, 2010

    While some of those comments you cited are obviously over-the-top, that doesn’t mean that you should be able to engage in lousy argumentation against it. Here’s what you’re doing in this post:

    1. List the most crazy reactions about the 10:10 video that you can find

    2. Propose that there are only TWO explanations (no further analysis required!) for the stupidity of the “No Pressure” video: the first being the crazy explanation that environmentalists want to murder nonbelievers (and obviously this is what any skeptic would think, you prefaced it with those quotes!); the second is the most neuter, missing-the-point explanation you can think up.

    3. Sit back and hope nobody notices that there are rarely really only two extremely polar explanations for anything like this.

    Personally, I’m going with explanation 1.5, which is this:

    While the people at 10:10 obviously aren’t suggesting that we kill everyone not on board with the carbon-reducing agenda, and while they DO have lousy PR skills and a poor sense of humor (and a stunning lack of foresight in not knowing this would back-fire), there IS a disturbing strain in the environmental crowd that does harbor somewhat extremist thoughts. It’s usually those with the least amount of knowledge on the subject that buy into de-populization and the most catastrophic warming scenarios (see e.g., James Lee) and those who want progress on environmental issues shouldn’t do anything that would be seen as encouraging or aligning themselves with extremist behavior. It’s irresponsible strategically, and the fact that the people over at 10:10 couldn’t realize this is truly disturbing.

  7. #7 Jack Savage
    October 5, 2010

    NL has nailed it.

    The mystery is… what were they thinking of? How did it get past the first group of people (not involved with the making of it) they showed it to?
    A complete puzzle. A case of bizarre cult group-think.
    As an Englishman, I can assure you it is just not funny.

  8. #8 mandas
    October 5, 2010

    “…..there IS a disturbing strain in the environmental crowd that does harbor somewhat extremist thoughts. It’s usually those with the least amount of knowledge on the subject ….”

    Yes NL, there are disturbing strains in every movement – environmentalist, animal rights, tea party, etc etc. But I can’t agree with you about the ‘its usually those with the least amount of knowledge on the subject’. Knowledge of the subject has nothing to do with it. It is just the personalities of those concerned, and it may be those who know more who want to take the most drastic action.

    All that being said though, I will go back to my earlier point about this being a British ad based on a well established British comedy genre, and is much to do about nothing. The fact that people are reacting to it says more about the people reacting than it does about the people who produced the ad in the first place.

  9. #9 g724
    October 5, 2010

    What 10:10 just did was forfeit all legitimacy by handing a huge one to denialists on a silver platter. The organization deserves to go out of business and die an ignominious death, and the people responsible for that video need to be banned from ever working in a sustainability-related nonprofit, for the rest of their lives.

    There is truly no excuse whatsoever for what they did. If they thought they could be Monty Python, then I think I can be Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking. But at least I have the common sense to not put insane rants on TV.

    Speaking as an American who is ferocious about climate & conservation, and whose electricity consumption is less than 1/2 of average, gasoline consumption is about 1/3 of average, and solid waste output is about 1/5 of average.

    Anyone with half a brain who works for 10:10 should resign angrily and publish their resignation letter. And anyone who funds them should yank their funding immediately. There are plenty of effective groups out there doing more to stop the climate catastrophe, who can use the help instead.

  10. #10 mandas
    October 5, 2010

    “….The organization deserves to go out of business and die an ignominious death, and the people responsible for that video need to be banned from ever working in a sustainability-related nonprofit, for the rest of their lives….”

    Way to over-react there g724.

  11. #11 Nick
    October 5, 2010

    Next thing you know,some religious cult will be using an image of a dying man as some kind of sick stunt…oh,wait.

  12. #12 Doug Bostrom
    October 5, 2010

    Meanwhile Steven Goddard is off in his own special place, slyly likening teachers to pedophiles.

    Actually his blog is a bit of a freak show all in all.

  13. #13 Nick
    October 6, 2010

    Galileo Goddard’s blog is truly awful,desperately bitter,dull and foolish.He seems to post some half-assed idea every five minutes.

  14. #14 Laurent Weppe
    October 6, 2010

    “No one could possibly think that this group of environmental activists actually wants to murder school children”

    Well, try to show the video to someone who does not speak english and does not understand what it is about (so no “ideological bias” will come to affect their reaction), they will either ask if this is a trailer for the next gore movie or ask who’s the sociopathic sicko who made such a video.

    To say it “missed the mark” is more than charitable, notwithstanding whatever faked outrage comes from the climate denialists.

    If they thought they could be Monty Python, then I think I can be Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking

    Actually it would have been really easy to make it a succesfull Pythonesque attempt: start with a narrator describing the red button by saying something like “This device allow people to directly experience the future they wish to see happening”. What baffles me is that it would not have been that hard to turn this creepy ad into an over the top hyperbole

  15. #15 Ian Kemmish
    October 6, 2010

    Lousy PR skills? This time last week nobody who didn’t read the Guardian had any idea who 10:10 was. This week, I’d wager they have more column inches than any other environmental organisation on the planet. Does that seem lousy to you?

    For the sake of completeness, I’ll add that I was initially mildly interested in them. However, in about the second or third week of the Guardian’s campaign about them, some of the op-ed material they were contributing revealed that a significant number of them were the kind of people who have only just “discovered” compact fluorescent light bulbs. Sure, it’s easy to save 10% in a year if you’ve been wasting energy for the past twenty – but I don’t think 10:10 have anything at all to say to the rest of us.

  16. #16 mandas
    October 6, 2010

    An environmental organisation produces a Monty Python like advertisement and the deniersphere screams about facism and murdering children.

    Meanwhile, climate scientists receive real hate-mail and real death threats, and there is stony silence. Can anyone spell “fucking hypocrites”?

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/05/hate-mail-climategate

  17. #17 skip
    October 6, 2010

    I can, but that’s not the point, Mandas, much as I respect you and your contribution to this forum (yap yap).

    If we’re claiming our position is based on science we have to hold ourselves and anyone that claims our side to a higher standard than our buffoonish rivals. Thus these 10.10 goofballs need to be censured.

    My two cents . . .

  18. #18 mandas
    October 6, 2010

    skip

    I thought the roles had been reversed and I was now the lapdog. Oh well…

    I will stick to my original position. My opinion (for what it is worth) is this is a lot to do about nothing. Just because a few people found the ads in poor taste or offensive does not mean they were. Taste etc is subjective. This is not about science, it is about the deniersphere using their standard tactics of throwing red herrings and attempting to play the man and not the ball (mixed metaphor there, sorry). They can’t discredit the science or the scientists (despite trying), so now they are trying to discredit the supporters. And no matter how squeaky clean the average organisation is, there is always some skeleton in the closet that can be attacked.

  19. #19 coby
    October 7, 2010

    Ad pulled, apology posted, probable donor backlash on its way…I’d say the verdict and sentence have been rendered, justice is done, Skip and mandas are both right…

    Now whose the lapdog? Or should it be lapdingo :)

  20. #20 Russ Finley
    October 7, 2010

    …jackasses have provided enough ammunition to undo years of effort.