Extract from a Report on the Origins of the Present Crisis
- Extract from a Report on the Origins of the Present Crisis
January 23, 2072
Sisters,
During preservation activities in Sector Three, a machine was discovered which holds important clues about the crisis. After much work, we have been able to recover a series of documents stored on this machine. These documents appear to consist of memoranda between different branches of the military establishment of the former government. I submit them as part of my larger report on the origins of the present crisis. Whether the comments in these memoranda were animated by blindness, folly, or evil, I leave you to judge.
Sister Indomita
Order for the Preservation of Lost Knowledge
Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence
1400 Defense Pentagon
Washington, DC, 20301-1400
January 1, 2010
MEMORANDUM FOR DIRECTOR, SECRETARY OF THE AIR FORCE, OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS-ENTERTAINMENT LIAISON
SUBJECT: HOLLYWOOD DEPICTIONS OF CLIMATE CHANGE
The Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence has followed growing public awareness of climate change with mounting concern. We [End Page 332] cannot allow such films to trigger social unrest. Please advise on measures taken in this regard.
Director, Secretary of the Air Force
Office of Public Affairs
Office of Public Affairs-Entertainment Liaison
10880 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 1240
Los Angeles, CA 90024
January 9, 2010
MEMORANDUM FOR UNDERSECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR INTELLIGENCE
SUBJECT: HOLLYWOOD DEPICTIONS OF CLIMATE CHANGE
The Undersecretary of Defense is correct that film companies are increasingly taking climate change as fodder. We do not, however, believe that this is a cause for alarm.
Films such as An Inconvenient Truth and Food, Inc. try to make the public aware of relatively unacknowledged information regarding contemporary threats to the natural systems on which human life depends. Although this office has not acted in an advisory role in the production of these films, we believe that their didactic format ensures that they will have little impact beyond a small, hyperliterate fringe segment of the US public.
An Inconvenient Truth, for example, lays out the scientific evidence concerning anthropogenic climate change. Most of this information is dry, and is unlikely to interest the average American, who we believe spends far more time thinking about how to make ends meet in an increasingly hostile economic climate than about the likely future impact of environmental destabilization. The filmmakers try to galvanize interest by hooking the film’s didactic material to the life story of former vice president Al Gore. His story is, however, remote to most people—his upbringing on a large farm as the son of a long-serving senator smacks of the kind of inside-the-Beltway privilege that so riles average folks. His crusade to spread the news about climate change comes across as the hobbyhorse of someone totally disconnected from the daily grind.
As for the science presented by An Inconvenient Truth, the efforts of the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition and www.JunkScience.com have spread so much doubt and disbelief about the veracity of scientific claims concerning climate change that the likelihood of a significant social movement arising around this issue is slim. [End Page 333]
Similar observations hold true for Food, Inc. The film admittedly deals with an issue—the quality of food available to ordinary Americans—that certainly has far more relevance to the average person on a day-to-day basis than the climate alarmism in Gore’s film. Nonetheless, like An Inconvenient Truth, the film is narrated by a parade of aging bald men and is unlikely to strike a chord with the major segment of the filmgoing population: teenage boys.
Furthermore, although the film offers a numbing catalog of grievances against the industrial food complex in the United States, it offers no real alternative. After all, few people can afford to buy organic produce, let alone grow their own food in their backyard. The impact of the...
