Loopy Right wing US blogs are fond of equating environmentalism and anti-global warming activism with murderous totalitarian politics.
“Those fluffy looking Greens” they say “… aren’t really interested in wildlife or air quality. They’re using environmentalism in order to institute a fascist dictatorship, in which our families, kids, and SUVs will be taken away, and those of us who are not murdered in Pol Pot style extermination camps will be sent for re-education through work.”
10:10 is a young-ish enviromental campaign, founded last year by Franny Armstrong, director of The Age of Stupid. Its goal is to encourage people to cut their CO2 output by 10%. It is supported by pretty much every leading politician in the United Kingdom (and Shami Chakrabarti, Rory Bremner and Alain de Botton) and receives a certain amount of public funding.
The Guardian is also a participant in the campaign. Yesterday, they launched a new campaign video called No Pressure starring footballer Peter Crouch and X Files star, Gillian Anderson. It was made by Richard Curtis – not the Al Qaeda specialist, but the director of “Love, Actually”.
The video presents green campaigners as smug, suburban, and genocidal. It is almost as if Ron Paul and Alex Jones had infiltrated the green movement, with the intention of bringing it down.
10:10 had a sudden flash of perspective, and took the film off youtube. Here is their statement:
Sorry.
Today we put up a mini-movie about 10:10 and climate change called ‘No Pressure’.
With climate change becoming increasingly threatening, and decreasingly talked about in the media, we wanted to find a way to bring this critical issue back into the headlines whilst making people laugh. We were therefore delighted when Britain’s leading comedy writer, Richard Curtis – writer of Blackadder, Four Weddings, Notting Hill and many others – agreed to write a short film for the 10:10 campaign. Many people found the resulting film extremely funny, but unfortunately some didn’t and we sincerely apologise to anybody we have offended.
As a result of these concerns we’ve taken it off our website. We won’t be making any attempt to censor or remove other versions currently in circulation on the internet.
We’d like to thank the 50+ film professionals and 40+ actors and extras and who gave their time and equipment to the film for free. We greatly value your contributions and the tremendous enthusiasm and professionalism you brought to the project.
At 10:10 we’re all about trying new and creative ways of getting people to take action on climate change. Unfortunately in this instance we missed the mark. Oh well, we live and learn.
Onwards and upwards,
Franny, Lizzie, Eugenie and the whole 10:10 team
Franny? Lizzie? EUGENIE?
Seriously, are Richard Curtis and the whole 10:10 team the Situationist wing of the Tea Party movement?