Not Evil Just Wrong McElhinney and Phelim MvAleer

For God’s sake, are we cooling or warming? A little over thirty years ago, the most feared issue faced by environmentalists was the so-called “Global Cooling” phenomenon, although statistics basically present the reverse situation as the real danger nowadays. “Global Warming” has been on the cover of all magazines and is often the subject of fiction movies and documentaries. However, a dissonant voice is now rising up between the alarming signs to say that all is not what it seems.

The Mythbusters-style documentary Not Evil Just Wrong deconstructs the biggest recent propagator of the fight against global warming: Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. As an example to enforce their argument, the directors use the DDT controversy; the substance was forbidden in the 70s after claims that it was spreading cancer between people and killing birds, however following the ban, one of the consequences was that malaria cases increased in Africa. Another example is the data asserting that in 2005 we experienced the hottest day of human existence, which apparently is incorrect.

“You’d rather save the birds and lose the people”, complains an African mother who lost her child to malaria. The cast of interviewees is mostly composed of ordinary people, telling stories about how preventive environmentalist measures are damaging their lives. The shoot was made in Ireland, China, Uganda, England, France and the US, but what is being screened at IDFA is not the final edit. The directors are still collecting donations for an extensive cinema release. An ideological media battle is coming up soon.

Not Evil Just Wrong, whose title is a quote from one of the interviewees describing Gore’s attitude, isn’t the directors first when it comes to controversial movies. Mine Your Own Business confronted environmental activists, claiming that they’d been destroying poor communities while they lived in developed countries. Although the movie was financed by a Canadian mining company, they say that it didn’t have any influence on the editing process, only having access to the movie after it was finished.

Talking about “taking care of our planet” is all well and good. But, what’s the real limit of our disregard for the environment, and how far do the interests of each movement go? Choose your team and fight for your environment. Or just recycle your garbage. Maybe it’ll help.

Arturo Mestanza