Audience Member
Not Wrong - Just Very, Very, Very, Very Wrong
If you don't believe that global warming is real then you're just as stubborn as the people who made the film Not Evil, Just Wrong. Global warming has been a subject of major political controversy these days. While some consider it one of our biggest challenges, others consider it as a natural climate shift that occurred in the 90's and hasn't significantly changed since then. Those who believe it have their own scientific reasons to back their claim, while others have their own reasons to ignore the theory. Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney's 2009 documentary, Not Evil, Just Wrong, is a great depiction of the "true" cost of global warming hysteria made by those who really don't want to believe that humans are affecting the Earth's climate.
The documentary was released October 18, 2009 to challenge Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth's message that humans are killing the planet. Not Evil, Just Wrong warns Americans that their jobs, modest lifestyles, and dreams for their children are at stake because of radical environmentalists that want to close down industries that rely on fossil fuels. Small towns such as Vevay, Indiana would become full of unemployment and poverty. People in Vevay, Indiana like Tim McElhaney, who works at a local plant making mufflers for Toyota, would lose his job. He and his wife would have to go back to borrowing money just to purchase bread for their family if the industry closed down. Not Evil, Just Wrong claims to expose the "deceptions" that the media, experts, politicians, and educators have been force feeding the public. Man-made pollution is not melting polar ice caps, decreasing polar bear populations, nor will it cause the ocean to rise twenty feet in a flash. Conservatives McAleer and McElhinney challenge the infamous hockey stick graph that pinned the unique burst of warming in the 20th century on an increase in CO2 levels. The film also fights the claim that carbon dioxide is poison. They tackle environmental organizations such as Greenpeace for persistently pushing for the same kind of propaganda spread by Rachel Carson that prompted world leaders to ban DDT, causing millions of children in the Third World to die of malaria.
Not Evil, Just Wrong cleverly uses pathos (a way of convincing the audience of an argument by appealing to emotion) to help convince the viewer that the global warming hysteria that radical environmentalism imposes is greatly impacting the low income working class. They do a really good job at this by showing viewers the McElhany family and other people from smaller towns such as Vevay, Indiana where most of the town's jobs come from huge industries that heavily utilize fossil fuels. The film focuses on the McElhany family and how they wouldn't be where they are if it weren't for the job that Tim McElhaney has as a muffler maker at a local plant for Toyota. Tiffany McElhany, Tim's wife, proclaims, "There are consequences to our actions. Shutting down the industry would mean less funding for schools, possibly less schools, it would mean an extreme cost of living raise. It would mean kids like my kids wouldn't be able to play in bands, wouldn't be able to do ballet class because there is just not going to be the extra money anymore in an everyday household to pay for these things." By showing the struggles of the McElhaney family and how greatly their lives are improved because of the use of fossil fuels, viewers like you sympathize towards their struggles and become slightly convinced that, "Okay, maybe we do need to maintain our current level of fossil fuels use."
McAleer and McElhinney aren't absolutely wrong that low income, working class families will be greatly impacted, but they have such a short term view on the ban of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are not a renewable resource meaning that when they potentially run out we'll have to find a different resource to use for energy (and of course the many other uses that fossil fuels provide). Fossil fuel production does generate hundred of thousands of jobs every year. By banning it, there would be an increase in unemployment which could seriously affect the economy. However, by switching over to renewable energy sources, the numbers of jobs lost could be displaced by the jobs created by energy efficient or renewable energy projects.
The film also suggest that the evidence for human-caused global warming is inconclusive and that the impact of suggesting legislation for mitigating climate change would be much more harmful to humans than beneficial. They do this by compelling to the audience's emotions and showing the impacts of the ban on DDT, a mosquito-killing pesticide. McAleer and McElhinney blame Rachel Carson for the deaths of more than forty million children and adults in the developing country because of her environmental science book, Silent Spring, that documented the detrimental effects on the environment of the indiscriminate use of pesticides. According to the film, millions of lives would have been saved if it weren't for Rachel Carson and her anecdotal, unfounded book.
The film makes it seem as if McAleer and McElhinney solved a Scooby Doo mystery case and behind the villain's mask was Rachel Carson. It was not Rachel Carson who banned DDT, but the very Republican Nixon Administration that did in 1972. The ban was intended to prevent the imminent extinction of peregrine falcons and other bird species that were vulnerable because DDT caused fatal thinning of eggshells. The ban did nothing to stop the manufacture or export of DDT. All Rachel Carson did was raise legitimate questions about the environmental and health dangers of DDT use.
Not Evil, Just Wrong competently uses ethos (an appeal to ethics convincing someone of the character or credibility of the persuader) by having former founding member of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, attack the climate change industry. Patrick Moore insists that recent statistics show that the U.S is cooling and that there is no scientific proof that mankind has caused global warming. Rather than climate change mitigation, he has a cornucopian standpoint, advocating for global warming adaptation.
While Patrick was a member of Greenpeace in the 1950s, in 1986 he abruptly turned his back on issues that he once passionately defended. He represents himself as an environmental "expert" or even an "environmentalist" but distinctly takes an anti-environmental stance on a wide range of issues. He has gone from a defender of the planet to a paid representative of corporate polluters. So is he really that credible?
This entire film was bs. It felt like eighty-four minutes of my life was wasted. If I wanted to watch a senseless film I would have rented out Avatar or maybe even the sex comedy, the Sex Lives of the Potato men. Despite that, I decided to grace this film with a two star rating instead of one.
The same tactics used by people who told us for decades that cigarettes don't cause cancer are the one's used by people now who are telling us there's no climate change. Watch this film if you want to see a different viewpoint on global warming. The film is full of educated people that know global warming exists but are just too stubborn to accept the fact that humans are heavily affecting the change in climate. Human-caused global warming is real, and if you can't accept that then you'll love this film.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
01/25/23
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Audience Member
Phelim is awesome. Josh Fox lied, people died.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/23/23
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Audience Member
"The ppl who call for massive CO2 reduction, the AL GOREs; are in fact the ENEMIES of POVERTY reduction in the developing world" That's the inconvenient truth!!! The documental is missing more power, but the road is traced...just connect the dots and find one more of the constructed media campaigns made to puppeteer society.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/25/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Something lacking in a sceptical documentary about man-made climate change.
It showed the human cost of implementing a global carbon tax upon "working families" ;) but it wasn't so much about the science.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
01/31/23
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Audience Member
it sheds much light on the fraud that is man made global warming and how the enviormentalists agenda has actually hurt and killed thousands if not millions of people
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
02/24/23
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