Cinefantastique Online

Wing-nuts* live in an fascinating fantasy land. It is a strange alternate dimension in which reality barely exists, and the greatest threat to humanity lies not in nuclear holocaust, global warming, or terrorism but in an unlikely alliance between East Coast liberal elite Academia and West Coast Hollywood hucksterism. An entertaining if absurd example of this is Noel Sheppard’s ignorant screed in News Busters, in which he whines about M. Night Shyamalan’s upcoming movie THE HAPPENING.

What triggered Sheppard’s panic response was this post in “The Weather Guys” blog at USA Today, which notes that THE HAPPENING will invoke the spectre of global warming:

“The film uniquely takes an in-depth look, through an imaginary story, at what could happen if the balance of nature, at the smallest levels, begins to break down,” [a] spokesperson said.

The Weather Guys’ post notes that, not being a documentary, THE HAPPENING will have the benefit of dramatic license, allowing “for a good measure of embellishment for entertainment’s sake.” The concept of embellishment, fiction, and entertainment apparently flew over Sheppard’s head; he interprets the film (without having seen it, of course) as a piece of liberal propaganda and draws dire conclusions:

In the end, Americans should be very afraid, not of the images Shyamalan presents, but of the likely reaction by the citizenry.

Let’s understand that we have precedent in our nation for fictional movies impacting policy.

For decades, Hollywood showed us frightening images of the nuclear age culminating with 1979’s “The China Syndrome.” As a result, America moved away from nuclear power plants, a decision that still haunts us three decades later.

Now, the new bogeyman is global warming coming at a time of record energy prices and a slowing economy. Add it all up, and we are once again being scared by Hollywood to make policy decisions that could be economically devastating for years to come.

Are we going to learn from Hollywood’s nuclear error, or make exactly the same mistake we did thirty years ago?

Those of you who live in the reality-based community may notice something missing from Sheppard’s history lesson. Did America really abandon nuclear power “[a]s a result” of Hollywood movies like THE CHINA SYNDROME, or was there some other factor – something that really happened?

Can you say Three-Mile Island? Less than two weeks after the release of CHINA SYNDROME, a major nuclear accident took place at this nuclear power plant: a partial meltdown of the reaction core that released radioactive gasses into the atmosphere. The story galvanized the nation with fear for several days because no one could say for certain whether the whole plant was going to meltdown. (Although no one officialy admitted it at the time, some physicists studying the problem were sure that the plant would melt.)

No immediate deaths were caused, but public support for nuclear power plummeted after the accident, thanks to a sense that we had been lucky to “dodge the bullet” and that it would be unwise to tempt fate twice. No new construction of nuclear power plants was initiated after that, but other factors were involved, such as a transition to natural gas as a source of energy, along with federal policies that kept an artificial lid on the cost of coal-fired electricity.

Sheppard may insist that the decision to abandon nuclear power “still haunts us,” but his rhetoric rings hollow. It is easy to insist there was an economic downside to foregoing this relatively cheap form of energy**, but Sheppard neglects to calculate the costs - in both dollars and, more important, human lives – that were avoided. The price tag for the cleanup of Three-Mile Island – an effort that did not end until 1993 – was nearly $1-billion. Is that really a price anyone wants to pay again? Did we really want to risk that the next accident would cause no casualties?

There was an attempt to portray the public reaction to Three-Mile Island as overblown. Nuclear power advocates pointed out that no one had died, and a couple months later, physicist Edward Teller (the man credited with creating the H-bomb) proclaimed, “Reactors are not dangerous.”

This statement was proven wrong by the 1986 disaster at the Russian nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, a massive power excursion causing an explosion that released radioactivity into the environment. Thirty people died in the explosion, but the nuclear cloud impacted more, spreading out over much of Russia, the Ukraine, and Belarus (which received about 60% of the fallout). Over 200 people at the nuclear plant (mostly rescue workers) suffered sever radiation sickness; over thirty died. Fishes in local lakes were contaminated beyond levels that were safe for consumption. Four square kilometers of surrounding forest died. Animals – including domestic and farm animals - died or stopped reproducing. Is it any wonder, then, that people might have concerns over the safety of nuclear power plants?

I will avoid the temptation to speculate on why Sheppard ignores these elementary facts in his attempt to lay the (perceived) blame on Hollywood for the USA’s decision to move away from nuclear power. I will say that his approach is part and parcel of a wing-nut tendency to ignore factual evidence in order to advance opinions  that do not hold up to scrutiny or even common sense.

Thus, we have Sheppard referring to global warming as a “bogeyman,” implying that the phenomenon is a childish myth. Unfortunately, as much as it would be a relief to agree with Sheppard, the science contradicts him. (Don’t trust me on this issue. Check out the website for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.)

However, even if Sheppard were right on the facts, his logic is unhinged. He worries that concerns about global warming are coming “at a time of record energy prices and a slowing economy.” Now think about that for a minute: the price of oil is going up, and this is hurting the U.S. economy. Global warming, the theory goes, is caused by burning fossil fuels; we could prevent (or at least slow) the process by using less oil. Yet Sheppard warns that Hollywood films like THE HAPPENING could scare us into making ”policy decisions that could be economically devastating for years to come.”

By now the obvious question has probably occurred to you, but I will spell it out anyway: If the rising cost of oil is hurting our economy, why is Sheppard frightened of a policy that would make us rely less on oil? Does he really think the economy would magically benefit from continuing to pay higher and higher prices for oil instead of finding alternate sources of energy? Wouldn’t a cheaper form of fuel leave more money in the pocketbook of the American consumer, which would in turn boost the economy thanks to their increased buying power? In short, wouldn’t global warming policy have the fringe benefit of helping, not hurting, the economy?

Unfortunately, little logic applies in the wing-nut response to global warming, which is essentially irrational. I learned this lesson when Lawrence French briefly offered global warming as a possible subtext for CLOVERFIELD, prompting a small outcry from the wingers. Their objections seldom if ever addressed the science, nor was whether or not the film supported the interpretation much of an issue. Rather, the objection was to the very concept of global warming, which was dismissed with terms such as “left-wing doomsday hystericism.”

When I tried to get one or two of these global warming skeptics to revise their arguments, sticking to facts instead of ad hominem attacks, I got little thanks for my effort. Although I was trying to present an opposing viewpoint that sounded rational, all I got was accusations that I was squelching dissent and forcing my opinions on others via the website. A typical response was that the “Terrible Scourge of Global Warming (TM)” is “only a theory” and that people who believe in it are “cultists” who refuse to allow dissenting opinion to be heard.

The facts do not support this assertion. Contrary to the accusation of stiffling dissent, the UNIPCC’s fourth Assessment Report on Global Warming (released in 2007) does include dissenting opinion, and its conclusions are not framed as absolute certainties. Rather the question of whether the Earth is warming, and whether this is caused by human activity, is expressed in terms of likelihoods and probabilities. At this point, the consensus of scientific opinion strongly favors the position that an increase in global temperature is very likely the result of greenhouse gas concentrations resulting from human burning of fossil fuels.

Does this mean that the Earth is – absolutely beyond any doubt – going to die a horrible death, choked by human exhaust fumes? Not exactly. When a weatherman tells you there is a 70% chance of rain, he is also implicitly telling you there is a 30% chance of no rain. When the UNIPCC says that the Earth will probably continue to warm as a result of greenhouse gases, the possibility remains that it might not.

My point here is not to offer hope that Global Warming will turn out to be a myth. I am merely pointing out that the theory is presented by its advocates in terms that are consistent with good scientific procedure, not with a fanatical certainty that shouts down opponents. The wing-nuts refuse to acknowledge this because it undermines their explanation for why people would support the theory: we’re supposed to believe that the UNIPCC consists of mindless fanatics blinded by an irrational left-wing hatred that prods them to destroy Western civilization by forcing it to abandon crude oil. (An alternate theory is that Al Gore has heavily invested in alternate energy sources and hopes to make a bundle when the U.N. forces America to give up gasoline. Can you spell C-O-N-S-P-I-R-A-C-Y N-U-T?”)

Not being a scientist, I cannot vouch for the validity of global warming. I can only observe the consensus among sceintists who have studied the topic. Consensus is not always correct, and there may be more to say on the subject. For the time being, however, it is clear that one can accept the theory of global warming without being either a fanatic, a left-wing shill, or a Hollywood huckster.

Films reflect concerns that exist in the culture. They may advocate a certain point of view, and one can disagree with that point of view, but it is wrong to pretend that the mere existence of THE HAPPENING (or THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED or THE CHINA SYNDROME) can provoke policy changes regardless of what is actually happening in the real world. Hollywood may have much to answer for, artistically speaking, but the dangers of nuclear power and global warming are not mere cinematic fantasties. They are  real-life subjects worthy of dramatic treatment, and films that deal with them should be judged on their merits, not mindlessly dismissed as propaganda that will ruin our economy.

*A small disclaimer regarding the use of the term “wing-nut.” I am using the phrase not to include all conservatives or all Republicans. Rather, I am using it to single out a subset of conservatives who make arguments that are not supported by facts or logic and, when these unfounded and illogical arguments are rejected, object that their opinions are being disregarded because of liberal bias.

**Nuclear power actually turns out not to be so cheap. Check out the comment I added at the bottom, which links to a Salon.com article on the subject.

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