I love LEGO, but this video ticks me off

Last updated on: November 24, 2014 at 11:42 pm by Kevin Miller

I love LEGO, but this video ticks me off 2014-11-24T23:42:43-07:00 Kevin Miller

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Right now I’m in the very early stages of a new documentary about the rhetoric surrounding fossil fuels, both pro and con. My resume already includes one documentary on this subject, but nearly four years have passed since it came out, and director/producer Mark Mathis and I think it’s time for a sequel. So right now, my spidey-sense is particularly attuned to any and all rhetorical ploys designed to sway the masses in one direction or the other.

It should come as no surprise then that the following video nearly did to my spidey-senses what Kim Kardashian’s bare behind was supposed to have done to the Internet last week.

Here’s what I like about the video:

LEGO. My 14-year-old son has been a LEGO nut since he was about six, and most of the family has followed suit. I’ve spent many happy hours designing all sorts of things with these endlessly malleable pieces of petroleum.

I also like the production values of this film. The LEGO models are great, it’s well shot, and the rearranged version of the theme song from The LEGO Movie is clever. If I were teaching a class on how to design effective propaganda, this video would be Exhibit A.

Here’s what I don’t like about the video:

1. Like most pieces of rhetoric coming from groups like Greenpeace, this film exaggerates the risks of fossil fuels while minimizing or ignoring the benefits. For example, it doesn’t note that the only reasons humans are able to thrive in the north at all is due to fossil fuels for heating, transportation and food production. It also doesn’t point out that the soccer ball, the hockey gear, the clothing, the fishing rod, the housing and virtually everything the shiny happy northern people are using prior to the arrival of the big, bad, cigar-smoking fat cat oil people arrive on the scene is made from oil and/or raw materials processed using fossil fuels and shipped up north using fossil-fuel powered transportation. Yes, extracting fossil fuels has an environmental impact. There are costs, but there are also benefits. And can you name the energy source best equipped to deal with the problems created by fossil fuel extraction? You got it, fossil fuels. In sum, without fossil fuels, there would be no northern way of life to threaten, and we would have no way to access the pristine wilderness to observe the wildlife featured at the beginning of the video. This video only presents one side of the equation couched in an emotional package, and a highly exaggerated side of the equation at that.

2. The film presents no viable alternative to fossil fuels. This is one of my most significant problems with the environmentalist movement as a whole: They’re great at criticizing problems but they offer nothing in the way of viable alternatives or solutions. The reason? There really aren’t any. I would love to see Greenpeace do a similar film on the environmental devastation created by the mining of rare earth minerals used in windmill magnets, for example. It’s horrifying. And yet, this is one of the alternatives to fossil fuels that Greenpeace champions. Now imagine scaling up this social and environmental devastation to replace the portion of our energy (85%) provided by coal, oil and natural gas. The planet would be literally uninhabitable, and every nation would be bankrupt and likely at war. And let’s not forget that the industrial processes required to manufacture windmills and solar panels are utterly reliant upon fossil fuels (with many of the components in windmills and solar panels made from fossil fuels). Not only that, solar and wind are completely unreliable, intermittent, low-density sources of energy that must be backed up with coal, natural gas, nuclear or hydro power, which means you’re essentially adding an extra industrial process to the one you’re protesting against. It’s literally the worst of all possible worlds. But Greenpeace doesn’t want to talk about that. Instead, they do the reverse of what they do with fossil fuels–they exaggerate the benefits of so-called “renewables” and minimize or ignore the social and environmental risks. It’s the heigh of irresponsibility.

This is something people need to get straight: Even though a particular fuel source (e.g. wind or solar energy) seems innocuous or renewable, the technology required to capture and store this energy certainly is not. The capture or extraction and consumption of every energy source involves an industrial process that has some sort of negative environmental, social and economic impact. No matter what fuel source you choose, there is no escaping this fact. And yet, groups like Greenpeace like to act as if this is true only of fossil fuels. To put it in Penn and Teller terms, “bullshit.” The only important question we should be asking is which fuel source(s) presents us with the most benefits and the least risks? Videos like this do nothing to help us answer this question. In fact, they make finding answers all the more difficult, because they purposefully obscure facts with emotional manipulation.

If groups like Greenpeace really care about the environment, rather than issue one-sided propaganda–aimed at children, no less–they should be producing films and literature that actually educate the public by presenting them with objective, cost-benefit scenarios for all sorts of fuel sources and extraction technologies. And these cost-benefit scenarios should include not only environmental factors but also social and economic considerations. As it stands, videos like this do exactly what Greenpeace accuses the fossil fuel industry of doing: sacrificing public interest for private gain. All in the guise of occupying the moral high ground. The fact that it directs its message at children–and uses LEGO on top of it–makes it downright evil in my mind. Particularly the LEGO part.

That just pisses me off.

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