“Avengers: Age of Ultron” is said to have a budget of roughly $250 million. The Marvel movie required shooting in 25 locations, including countries like Bangladesh, South Africa, Italy, South Korea and England. With all the cast and crew and sets involved, it had to leave a hefty carbon footprint. And yet, somehow, director Joss Whedon and Mark Ruffalo (aka: The Hulk) thought it would be a good idea to lecture the rest of us on climate change this Earth Day.
If Joss Whedon really cared about climate change as his self-congratulatory tweets suggest, then he would renounce the kind of big budget movies (and carbon footprints) Marvel Studios leaves all over the globe. He won’t do that though, because he really, really likes the millions of dollars Marvel puts into his bank account.
Mark Ruffalo is no different.
Yes, we can do something — like not act in a movie with a carbon footprint that 99.9 percent of moviegoers could not duplicate in 10,000 lifetimes.
The weird thing about hastags like #ClimateChangeIsReal is that there is basically no one who denies that climate changes. It’s always changed. In fact, yours truly blogged on climate change after my visit to Virginia Living Museum in Newport News, Virginia in 2013.
Here is what one of the educational notes next to the museum’s riverbank fossils said:
“Since the end of the dinosaur age, eastern Virginia has been covered by ocean water many times. Beneath these seas, layers upon layers of shells, bones and teeth from abundant ocean life accumulated to form fossil-bearing sediments. Coastal river bluffs now display these ancient sediment layers, in particular, a 3.5-to-5 million-year-old fossil-rich band called Yorktown Formation,” (Virginia Living Museum).
It is safe to say that the climate has changed quite a bit over the course of 5 million years — so much so that the great state of Virginia has been underwater multiple times.
The reason why Hollywood actors and directors engage in meaningless Twitter rhetoric like “#ClimateChangeIsReal” is because any time they’re forced to debate substantive questions they look “dumber than weather.”
Here are some real questions for your favorite “Avengers: Age of Ultron” environmental activist stars:
- How much does man have an effect on climate in relation to things like that giant ball of exploding gas called the sun?
- If man is responsible for significant changes to the earth’s ever-changing climate, what are the proposed political solutions to the problem?
- Will the political solutions put forth by Hollywood actors and directors result in losses to freedom and liberty?
- Will the political solutions put forth by men like Mark Ruffalo actually have any tangible effect?
Those are questions Messrs. Whedon and Ruffalo aren’t comfortable answering, which is why they opt instead for tweets that result in fawning praise by their Twitter followers.
The next time these guys essentially try to shame you because you like nice long showers or vehicles that don’t run on batteries, ask them how it feels to be a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe juggernaut and its Galactus-sized carbon footprint. My guess is that that they’ll run away faster than Quicksilver.