IT SHOULD come as no surprise that there’s a new animation with its release timed for the summer holidays to indoctrinate our children and grandchildren if we adults allow it. In our fully politicised world imaginary cuddly animals that speak the lingo and post on social media are the ideal tool for cultural Marxists.
As the latest movie to assault childhood innocence by misrepresenting a world full of difficult choices, Ozi: Voice of the Forest, tells a story of an orphan Orangutan who uses her social media influencer skills to save her forest and home from deforestation – due to the cultivation of Oil Palm (natch).
The political activism of Mikros Animation, supported by Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way Productions, is no slip of the cursor, the PR puff for the feature states it “aims to raise awareness around the issues our planet’s rainforests face due to growing levels of deforestation, and how this affects the ecosystems within.”
Well, maybe it does, but not all of the issues and their affects. Absent are the inconvenient facts about the successful efforts of Malaysian Oil Palm farmers to arrest deforestation and give hope for real orangutans. There is a lot of work being done to ensure that this economically vital crop can continue being produced without damage to the environment.
In short, the central plotline of ‘Ozi’ is out of sync with reality, relying on tired old stereotypes at the expense of verifiable facts about certified sustainable palm oil programmes leading to some 83% of palm oil refining capacity now operating under a ‘No Deforestation, Peat and Exploitation (NDPE)’ commitment.
According to WWF, palm oil can be found in almost half of all packaged products sold in supermarkets, but even it acknowledges tt palm oil can contribute to sustainability if it’s managed properly. The fundamental point is if we did not cultivate palm oil but used other seed oil sources, their far lower yields would require substantially more land, resulting in greater levels of deforestation.
To give some sense of scale, consider that globally we currently use 322 million hectares (an area the size of India) to grow oil crops. If we were to source it all from the demonised Oil Palm we’d need just 77 million hectares – four times less, resulting in far less deforestation. But if we got it all from fashionable olive oil then we’d need 660 million hectares – the equivalent of two Indias by landmass.
Maybe Ozi should use her tablet to ‘visit’ the Natural History Museum blog, where she will learn the palm oil industry isn’t the villain she’s making it out to be? Discussing ‘palm oil sustainability’ it describes how farmers are diversifying their monocultures to the benefit of fauna:
“We see even larger biodiversity boosts when areas of rainforest are preserved within oil palm landscapes… research shows they can support more than half of the biodiversity found in undamaged rainforests. They also provide stepping stones for animals travelling across the landscape”, providing “wildlife corridors” and “additional benefits like reducing soil erosion and protecting carbon storage.”
“Linking up forest areas also ensures populations of elephants and orangutans can mix with other populations and stop inbreeding from setting in”, keeping “these mammals away from plantations, where they might end up in conflict with humans.”
So you see, it’s complicated, not a simple question of boycotting or stopping Palm Oil farming.
Not that complex issues are treated as such by celebrities wishing to wear their virtues on their sleeves. Like many Hollywood A-listers, Leonardo DiCaprio is determined to be known as having more substance than just being an actor. And, like so many of his peers, he has thrown his weight into fighting climate change.
With a global consensus of Western governments, billionaire philanthropists and media moguls blaming man’s efforts to survive as responsible for a predicted climate catastrophe it’s an easy argument to make. Better still, the movie luvvies don’t have to sacrifice anything tangible to show what great people they are.
Ironies and hypocrisy abound. In 2016, the Oscar-winner was slammed for munching 8,000 miles on a private jet to accept a green award. A six-and-a-half hour intercontinental flight on a private jet will have the same carbon footprint (13 mt CO2e) as the average US resident will have in a year (2020 data).
DiCaprio is well-known to holiday on luxurious superyachts, such as a recent outing in St Barts with his actress girlfriend Camila Morrone on the Vava II, the largest yacht manufactured in Britain (pictured above). This megayacht is estimated to burn 300 gallons of diesel fuel per hour and produce 238kg of carbon dioxide per mile, the CO2e equivalent that would take an average British car two months to emit.
Funding self-righteous movies is a self-serving circus, but it’s not entertaining and real South Asian communities face subsistence living if the likes of DiCaprio are successful.
Maybe some well-meaning actor-come-philanthropist could fund a kids’ animation about why the wealthiest and most privileged swanning around in their private jets and mega-yachts have no moral authority to advocate how the poorest and most disadvantaged should scrape a living. Well, animations are the stuff of fantasy are they not?
Fortunately, after a poor review even in The Guardian (only 2 out of 5 stars) Ozi is, by most accounts, a dud. The Jungle Book it ain’t. Our kids need innocent entertainment not ecological sermons, Kool-Aid drinking mums and dads can show them Greta on YouTube if they want that.
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Image of Ozi the Orangutan courtesy of Mikros Animation. Photo of Vava II by Acroterion – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61268046
