Green activism is polluting kids’ films

There are many things to love about the modern age, but ubiquitous virtue-signalling in popular media is not one of them. Try turning on the TV or opening a magazine without being bombarded by political messaging. Righteous activism is now constantly being injected into places where it does not belong.

Environmental propaganda, in particular, is everywhere you look. This isn’t even confined to nature documentaries. Lectures about climate change are now shoehorned into every possible form of entertainment. Even Doctor Who has started preaching to viewers about the harms of plastic pollution.

Children’s content is by no means spared from this. Earlier this month, Appian Way Productions, Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company, released a new animated film called Ozi: Voice of the Forest. The film follows a young, topknot-sporting orangutan who battles against an evil corporation hellbent on destroying her rainforest home. Ozi fights back by learning how to use a tablet and becoming an online influencer.

Needless to say, it’s an agonising watch. Even the Guardian gives it two stars. It turns out audiences didn’t exactly love it, either. Ozi made an average of just £221 per cinema on its opening weekend. But its makers are no doubt undeterred. For them, the reward for their labours is not money, but pious applause from their ideological allies.

Predictably, the film portrays building a business and making a profit as inherently destructive. To make matters worse, the green talking point central to its narrative is easily debunked.

Ozi’s villain of choice is a maleficent, fictitious palm-oil company. Palm oil is a little talked-about but almost ubiquitous ingredient in modern consumer goods. The WWF reckons it pops up in about half of the packaged items we see on shop shelves, from chocolate to shampoo. Palm oil has historically been associated with deforestation but, like so many products, its production methods have improved dramatically over time.

In recent years, thanks to a sustainability push in the south-east Asian countries that export it, 93 per cent of the palm oil that enters Europe is certified as sustainable. That has substantial positive consequences for nature. According to research from Global Forest Watch, Malaysia, a top palm oil-producing nation, has seen ‘primary forest loss’ fall precipitously in recent years. Forest loss has reduced by over 70 per cent since its peak in 2014. There is nothing inherently destructive about the palm-oil industry.

All this is immaterial to the producers of Ozi. Campaigning against palm oil has become fashionable and that’s apparently enough for them to make it the centrepiece of their child-facing environmental propaganda. It tells children there is a simple, binary trade-off between living comfortably in the modern world and saving the planet. A better future is not possible, they tell your kids from their Californian mansions.

If nothing else, the rank hypocrisy of Hollywood lecturing us and our kids about the evils of capitalism leaves a sour taste in the mouth. Zooming between countries in their private jets, today’s cultural elites want us to know how virtuous they are and how hard they are working to ‘raise awareness’ of ‘important issues’. They would never dream themselves of giving up on the modern comforts they decry.

DiCaprio himself is one of the worst offenders. He values the convenience of a private jet, but never seems to publicly address the obvious conflict between his green activism and his outsized carbon footprint. Emails published by Wikileaks in 2015 revealed DiCaprio once made a whopping six private jet trips in six weeks. The following year, he managed to clock up 8,000 miles on a private jet flying across the Atlantic to accept an award for his environmental activism. The irony is apparently lost on him.

It’s not just planes, either. DiCaprio once took his girlfriend on a trip on Britain’s largest superyacht, the Vava II, which burns 300 gallons of diesel per hour.

DiCaprio is entitled to his private jet, and to his hypocritical worldview, but it is a shame he feels the need to take up space in our cinemas with his preachy nonsense. Parents should forego Ozi: Voice of the Forest and instead treat their kids to something entertaining, rather than this thinly veiled propaganda.

Jason Reed is the UK lead at Young Voices and a political and policy commentator for a wide range of outlets. Follow him on Twitter: @JasonReed624