
McElhinney
Wichita Rotary Club members got a preview of the new documentary film “Not Evil, Just Wrong” at a lunchtime gathering at Wichita’s Botanica Monday. Ann McElhinney showed brief clips and spoke about the film she and her husband, Phelim McAleer, made to counter what they say is dangerous hysteria about global warming.
The film will premier around the world Sunday, Oct. 18. In Wichita Americans for Prosperity and the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy are co-sponsoring a premier showing. Anyone wishing to hold their own premier event can order a premier kit and DVD online.
The film counters Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” by highlighting dishonesty in environmental efforts and drawing comparisons to the effects of the worldwide ban of the pesticide DDT, brought about by the 1962 book “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson.
At least 30 million malaria deaths might have been prevented if DDT had not been banned according to experts cited in the film. The World Health Organization lifted the ban in 2006 after decades of debate.
During her presentation Monday McElhinney noted questions of the Four-Way Test that guides Rotary Club members. The first asks, “Is it the truth?” She says her film uncovers truth in the environmental debate. In 2007 a British judge, ruling on a suit to stop secondary schools from showing Gore’s 2006 film, found it contained “serious scientific inaccuracies, political propaganda and sentimental mush.”
“Not Evil, Just Wrong” features scientists and environmentalists, including Patrick Moore, Co-founder and Former Director of Greeenpeace, rebutting some major claims of Gore and other environmentalists. During an interview Monday afternoon McElhinney said she thinks Gore knows the truth. “People that are that ideologically blinkered have to stay with the story even though the facts disagree with them.”
MeElhinney said the same type of propaganda led world leaders to ban DDT.
“The other thing that environmentalists have in common is that they’re elites. It won’t hurt them so it doesn’t really matter.” Gore and other celebrity environmentalists have been criticized for demanding the public abstain from environmental bad behavior while continuing to use private jets.
“On a personal level it won’t affect him,” McElhinney said. Everyone should have $200 million dollars. I’m all in favor of it. And everyone should have a private jet. But I think it’s an awful shame if people that get to enjoy that kind of level of the good things in life don’t think about poorer people and don’t think that the decisions they’re making will very negatively effect poor people. So I don’t think he cares.”
The filmmakers hope to drive home the reality of extreme environmentalism by presenting the stories of poor families in America’s coal country who are fearful of economic collapse due to global warming hysteria and the reality of children dying in Africa from malaria. “It’s very hard for people to understand the big numbers but very easy for people to understand the death of a child,” McElhinney said.
She says extreme environmentalism is about control and an anti-American agenda. “There’s an interesting timing here, Communism died and the green movement almost seemed to come up at the very same time. If you think about and analyze what the environmentalists say, they do want to control.”
Twenty-five years ago McElhinney, a 19-year-old Irish girl wanting an American experience, spent a summer in Clay Center, Kansas. She learned that Anericans have a special regard for freedom. “Americans, more than any other country in the world, are resisting this stuff because they understand it will effect their freedoms.”
A lot of the environmental initiatives are directed at America in what she says is a thinly disguised war on America and capitalism. “If you stop using fossil fuels in America they’re going to be delighted in China. It’ll be the biggest stimulus ever for China.”
McElhinney said she has faith in the free market. “Capitalism has brought 200 million people out of poverty in India. How marvelous. I think the best solutions to everything are in the free market.”
Additional resources:
- Film trailer on Youtube
- Review by the Wall Street Journal
- Audio of interview by Laura Ingraham
Wichita premier
Where: Wichita State University Rhatigan Center (click for map), also known as the Campus Activity Center (CAC)
When: October 18, 2009
- 6 p.m. Program begins
- 6:15 p.m. An Atmospheric Scientist’s View of “Global Warming” by meteorologist Mike Smith
- 7 p.m.: Nationwide simultaneous premiere of “Not Evil, Just Wrong”
Admission: Free












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