Movie Review
‘Too Hot Not to Handle’
HBO’s Earth Day global warming special is high-octane propaganda intent on changing America’s prosperous habits.

By Amy Menefee
Business & Media Institute
April 19, 2006

     “Do you drive a car?” one scientist asked. Yes, you do, and you use electricity and water and heck, you even exhale carbon dioxide. You … Earth-hater!

     From the moment Angela Lansbury (yes, Angela Lansbury) opened the film singing, “Someone has wounded you, dear world … Someone has poisoned you, dear world …” it was clear that the culprits in this “Murder, She Wrote” were Americans.

     One professor interviewed for the special said the United States uses more energy by far than any other country in the world. Of course, there’s a connection between energy use and prosperity – we also have the largest economy in the world. But this film asserts that we must stop our productive ways before we are plagued with rising seas, forest fires, floods, droughts, disease, hurricanes, heat waves, and perhaps most shockingly, more pollen in our springtimes.

     What is this film in favor of? It’s in favor of more regulation – government forcing businesses and consumers to change, no matter how costly. It’s in favor of scaring the pants off you so you’ll do something, like turn off that lamp! Now!

     What is it against? Companies driven by profit. People driven by their own cost-conscious needs as consumers. It’s against the industrialization that brought us “tailpipes and smoke stacks,” even though one person admits fossil fuels have produced the living standard we enjoy. And then there’s pollen.

     Pollen-allergic sniffles are annoying, but far worse is being blamed for something that isn’t your fault. The HBO film conveniently left out anyone who would hand you a Kleenex and tell you it’s okay. Where are the scientists who have said that stronger hurricanes aren’t a result of man-made global warming, but of natural cycles? That the earth was going through periods of warming and cooling long before industrialized man starting pumping out greenhouse gases? Does anyone besides George Will remember when, about 30 years ago, Those In the Know were predicting another ice age?

     In a 2004 interview, Laurie David, wife of “Seinfeld” creator Larry David and executive producer of “Too Hot Not to Handle,” accused “the opposite side” of “using PR firms and misinformation and false scientists and false advertising.”

     She doesn’t need a PR firm now, though, because she has the force of a coordinated media push behind her. The misinformation in her film takes examples of natural happenings around the world, exaggerating and extrapolating them into what “would” or “could” be unless we all start taking spit baths and driving hybrids. Her scientists, while credentialed, have among them donors to Democratic candidates and anti-Bush administration causes. And the Ad Council has recently taken care of the global warming advertising.

     But the American people shouldn’t take kindly to unwarranted guilt heaped upon their heads. Laurie David may learn that it ain’t over when Angela Lansbury sings.