It should come as no surprise that there is a new cartoon coming to theaters just in time for the summer holidays to indoctrinate our children and grandchildren, if we adults allow it. In our fully politicized world, imaginary stuffed animals that speak the language and post on social media are the ideal tool for cultural Marxists.
As the latest film to attack childhood innocence by misrepresenting a world full of difficult choices, Ozi: Voice of the Forest, tells the story of an orangutan orphan who uses her skills as a social media influencer to save her forest and home from deforestation due to oil palm cultivation (of course).
The political activism of Mikros Animation, backed by Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way Productions, is no accident: the PR advertisement for the feature film states that it “aims to raise awareness of the problems facing our planet’s rainforests due to increasing deforestation and how this affects the ecosystems they contain.”
Well, maybe it is, but not all of the problems and their impacts. The inconvenient facts about the successful efforts of Malaysian oil palm farmers to stop deforestation and give hope to real orangutans are missing. Much is being done to ensure that this economically important crop can continue to be grown without environmental damage.
In short, the central storyline of Ozi has no connection to reality. It relies on old, hackneyed stereotypes and neglects verifiable facts about certified, sustainable palm oil programs, which have led to around 83 percent of palm oil refining capacity today being operated under the No Deforestation, No Peat Extraction and No Exploitation (NDPE) commitment.
According to the WWF, palm oil is found in almost half of all packaged products sold in supermarkets. Yet even the WWF recognizes that palm oil can contribute to sustainability if managed properly.(2)The crucial point is: If we did not grow palm oil but used other seed oil sources, the significantly lower yields would mean a much larger demand for land, which in turn would lead to greater deforestation.
To get an idea of the scale, consider that we currently use 322 million hectares (an area the size of India) worldwide to grow oil crops. If we got it all from the demonized oil palm, we would only need 77 million hectares – four times less, which would lead to far less deforestation. But if we got it all from the fashionable olive oil, we would need 660 million hectares – the equivalent of two Indias’ land mass.
Maybe Ozi should take her tablet and “visit” the Natural History Museum’s blog, where she’ll learn that the palm oil industry is not the villain it makes it out to be? Under the theme of “Palm Oil Sustainability,” it describes how farmers are diversifying their monocultures for the benefit of fauna:
“We see even greater gains in biodiversity when rainforest areas are preserved in oil palm landscapes… Research shows they can support more than half the biodiversity in undamaged rainforests. They also provide stepping stones for animals migrating across the landscape,” providing “wildlife corridors” and “additional benefits such as reducing soil erosion and protecting carbon storage.”
“The connection of the forest areas also ensures that elephant and orangutan populations can mix with other populations and inbreeding is avoided,” says the researcher. “These mammals are kept away from the plantations where they could come into conflict with humans.”
So you see, it is complicated and not a simple question of boycotting or stopping palm oil cultivation.
Not that celebrities who want to parade their virtues openly treat complex issues as such. Like many Hollywood stars, Leonardo DiCaprio is determined to be known as someone with more substance than just being an actor. And like so many of his peers, he has taken a stand in the fight against climate change.
With a global consensus of Western governments, billionaire philanthropists and media moguls blaming human survival efforts for a predicted climate catastrophe, it’s an easy argument to make. And even better, the movie stars don’t have to sacrifice anything tangible to show what great people they are.
Irony and hypocrisy are everywhere. In 2016, the Oscar winner was criticized for flying 8,000 miles in a private jet to accept an environmental award. A six-and-a-half-hour intercontinental flight in a private jet has the same carbon footprint (13 million tons of CO2 equivalents) as an average US citizen in a year (2020 data).
DiCaprio is known for vacationing on luxury superyachts, including a recent trip to St. Barts with his girlfriend, actress Camila Morrone, on the Vava II, the largest yacht made in Britain. This megayacht consumes an estimated 300 gallons of diesel fuel per hour and produces 238 kg of carbon dioxide per mile, the CO2 equivalent that an average British car would emit in two months.
Funding self-righteous films is a self-serving circus, but it is not entertaining, and when people like DiCaprio succeed, South Asian communities are forced to live at subsistence level.
Perhaps a well-meaning actor turned philanthropist could finance a children’s cartoon about why the richest and most privileged, cruising around in their private jets and mega yachts, have no moral authority to advocate for how the poorest and most disadvantaged should eke out a living. Well, cartoons are the stuff of fantasy, aren’t they?
Fortunately, after a bad review in The Guardian (only 2 out of 5 stars) Ozi is, by most reports, a dud. The Jungle Book it is not so. Our children need innocent entertainment, not ecological sermons, Kool-Aid drinking mothers and fathers can show them Greta YouTube if they want that.
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Image of Ozi the orangutan courtesy of Mikros Animation.
