[ExI] Kingsman

[Keith Henson]

Arel, my wife, is much more of a movie person than I am.  She wanted
to see one, “Kingsman: The Secret Service” so we went this evening

IMDB describes it thus:  “A super-secret spy organization recruits an
unrefined but promising street kid into the agency's ultra-competitive
training program just as a global threat emerges from a twisted tech
genius.”

It was a lot more interesting than you might expect for something
based off a comic book.  It is set in a world where global warming is
the consensus and said extremely rich tech genius dude by the name of
Valentine (played by Samuel L. Jackson) decides the only way to cope
is to kill most of the population.

It’s full of comic book violence, but the underlying politics is
rather interesting.  I didn't know the concerns about global warming
and overpopulation had penetrated far enough into the culture to base
a story on thwarting an evil genius whose idea of coping with global
warming is by killing off most of the population by inducing them into
a killing rage.  The fundamentalist church scene where the enraged
congregation members are all armed and kill each other was an amusing
twist.

A few years ago I ran into a number of people with similar views to
the Valentine character.  They didn’t think it was desirable to solve
the energy problem and commented on one of my early power satellite
article.  http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5485

The raging debate over the desirability of solving the energy problem
became so noisy that another blog commented on it.

“If you take a few minutes to read this blog, and again the comments,
you find the dissonance on full display.  On the one hand you have a
person saying that there may be an energy answer after fossil fuels.
On the other hand you have lots of people not only saying it is not
possible, but directly arguing that a human die-back is more desirable
than cheap energy.”

http://www.futurist.com/2009/06/15/energy-and-the-future-space-based-power-and-cognitive-dissonance/

My sum up comment to the whole thing was:

"Perhaps it is incorrect of me to assume they are in favor of a die
off when they reject that there even could be a solution to the
carbon/energy problems.  Operationally though it's the same thing."

It’s quite strange to have the attitudes of people you were debating
some 6 years ago define a movie villain.

Keith