So I just watched Trading on Thin Air without having any idea what it was about before starting it.
It turns out a surprisingly useful piece. I’m not sure who actually made the film, but they seem to be average (or perhaps smarter-than-your-average) global warmists, so it’s built on the AGW premise, and of course includes some economic misunderstandings here and there…but it’s remarkable how accurate it is and how well it captures the real issues behind fiat currency and Cap & Trade…so remarkable in fact that it’s almost (almost) astounding how they could be so close yet still so far away.
One perfect example is when a talking head author lady points out how the price of oil more than doubled over a period of time when demand had gone down while supply had gone up (allegedly…she uses a timeframe of only 6 months), and then makes a comment about how “if you know anything about basic economics, if demand goes down or supply goes up, price should go down…so the fact that the price went up shows that markets aren’t working, and they aren’t working because we’re not regulating them.”) So obviously the implicit argument is, we need more regulation…but this is the argument she’s making while trying to make the case that Cap & Trade is a horrible idea. What she thinks Cap & Trade is, I have no idea.
Another great example is at 46:06, when a guy says “when Obama, or Biden or those people say 'think of the national budget like a household budget…we’re spending too much money…” (I guess he easily confuses Obama/Biden with Republicans). He continues: “Wrong! The national budget, the national debt has nothing to do with domestic debt.” (I have no idea what that is supposed to mean).
But as bad as that is, he follows it up with “..it has to do with the creation of money, it has to do with the banks, it has to do with the Federal Reserve. It has to do with who is actually making the money, and then who is using the money created by the Federal Reserve — which of course is a creature of the banks…”
The film is one of those counfounding pieces like Paul Grignon’s Money as Debt and Bill Still’s Money Masters. It seems to see all the problems with monopoly control, has no real problem pointing them out, and even some of the negative effects, and then goes on to offer no “solution” other than maybe more monopoly control.
The only difference here is Thin Air doesn’t rest on that notion. If I had to make a firm statement I would say the film offers no real solution at all. It literally ends with guys saying how “there’s still hope…we sheep just need to start asking questions and educating ourselves”. Which, while it’s not very useful, it’s not exactly damaging either…as it’s true, and certainly isn’t a faux “solution” like that presented in Grignon and Still’s films.
Overall this one presents much more good stuff than bad, and ultimately I think can be a very useful tool against the well-meaning do-gooder Ralph Nader types you might know, who just don’t know any better. Thin Air does a great job of turning so many of the “green” arguments on their heads, and actually using a lot of the environmentalist, tree-hugging, bleeding heart pathos against those who would argue for something like Cap and Trade and more subsidization of “green energy” projects and the like. The film talks about South American’s being forced off their lands so that some company might plant eucalyptus trees and then be able to sell cabon offsets. They show Africans talking about how their land and livlihood is destroyed by the building of dams.
It does get off track for a short bit in the middle, but by the end of the film they’ve got one guy talking about how economic ruin and profit for the corporations is brought about by the “anthropomorphic global warming scam” (his actual words), another guy even says how “their are a host of problems that are created by our attempts to comply with the Kyoto Protocol, they are environmental, and they also affect the ability of people in the 3rd world to feed themselves”, and then finally just concludes that “Kyoto has emerged as the single biggest destroyer of the environment.”
So while the film will most definitely leave viewers with virtually no idea what the solution is, it will do a great job of shaking up the notions they currently hold about government regulation and environmental programs being the answer. And for this, I think it can prove invaluable.
It’s not every day you get a film tying something the environmentalists like (global warming) to something they hate (corporations) and pointing out how it’s a quite cozy relationship for the two. You don’t often see images of African villages being destroyed alongside audio of how “green energy projects” are the cause of it.
You can watch and share the full film on Amazon and free on Hulu.