Holy cow was that
Romanoff, who is running second in polls to former Gov. John Hickenlooper in the race to take on incumbent Republican Sen. Cory Gardner, and is running to the left of the moderate-liberal Hickenlooper, the only open lane, has been as tightly bound with climate-change activism as Gardner has been stuck to President Donald Trump. But that did not prepare anyone for his ad-cum-movie-short, “Home.”
It begins in a dark place – a basement, with the titles “Colorado Springs, CO” superimposed, and “In the not so distant future.” Then a girl’s voiceover: “What I miss most is the sunshine... We’ve been here for a really long time now.”
We see her parents, a pregnant woman and her male partner, in hazmat suits, squabbling. Through static, a radio announcer says, “Do not go outside.” Then Romanoff, on the radio: “This is not the stuff of fiction, nor some far off threat.”
Cut to present-day wildfires, droughts, tornadoes, refugees. Then to the Democratic presidential candidates on a debate stage, and a commentator saying, “You didn’t hear a lot of specifics on climate change from the debate because they think it’s too complicated an issue.” Cut to a refugee, apparently, a woman. She is wailing.
The 2020 Democratic Colorado Senate primary may be our last chance to address climate change, Romanoff says: “We can squander that chance on business as usual, allow corporate cash to cloud our judgment ...”
And cut to Hickenlooper, testifying before the Senate in 2013, saying Halliburton’s new fracking fluid is so clean you can drink it; then Trump, saying we have ended the war on coal. “Tired politicians tell us to lower our sights,” Romanoff says – followed by Gardner saying the Green New Deal is “a radical move toward a socialist energy and economic policy.”
And we wonder: Is there anyone connected with the Green New Deal, including its principal author, socialist New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who does not think it is radical, or socialist? Those are meant to be among the selling points of the resolution. Is it only wrong if a Republican says it?
Next we see Greta Thunberg, the famously angry Swedish teen climate activist, saying we should be angry. Then: “This is a movement driven by our nation’s true leaders,” Romanoff says, flashing on Ocasio-Cortez, “and people unfettered by fear” – back to Thunberg. “Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are already doing it,” Romanoff explains.
The last quote came from a humor magazine, Puck, in 1902. Commenting on the pace of technological change, it said, “Things move along so rapidly nowadays that people saying ‘It can’t be done’ are always being interrupted by somebody doing it.” You must decide whether or how the meaning has changed.
In 1964, Lyndon Johnson, running for president against the hawkish Republican Barry Goldwater, aired a TV ad that showed a little girl counting as she pulled petals off a daisy, then, as the camera zoomed into her iris, a countdown to a nuclear explosion. “These are the stakes,” Johnson said, followed by “Vote for President Johnson on Nov. 3.” No one had seen anything like it before in political advertising. Johnson won in a landslide.
In late 2016, Hillary Clinton’s campaign found the girl from the Daisy ad and, against the backdrop of it, had her say a vote for Trump could lead to nuclear war. We know how that turned out, in both senses.
And, notwithstanding Romanoff’s cinematic effort, which you really should see, we are still not hearing a lot of specifics from the candidates on climate change.
