Tone Deaf
Early on the evening of June 21, as air conditioned, stretch limousines and mammoth chauffer-driven SUVs made their way up narrow winding Hollywood Hills streets to the Greek Amphitheatre in Los Angeles’ Griffith Park, the mercury was still hovering above the century mark. The fleet of high-priced, low-mileage, exhaust-spewing livery was about to deliver guests of the Walt Disney Company to the world premiere of Pixar Animation Studio’s latest full-length, CG-animated film, WALL-E.
WALL•E is the story of a small trash compacting robot dutifully cleaning up the mess left by mankind on an Earth whose rivers and oceans have all run dry and whose atmosphere is so befouled that life as we know it does not exist anywhere on the planet.
It was the sixth straight day of serious record-breaking heat across Southern California, where temperatures have been anywhere from 10 to 15 degrees above normal average temps for this time of year and random power outages plagued the populace. The irony of the CO2-expelling, resource-depleting equipment being used to promote the film was lost on no one standing beneath the thousands of kilowatts of stage lighting used to illuminate the “brown” carpet.
Perhaps this may explain why it was so difficult for many members of the media to get even a few words from those responsible for the production of WALL•E and the operation of Disney/Pixar Animation Studios.
WALL•E writer, director Andrew Stanton waves to the media from the far side of the "brown" carpet.
Image copyright© obe-mediaone. All rights reserved.
Alone among the Disney/Pixar execs willing to talk eco issues with the press was Ed Catmull, president of the joint animation studios.
When asked if he himself recycled, Catmull proudly said yes during an online video interview. When asked when the last time he recycled was, Catmull told his interviewer that he’d done so that very day, as he does nearly every day.
Catmull went on to say he was very concerned about the environment. He volunteered that his personal vehicle is a Toyota Prius Hybrid, and that he’s eagerly looking forward to the day he can buy a car that gets better than 50 miles per gallon while driving around town.
That’s His Story, and He’s Stickin’ to It
This wasn’t the first time that the idea that WALL•E is intended to be a cautionary tale about the future of our planet has come up.
Earlier in the week, WALL•E director and cowriter Andrew Stanton spent a great deal of time sparring with reporters about the deeper meaning of WALL•E’s story.
Questioner after questioner pressed the director as to the true intent behind his depiction of an Earth ravaged by man’s wastefulness, and a humanity so lazy that it has devolved into a society of big, bloated, baby-like beings that never leave their hover chairs or communicate in any way other than video screen—even when the person they’re talking to is right beside them.
For his part, Stanton gamely brushed aside every question about the film’s message, as he’s done since the beginning of the WALL•E media campaign, while continually repeating the mantra that his film is “basically a love story between two robots.”
WALL•E is a love story, and a charming one at that—we’ll have a full review of the film on Friday. However, Stanton’s repeated denials that he and the gang at Pixar never intended the film to convey a deeper meaning failed to mollify the majority of media at this week’s events. And there may be a reason for that.
A small sample of the WALL•E consumer goods available, well for consumption.
Image copyright© obe-mediaone. All rights reserved.
Mixed Messages
Stanton is probably wise to distance himself from the idea that he and the folks up in Emeryville in any way wanted to send a message about the environment.
When it comes to the real-world environment, the story coming out of the Walt Disney Company can be confusing at best…and downright silly at worst.
Talk to people familiar with Disney’s environmental polices and you’ll learn about a myriad of highly effective programs the Mouse has put in place to save energy and conserve resources at its parks, resorts, and offices around the world.
At Walt Disney World in Florida, the company’s “Stride for Five” energy conservation program saved so much electricity that when Disney’s Animal Kingdom came on line, it didn’t even raise the resort’s overall load.
At the same time, you’ll learn of the frustration involved in getting people within the company to understand that no matter how much you deny it, people are going to notice the irony of promoting a movie about a devastated and wasted Earth by throwing a lavish resources consuming party.
Since 1990, Disney has had an Environmental Policy Division, out of which grew the Disney Environmentality brand. Despite making remarkable and significant strides in better managing the company’s environmental impact, Environmentality still found it difficult to be able to fully and accurately assess the impact of Disney’s diverse and often far-flung operations.
In 2006, CEO Bob Iger appointed the Environmental Council of senior executives to better analyze Disney's impact on the environment. The council, in turn, has undertaken a “thorough and detailed audit” of every aspect of the company’s resource management and environmental impact. That report should be ready later this year.
And not a minute too soon as a visit to the Disney Environmentality website will attest.
Why is a Raven Like a Writing Desk?
Like something out of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass,Disney’s Enviroport 2007, the most recent annual environmental report of the Walt Disney Company, can leave the average reader wondering how committees and forward-looking reports save energy. It also makes you wonder why the report talks so much about teaching guests and customers how to conserve resources and not so much about what the company is doing to reduce its environmental impact, besides having its cast members turn off lights and stop using plastic water bottles.
A holdover of many of the policies from the Disney Company of the ‘90s, the report makes generous use of corporate speak—I think the writer was being paid by the word—and inadvertently gives the appearance the company is a victim of its own inertia:
Disney's enhanced policies will aim to optimize the Company's operational impact on the environment through the measurement and reduction of waste, fossil-fuel use, and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as improved eco-system protection. The Environmental Council sees 2008 as a year in which systems are put into place, measurements are greatly refined, and new initiatives are kick-started to both establish and begin to meet reduction goals.—Disney Enviroport 2007
That statement reads as if the company would like to use less fuel and lower greenhouse gas emissions but, despite having an organized effort in place to do so since 1990, hasn’t, as of yet, been able to clean up its act, so to speak.
What the report doesn’t talk about is the strides Disney has made in converting all of its executive vehicles to cleaner burning, high-mileage hybrids and its increased use of alternative fuels, such as biodiesel.
Sun Screen
And then there’s solar energy.
With hundreds of square acres of flat roofs sitting beneath the sun drenched skies of Florida and Southern California, the Walt Disney Company only has two sets, or arrays, of solar panels atop a single sound stage and a walk-way at The Walt Disney Studios in Burbank. Why not more?
The Walt Disney Company considers these installations to be pilot initiatives that will help us learn more about the process of solar installation, how well the system operates over the long-term, reliability of the system, and if the electronics are meeting expectations. The time needed for making this evaluation is at least two years, which will allow us to see how well system functions and to assess any impacts on the system sustained over time. After that, Disney will assess the benefit of future projects with special attention given to the financial feasibility of such systems.—Disney Solar FAQ
That somewhat wordy response—probably written by the same guy who wrote about fuel consumption—overlooks one very important fact. Solar energy is one of the most extensively researched and documented forms of energy there is.
There are voluminous, academically-credited research materials readily available on virtually every aspect of its use. Not to mention the fact that several well-established companies are currently in the business of installing and operating solar arrays for companies just like Disney.
How do I know all this? I got the preceding information from a transcript of a PBS Nova documentary on solar energy Saved by the Sun, which I found via a Google search. Additionally, I learned that the people and government of Germany are far more convinced of the viability of the immediate implementation of solar energy than the cautious folks at Disney, and Germany, which is on track to get 20 percent of its electricity from the sun, doesn’t have nearly the access to sunny skies that Mickey has.
I can’t imagine why it’s going to take Disney Environmentality two years to figure out if using solar energy is a good thing or not, and neither could any of the folks familiar with the Mouse’s environmental polices I spoke with.
Change is difficult, and as the old saying goes: its progress, not perfection. It does seem funny, however, that a communications company would have such a hard time telling its own energy conservation story.
The PBS Nova documentary Saved by the Sun is available online from PBS or for DVD purchase.
Image copyright© PBS. All rights reserved.
[As a direct result of the purchase of Pixar Animation Studios by the Walt Disney Company, C. W. Oberleitner now owns two shares of stock in the Walt Disney Company.—Editor]
