Ban Ki-moon Tackles the Important Issues

Apparently a world in crisis isn't enough to keep this "world leader" occupied. Much like his kindred spirit in the White House who parties while the Mideast unravels, this dim bulb presses forward with the really important issues of the day.

Libya's aflame, Mexico's under siege, Iran's building nuclear weapons and what's the U.N. secretary-general doing? Pitching movie ideas to Hollywood bigwigs.

We kid you not. As the real world seemed to be coming apart at the seams, Ban Ki-moon swept into Tinseltown during Oscar week to urge the entertainment industry to produce more movies, TV shows and music about — drumroll, please — global warming.

During a daylong forum, some 400 writers, directors, producers, agents and network executives were briefed on recent heat waves, floods, fires and droughts that have been blamed on man-made climate change.

"Animate these stories!" the Los Angeles Times quoted Ban as beseeching. "Set them to music! Give them life! Together we can have a blockbuster impact on the world." And judging from the Times' unblinking account, ideas started flowing immediately.

Despite the fact movies about mythical global warming bomb at the box office, surely Hollywood will continue to pour money down the rathole.

The climate effort, managed by the same office, has broader ambitions. "You have power and influence to send to millions and billions of people around world," Ban told his Los Angeles audience. "To make planet Earth environmentally sustainable is a political and moral imperative."

Also speaking on panels were Indian economist Rajendra Pachauri — chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the group of some 2,500 scientists who won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for assessing the effects of greenhouse gases — and Costa Rican diplomat Christiana Figueres, who led global treaty negotiations in Cancun as the head of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

"There's a huge gap between what governments can do, given political constraints, and what they should do," Figueres told Hollywood executives. "That's where you come in. ... We need you to make it sexy and cool to bring about the energy revolution that has to happen."

King asked Pachauri if he had a "sexy story we could make into a film."

Please, don't ever mention Larry King and Patchy in the same sentence as the word sexy.

But Marshall Herskovitz, a veteran producer and director who has a climate-related project in the works, dismissed the comparison. "Everybody is interested in health," he said. "But audiences see climate change as a distant phenomenon that affects parts of the world we don't see."

Unfortunately, Herskovitz said, "the best messaging on climate change by far is by the deniers. Chevron has a brilliant TV campaign. They would lead you to believe that climate change is being solved by the oil business."

H/T.