"Carbon Zero Heroes" is the first segment of the thirty-third episode of the Disney Channel animated series The Ghost and Molly McGee.
Synopsis[]
When Molly and Ollie decide to embrace a carbon-zero lifestyle, they realize it's harder than it seems.
Plot[]
After watching a video about climate change, Molly and Ollie decide that they will live a carbon-zero lifestyle in order to "change climate change" and resort to removing anything that remotely uses up energy. They immediately hit a problem when they remember to go to Andrea's birthday party and insist on using bikes, despite having to go up a giant hill. Meanwhile, Libby believes that climate change is inevitable and reveals to Scratch that she has built a bunker for herself for the climate change fallout which she believes will result in a zombie apocalypse. Scratch is amused by the scenario, admitting that he does not care much for how the Earth turns out due to already being dead.
Molly and Ollie make it Andrea's party but arrive too late as it has already ended. They return home, tired and defeated and turn down watching a movie, using up the refrigerator, and have dinner by eating raw vegetables from the garden outside. The two begin to radically suffer from not having access to any pleasures. Libby continues to reveal her plan for the apocalypse, much to Scratch's amusement, but when she mentions that no processed foods like ice cream will exist, Scratch becomes horrified and despondent. Molly and Ollie have Darryl crunch the numbers on their actions and while they succeed in being labeled carbon-free, the margin of error reveals an extreme 0.003% was used up, much to their sadness.
Molly and Ollie decide to join Libby in her bunker and accept the inevitable, but Scratch isn't having any of it. He reveals his fear of losing ice cream all together, but while going over describing what makes ice cream great, the kids start to assume that Scratch is making an analogy about working together and they all agree that it takes everyone to keep carbon emissions down. They pitch their idea for a new project to the mayor who agrees that they need to do something. Brighton begins opening up green jobs, more bike lanes, and locally made fan generators, working towards a cleaner tomorrow. Scratch meanwhile gorges himself on ice cream.
Cast[]
- Ashly Burch as Molly McGee
- Dana Snyder as Scratch
- Alan Lee as Ollie Chen
- Lara Jill Miller as Libby Stein-Torres
- Jordan Klepper as Pete McGee
- Sumalee Montano as Sharon McGee
- Michaela Dietz as Darryl McGee
- Jules Medcraft as Andrea Davenport
- Patton Oswalt as Mayor Brunson
- Julia Jones as Clover Lightfoot
Song[]
- "We Can Change Climate Change"
Trivia[]
- This episode essentially acts as an educational piece about carbon awareness.
- The genre of the song "We Can Change Climate Change" is stylized like many songs that have played during the end credits of several animated films in the 1990s.
- The song's melody also has some similarities to "Waving Through a Window" from the Broadway musical, Dear Evan Hansen, as well as the Cyndi Lauper song "Time After Time".
- Libby's argument over there being a zombie apocalypse to follow climate change is not only fantastical, it is also unrealistic. Seeing as how zombies are essentially rotting corpses, climate change would virtually make it impossible for zombies to even function as the extreme weather would most likely prevent them from even functioning.
