Marvel retiree Robert Downey Jr. has a new show: Downey’s Dream Cars. It follows the millionaire as he seeks to reconcile two of his hobbies, classic car collecting and climate change mitigation.
The Iron Man actor has led with this sort of juxtaposition before; when he kicked off his climate-focused venture firm FootPrint Coalition in 2019, he reportedly contrasted his intentions with a colorful description of himself as a “one-man carbon footprint nightmare colossus.”
We see more of this in episode one of Downey’s Dream Cars. The series centers on Downey’s plan to work with experts (such as Rich Benoit of Electrified Garage) to retrofit his various classic cars so they can run on lower-emission tech. Yet, the first episode opens with a left-field shot of Downey marching into a U.S. Army helicopter, introducing a stunt that seems at odds with the show’s emphasis on climate change. Out the gate, Downey acknowledges that this is a bit confusing, saying something to the effect of, “Wait, isn’t this …
