This film gets many things right when discussing the issues with renewable energy despite what all the naysayers say about the information being dated or misleading. The reality of the limitations of green energy were well known when the Kyoto Protocol was created in 1997 and there has been no magic bullet invented to date that has substantially changed these limitations 20+ years later.
However, this film fails to grasp the root cause of the situation we are in today. Also, it fails to frame the issue of climate change as a systemic problem rather insisting it's just another problem coinciding with the bigger problem of--what...well, it doesn't clearly state what. It implies--Over population? Civilization? Ecological collapse?
Whatever it may be in the mind of the filmmaker, it doesn't matter. My basic point is the film fails to grasp that climate change is a systemic problem and represents the ultimate outcome arising from the many abuses humans have wrought on the planet since perhaps their first appearance on the planet. Until climate change, the issues were the same as today and only differed in scale. To date, we've been able to kick the can down the road as we hit each limit--be it with migration, agriculture, colonialism, wastewater treatment, drinking water treatment, solid waste management, birth control, the green revolution, fracking, deeper wells for water and oil, fish farms, taller smoke stacks, catalytic converters on cars, etc.
With climate change we have reached a point where the entire system has shifted beneath our feet due to our activity and there is no more road to kick the can down. We have fundamentally altered the carbon cycle on this planet, the basic system that supports life as we know it on the planet. This shift is acidifying oceans, changing wind and water currents, killing forests, creating deserts, causing sessile species to go extinct, warming the deep sea in addition to melting the polar ice caps and glaciers we all hear about over and over again.
A systemic shift such as climate change requires a systemic change in how humans live on this planet. This film fails to realize that all the issues it raises with the current efforts put forward to address climate arise from a single underling root cause. And that root cause is, all of these so called solutions are based on the carbon mass balance approach to addressing climate change as mapped out in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. It is this approach, to perceive climate change as simply a carbon problem, is the reason why we have things like biomass plants, electric cars, gas powered electric plants, etc. If the film was as well informed about the climate change movement as it purports to be, it would have never proposed the issue was some sort of nefarious conspiracy between the environmental movement and the fossil fuel associated corporations. Rather it would KNOW that this alliance is by design with the signing of the Kyoto protocol. To make a film critical of this alliance seems to me either a cash grab or ignorance as that horse left the barn decades ago.
Of course back in the 1990 we could have easily chosen options such as addressing population through education and supporting planned parenthood, reforestation, conservation of existing forests and natural preserves, reducing consumption, improving energy efficiency, de-industrializing, mass transportation, proper city planning and other life embracing options to address climate change. Had we done this, we may have found ourselves living lives of quality. But human nature is what it is and it was especially strong in the Me generation boomers who held the reins at the time critical decisions needed to be made. It should be noted there was barely a whisper of groups advocating for this approach at the time of Kyoto. No one cared enough to be informed about the issue to raise a fuss in the 90s. This movie is decades late and a dollar short.
The fact is we as a species failed from the get go with Kyoto and the industry/economic interests that shaped what went into that plan. That is the real story and this film ignores this. Rather it places the blame on some nefarious conspiratorial relationship between oil/gas industry and environmentalists groups.
A poorly informed take on a tragic chain of events that can be traced directly back to at least to 1997 if not the appearance of humans on this planet.
However, this film fails to grasp the root cause of the situation we are in today. Also, it fails to frame the issue of climate change as a systemic problem rather insisting it's just another problem coinciding with the bigger problem of--what...well, it doesn't clearly state what. It implies--Over population? Civilization? Ecological collapse?
Whatever it may be in the mind of the filmmaker, it doesn't matter. My basic point is the film fails to grasp that climate change is a systemic problem and represents the ultimate outcome arising from the many abuses humans have wrought on the planet since perhaps their first appearance on the planet. Until climate change, the issues were the same as today and only differed in scale. To date, we've been able to kick the can down the road as we hit each limit--be it with migration, agriculture, colonialism, wastewater treatment, drinking water treatment, solid waste management, birth control, the green revolution, fracking, deeper wells for water and oil, fish farms, taller smoke stacks, catalytic converters on cars, etc.
With climate change we have reached a point where the entire system has shifted beneath our feet due to our activity and there is no more road to kick the can down. We have fundamentally altered the carbon cycle on this planet, the basic system that supports life as we know it on the planet. This shift is acidifying oceans, changing wind and water currents, killing forests, creating deserts, causing sessile species to go extinct, warming the deep sea in addition to melting the polar ice caps and glaciers we all hear about over and over again.
A systemic shift such as climate change requires a systemic change in how humans live on this planet. This film fails to realize that all the issues it raises with the current efforts put forward to address climate arise from a single underling root cause. And that root cause is, all of these so called solutions are based on the carbon mass balance approach to addressing climate change as mapped out in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. It is this approach, to perceive climate change as simply a carbon problem, is the reason why we have things like biomass plants, electric cars, gas powered electric plants, etc. If the film was as well informed about the climate change movement as it purports to be, it would have never proposed the issue was some sort of nefarious conspiracy between the environmental movement and the fossil fuel associated corporations. Rather it would KNOW that this alliance is by design with the signing of the Kyoto protocol. To make a film critical of this alliance seems to me either a cash grab or ignorance as that horse left the barn decades ago.
Of course back in the 1990 we could have easily chosen options such as addressing population through education and supporting planned parenthood, reforestation, conservation of existing forests and natural preserves, reducing consumption, improving energy efficiency, de-industrializing, mass transportation, proper city planning and other life embracing options to address climate change. Had we done this, we may have found ourselves living lives of quality. But human nature is what it is and it was especially strong in the Me generation boomers who held the reins at the time critical decisions needed to be made. It should be noted there was barely a whisper of groups advocating for this approach at the time of Kyoto. No one cared enough to be informed about the issue to raise a fuss in the 90s. This movie is decades late and a dollar short.
The fact is we as a species failed from the get go with Kyoto and the industry/economic interests that shaped what went into that plan. That is the real story and this film ignores this. Rather it places the blame on some nefarious conspiratorial relationship between oil/gas industry and environmentalists groups.
A poorly informed take on a tragic chain of events that can be traced directly back to at least to 1997 if not the appearance of humans on this planet.