The
new film's creators aim to spark conversations about global warming.
Writer Naomi Klein and her filmmaker husband Avi Lewis lucked out with the release of their new documentary, This Changes Everything. This film about why humanity must kick our fossil-fuel habit before it wrecks the planet arrived at an ideal time.
For
one thing, Hillary Clinton belatedly came out against the Keystone XL pipeline. The Democratic Party’s presidential
frontrunner called the effort to funnel dirty oil extracted from Canada’s tar
sands through six states a “distraction from the important work we have to do
to combat climate change.”
And
Royal Dutch Shell has put its plans to drill for Arctic oil on ice. Despite pouring $7 billion
into that gambit, the company bowed to the bleak outlook for petroleum prices and
environmental pressure.
Klein
narrates the film, which illustrates many observations she made in her best-selling book with the same title. In print and on
the screen, she and Lewis stoke optimism instead of feeding the sense of
futility that often hinders climate action.
Lewis and Klein are Canadian, so it’s no surprise that the documentary dwells on Alberta. That’s the where the long-delayed Keystone XL pipeline, which Clinton embraced when she served in the Obama administration, would originate.
The
film begins with footage of the industrial wasteland that tar sands mining has
carved from the Canadian province’s mist-laced boreal forests.
A
beige moonscape cross-cut by veins of gooey bitumen looks like abstract art, or
mounds of mocha-fudge gelato, until viewers realize they’re glimpsing what used
to be a verdant landscape straight out of a Nordic fairytale. Before mining oil
from the muck below the forest floor, workers excise what the industry calls
the “overburden” by felling primeval forest and scraping away the rich soil
that sustains it.
These
gut-churning images, coupled with the disgusted response of native people
witnessing the destruction of their ancestral lands, brings the long-term costs
of powering our economy with fossil fuels into focus.
This
Changes Everything also
zooms in on folks in Montana, India, and everywhere in between on the
frontlines of climate resistance. Increasingly, they’re winning battles.
The
documentary also brings viewers to Fort McMurray, an Alberta boomtown where
hard-drinking workers are becoming millionaires without growing any roots.
There, boilermaker Lliam Hildebrand stares nervously into the camera. He labels
tar sands mining “barbaric” and says he finds the prospect of shifting to wind
and solar energy “exciting.”
After
all, “the renewable energy industry would employ exactly the same workers
that the oil sands does,” Hildebrand explains. “Pipefitters,
boilermakers, electricians…There’s absolutely no reason to not make the
transition.”
Following
a limited release in theaters, the film will become an educational
tool anchored to climate change discussions in communities
large and small.
Lewis
and Klein planned the release to coincide with the final negotiations for a new
United Nations climate treaty, which will begin in Paris on November 30.
Their New
York City premiere on October 2 coincided with the devastating floods that
swamped Columbia, Charleston, and smaller South Carolina towns. More than two feet of rain fell in
some areas. All that water killed 17 people, caused more than $1 billion in
damage, and raised questions about how frequent this kind of extreme weather
will become thanks to climate change.
Less
than two weeks earlier, Leonardo di Caprio and other investors had announced in
the Big Apple that their effort to move money out of oil, gas, and coal
financial assets is gaining steam. The total value of personal and
institutional holdings being divested of at least some fossil-fuel exposure has
topped $2.6 trillion.
There’s
never been a better time to discuss the benefits of ditching oil, gas, and
coal.
Columnist
Emily Schwartz Greco is the managing editor of OtherWords, a non-profit
national editorial service run by the Institute for Policy Studies. OtherWords.org.