'We could have saved ourselves - but we didn't'

Image by Peter Armstrong

By Daniel Nelson

"The Age of Stupid" is now – because we continue to pump out carbon while knowing that it’s poisoning the world. "The Age of Stupid" is also an entertaining documentary film. But the makers hope it will be more: that it will help mobilise NGOs and individuals into action.

Their hope reflects the way the film was financed: it’s “crowd-funded”. The bulk of the money has come from donations and selling "shares" to ordinary people.

There was certainly a crowd at last week’s screening in Portcullis House, the externally ugly building opposite the Houses of Parliament that provides offices for MPs and their staff. Most of the audience, however, were supporters of the film-makers and climate activists, with barely half-a-dozen of the country’s elected representatives in attendance.

Nevertheless, Roger Hickman of Friends of the Earth was determinedly optimistic. He compared the Government’s climate bill, which seeks to establish parliamentary monitoring of carbon emission reductions, to Britain’s pioneering role in banning the slave trade.

To be effective, he admitted, the legislation needed a tougher overall reduction target and the inclusion of aircraft and ship emissions – but more than 80 MPs had signed up in support of these two proposals.

Colin Challen, the Labour MP who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on climate change, emphasised the importance of influencing MPs and staying engaged with the political process. He mused on the need for a “Green Militant Tendency” to infiltrate all political parties and influence their policies.

For the moment, the aim of the film’s director, Franny Armstrong, apart from worldwide screenings and an Oscar, is to focus on the NGO movement and its estimated 20 million members.

An NGO meeting is planned for 4 September “to plan how to get the film seen by as many people as possible.” So far, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, National Trust, Christian Aid, oneclimate and Oxfam have signed up.

And the film? It’s intelligent and entertaining – which puts it way ahead of the field. It focuses on the lives and struggles of seven people: 82-year-old French climber and guide, Fernand Pareaux; Iraqi refugees Jamila and Adnan Bayyoud, who fled to Jordan after their father was killed by US troops; Layefa Malin who lives in an oil-rich region of Nigeria in a village that lacks clean drinking water, electricity and healthcare; Al Duvernay, who rescued more than 100 people after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans; Jeh Wadia, who has set up a low-cost airline in India; Piers Guy, a windfarm developer fighting NIMBY protesters.

These real-life stories are held together by a dramatic device (added, amazingly, after three years’ filming when Armstrong, tired but clear-headed, decided the film as it stood wasn’t good enough) in which British actor Pete Postlethwaite looks back from the doomed year 2055 at the stupidity of an age in which “we could have saved ourselves, but we didn’t”. He has created a huge library containing information about the lives lived so absurdly – by you and me – as climate change began to bite; from his archives he selects the stories we see.

The film’s strength is that the people in these stories are movingly human: funny (often inadvertently), sad, ambitious, practical, idealistic, wistful, confused. You don’t feel they are being paraded to make an ideological point. Malin, for example, wants a better life for her fellow villagers, but she also wants a well-paid job and nice clothes. Duvernay, the retired oilman, asked if he would live his life the same way, knowing what he now knows, retorts, “Of course I would. You’ve got to work, you’ve got to do something.”

In terms of mobilising people to take action – as distinct from simply providing intelligent entertainment – I wonder whether the film-makers’ honesty will reduce the potential impact. If the message is simple and clear (reduce emissions to save the world), people will sign up. But each extra layer of complexity introduces potential doubts and reservations for viewers. Some people, for instance, may be convinced that climate change is occurring, but disagree about the overall importance of Piers Guy’s windfarms. Instead of lobbying their MP for action towards an agreed end, they may be sidetracked into a technical discussion on precise means.

A member of the audience at the Portcullis House screening put it another way: “It’s another film on what’s going wrong,” he said. “Let’s take the film as a full stop on what’s bad and then focus on what to do, what’s good.”

Let’s just hope those 20 million NGO supporters see the film, and that we all become less stupid.

* The Age of Stupid: www.crudemovie.net/

* To attend the September NGO meeting, email activists@ageofstupid.net

+ Pete gets a wind turbine [from the "Shropshire Star"

"Shropshire’s Oscar-nominated movie star Pete Postlethwaite is planning to invest thousands of pounds making his country home one of the most environmentally-friendly in the county.

Mr Postlethwaite owns a house in the south Shropshire countryside, near Bishop’s Castle, and wants to install a range of ecologically-responsible features....."