Movies About Climate Change: showings TBA

Caption: Refugees of the Blue Planet captures the plight of the Maldives islanders.

SACC is gearing up a film fest on climate change this summer. We have some of these films and are in the process of trying to acquire and get permission to show the others.

* An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore. This is the old standby, often criticized for not not providing solutions. Nevertheless for those that have not seen it, it provides a good introduction to the basic problem.

* Escape from Suburbia and the its prequel End of Suburbia, both about peak oil. These are incredible films reveal how our economy and way of life is built on a resource that cannot last, and the need for truly sustainable off-the-grid living through community gardening, renewable energy sources (as in Germany) and a reduction in consumption.

* The following films available through Robarts Library and can be accessed anytime by students:

• The Great Warming is a Canadian film about global warming. It is dull and out date and too long, but part of it are worth seeing.
• Rising waters : global warming and the fate of the Pacific Islands. These people actually lost their homes to rising ocean level —the first discernible victims of climate change. The World Health Organization estimates that 150,000 people lose their lives annually to climate change —it is probably much higher than that.

* A list of 30 global warming films from Bullfrog Films. Most of these we have not seen yet but have heard about and will review. Has anyone seen any of them and can provide a brief movie review?

* Turning down the heat : the new energy revolution by David Suzuki.

* Two part BBC series on climate change with Richard Attenborough.

* Soylent Green. Although made in 1972 It is eerily prescient regarding the future. See movie review. Silent Running and TXH-1138 are two sci-fi film from the 1970s that gives a dystopian vision of what the future might be like: devoid of plant and animal life, with humans living in completely artificial enviroments.

* How to Save the Planet, about the organic farming revolution in India. The relation to climate change is that centralized industrial farming is unsustainable, whereas localized organic farming is the solution to the world's food problems. See movie review.

* 26 Films on renewable energy endorsed by the Sierra Club. Has anyone seen these films? Would you care to write a brief review of them for this blog?

* A movies we are undecided about showing: The Day After Tomorrow. The science is all wrong in this film and it's not well-made, but it does give you a sense of how stupid the U.S. government is by failing to deal with the impending crisis. There is an interesting scene at the beginning where the Larsen B ice shelf in Antarctica breaks off (which actually happened).

* A movie we want to show when it's released: The film with the working title The Tipping Point (to be released in 2008) is being produced and directed by those who produced the acclaimed 8-hour BBC television series "Earth Story." It will interview scientists involved in studying climate change.