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Climate Vision
Reuters reports that concerns over climate change have risen only slightly since 2009, as consumers around the world worry more about issues immediately impacting their daily lives. Climate of Denial features interviews with leading climate visionaries and thinkers who tell of their life's work and what inspires their vision, and the struggle with our collective denial of the magnitude of the problem. Their personal stories and insights narrate of state-of-the-art imaging of precipitous glacial ice melt and atmospheric temperature changes that graphically illustrate well-studied but poorly understood phenomenon. Through the use of unconventional editing techniques, the film seeks to pull away the veil of denial by contextualizing the hard science with the psychological forces that compel us to look away. The film opens with the words of Paul Crutzen, the Dutch atmospheric chemist who was awarded a Nobel Prize for his research on the hole in the Earth's ozone layer, and who first proposed the concept of "nuclear winter." When asked how he would explain global warming to his grandchildren, his poignant reply, "I haven't told them yet... I want them to remain children awhile longer..." speaks to our collective innocence and uncertainty in the face of a frightening unknown. As humanity has never faced such a global game changer in our evolutionary history, there may be no mechanism within the collective psyche to comprehend the magnitude of the crisis. As Hollywood has placed global warming within the realm of science fiction, too frightening and abstract to truly consider, how will we find the courage to face the coming storm? With Paul Crutzen, John Latham, Steven Salter and Jim Fournier. Other interviews under consideration include Jim Hansen, George Lakoff, and other leading thinkers and climate experts whose work may hold the keys to our future. Lee Buric
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