A Cautionary Tale
A cautionary tale
Global warming is a topic still debated and regularly discussed in the media. So it’s no surprise that here we have another documentary preaching most probably to the converted. While it will strengthen the resolve of the true believers, it could also throw a smidgen of concern into minds of skeptics. The Age of Stupid packs more whammy than An Inconvenient Truth and is particularly watchable. It deserves to be widely seen.
It's "hosted" by a grim faced Pete Postlethwaite who appears as the Global Archivist in the year 2055, when the planet is stricken by extreme climate changes. He oversees the storage archive containing the history of our race, located on a tower in the melted Arctic. The hope is if the planet becomes habitable again, or another life form takes over, they may be able to avoid a similar fate.
Postlethwaite, presenting doom-laden images on his touch computer screen, pertinently asks “Weren’t we sure we were worth saving... why didn’t we stop climate change when we had the chance?” To make this point perfectly clear, the first scenes from 2055 show the devastation of Sydney in flames around the Opera House, London under water, and Las Vegas under sand. Life on the planet is being snuffed out. So why have we committed suicide in ‘The Age of Stupid’, as Postlethwaite calls the first half of this century. The doco proceeds to tell us in compelling interviews and graphic newsreels culled from 1950 to 2008. In the final scene the archive is blasted into space as a cautionary tale for other civilisations.
From around the globe we meet people directly concerned with the threat of global warming. There’s a girl in Nigeria who cherishes the hope of becoming a doctor despite living in a poverty stricken village. She’s forced to fish in oil polluted waters of a nearby river. The wealth of the oil-rich country is channeled into the pockets of the few powerful, and certainly doesn’t get spent on social welfare. A retired Shell oil executive in New Orleans loses everything in Hurricane Katrina, but still manages to rescue dozens of people in his small boat. The scenes of the hurricane itself are daunting enough.
Jeh Wadia, a dynamic Indian ‘Richard Branson’ wannabe, opens his low cost airline despite air travel’s massive pollution problem while imagining he can help to eradicate local poverty. Fernand Pareau, an aging but active mountain guide in the French Alps, laments the rapid shrinking of a glacier as an ever increasing number of cars and trucks zoom through the Mont Blanc tunnel. Most ironic of all is Piers Guy, a British wind turbine entrepreneur who constantly battles local residents at sites where he wishes to establish a wind farm. While they’re all in total favour of green electricity they don’t want it generated in their backyards - so very bad for the view and property value.
It seems in a society so dependent on consumerism, the social changes required aren’t easily accepted. Fossil fuel is bound to run out at our present frightening rate of usage. The Age of Stupid vividly depicts the climate problems facing the world. It does so with a neat mix of snappy interviews, graphics, animation, CGI and memorable stock footage. Despite its apocalyptic story, the material is presented in a palatable way, proving to be both entertaining and thought provoking. The only downside perhaps is that people may feel we’re already gone too far and there’s no hope of redemption. The cut-off point of 2015 isn’t far away, and we’re told unless we reduce carbon emissions by that date the world is surely doomed.
Rugged featured Postlethwaite (Closing The Ring) as Master of Ceremonies does a great job of pointing the finger of guilt at us with the help of a challenging commentary written by Franny Armstrong, also competently directing the documentary. The visuals, especially Lawrence Gardner’s cinematography, are crisp and clean; while sharp editing by David G. Hill binds it tightly together. There’s a grim humour lurking in the background, but the warning is no laughing matter. It’s a strong effective ‘message’ film. Whether we take heed is another matter.
