A 'shameless campaigning film'

The terrifying documentary about climate change. The Age of Stupid is the most imaginative and dramatic assault on the institutional complacency shrouding the issue. Pete Postlethwaite is our guide to the near future.

The year is 2055. Most of London is under water. Sydney is in flames. Las Vegas is being gently swallowed by the desert. The Archivist (Postlethwaite) lives alone in a concrete tower in the middle of the oily ocean somewhere around Norway with a museum collection of stuffed animals and priceless works of art. He sits in front of a transparent space-age screen and rifles through genuine newsreel clips, wondering why we failed to fight the 2degrees of global warming that pushed the planet beyond the critical point in 2015.

The power of this shameless campaigning film is that it gives dates and deadlines. It explores options and ideas. It names culprits, such as the businessman with dreams of providing dirt-cheap air travel to every man, woman, and child in India. It is witheringly sharp about the great and the good in rural England who would rather shoot their neighbours than allow them to erect a wind turbine.

The conclusion is probably spot-on: we are inches away from being the first species on the planet to knowingly kill itself off.