We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, May 25, 2015

Ice and the Sky review – powerful eco doc fronts up to climate change deniers

Click here to access this film review by Andrew Pulver from The Guardian.
...Jacquet returns to the Antarctic to tell the life story of climatologist Claude Lorius, now in his 80s, who has spent his life drilling out ice cores at enormous depth, and whose resulting analysis proved key in linking climate change and “greenhouse” gases.
Jacquet presents his film very much as a head-on challenge to climate change deniers: by simply talking us through Lorius’s career, and the progress of his work, we understand the methodical processes by which he came to his conclusions. Essentially, it’s a rebuttal to background-noise deniers’ complaints about flawed science: Lorius says what he found, and what it means, with calm, unflappable detachment. 
The author concludes his review with this statement:
Jacquet’s film is ... a call to arms to the environmental movement destabilised and buffeted by the denial industry. Ice and the Sky ends with a direct challenge to the viewer: “Now that you know, what are you going to do?” What, indeed. This is a powerful testament, and one that ought to have a considerable impact.