Another bad movie about climate change...

Several years ago, the world had the pleasure of witnessing the potential calamities of climate change for $10 and a popcorn when The Day After Tomorrow came to theatres. That blockbuster saw cataclysmic storms and the flooding of New York City after the global ocean conveyor suddenly shut down. Chaos ensued, Dennis Quaid had to rescue Jake Gyllenhaal and in an ironic twist, the surviving Americans had to escape to Mexico.

This evening I encountered another climate change movie that was a little less blockbuster but just as doom and gloom. Released in 2006, The Last Winter is set in a remote Alaskan monitoring station. After an oil company finds a mammoth supply of oil under the permafrost somewhere in Alaska, they are forced to bring in a group of environmentalists to measure the potential environmental impact of drilling on the 'pristine' landscape. The environmentalists clash with the rugged oil company folk (led by Ron Perlman, though this time not donning his Hellboy look), but soon things start to get weird once one of the workers ends up frozen and naked by a mysterious oil pipe.

Now, before I go any further, I'll caution those that have any desire to see this film that I might give some of it away below. Read at your peril. But seriously, you shouldn't waste your time with the movie...

What seems to be happening is the permafrost is warming in Alaska at an exponential rate and perhaps some 'Sour Gas' is leaking. Then more things go wrong, people go crazy, lots of folks die and the last few seem to figure out that what is coming after them is an old dark spirit known by the Inuit as a Windigo, which in the movie is glowing green and resembles some kind caribou on steroids. More people die and some get lit on fire.

Eventually, the last survivor wakes up in a hospital bed somewhere else in Alaska, only to find the small medical station inhabited by a TV showing massive flooding in North America and the hanging corpse of a doctor that committed suicide. She goes outside and is standing in a major puddle with alarms going off. End scene.

We can only infer that it's the end of the world. After all, the film's tagline is "What if mankind only had one season left on Earth?". It was pretty depressing. I mean, you didn't see her escaping to Mexico.

The film's main message seemed to be twofold. First, whenever climate change hits us, it will hit us hard and it will be bad. Second, it carried a narrative of nature striking back against us, both in its weather-related form with lots of melting and in its spiritual giant caribou form.

Despite the clear budget differences between this and The Day After Tomorrow, Hollywood still seems to only be able to pull off alarmist climate change movies. If I were in the business, I would too. Copenhagen conferences and G8 meetings probably wouldn't make for box-office hits. Then again, throw in Denzel Washington as Barack Obama and add a few plot twists involving him kicking serious global public policy ass, and you might have something.

At least this movie wasn't as blatant about the climate change stuff until the end. But it still sucked. A lot. Don't watch it.

Are you an environmentalist?...

I posed this question on our blog several months ago after watching the film Addicted to Plastic at the Peterborough Film Festival. The film's creator asked this of the many people he interviewed during his film, including farmers, sailors, scientists and entrepreneurs.


The results were mixed. Some were very happy to consider themselves environmentalists, including some farmers, citing their intrinsic tie to the environment, while others were vehemently opposed to the idea, such as an entrepreneur who reuses material to build large objects and some scientists who felt that shouldn't pick sides as it would ruin their research credibility.

So what exactly does it mean to be an environmentalist?

According to some dictionaries, an environmentalist is one who "advocates for or works towards protecting the natural environment from destruction or pollution". That's fairly vague, but such vagueness is entirely appropriate when looking at such a broad term.

The word is relative to each person. Some environmentalists will do anything and everything in their power to "protect the natural environment". Others may only make environmentally-focused decisions every once in awhile. Some may not even know they're doing something 'environmentally friendly'.

But it is this first group that seems to have grabbed the popular definition of what an environmentalist is. These are the granola-munching, Greenpeace flag-waving, ultra-vegan, reuse everything, 'don't bother that mosquito because it's a beautiful creature' types. Quite simply, they are the hardcores. And I should point out that there is nothing wrong with this. In fact, I'm quite impressed by the lifestyle that many of these people live. I certainly could never do it.

But the problem is that when the average person considers what it is to be an environmentalist, this is what first comes to mind. The entrepreneur wants nothing to do with a label that would associate him with the hardcores. And some others might simply feel they don't 'qualify' to be an environmentalist because they are not up to the standard set by the hardcores. Sally down the road might be very 'green', but since she still drives her Volvo to work and frequently watches movies on her Plasma TV, she thinks there is no way she could be an environmentalist.

The idea that environmentalists are limited to the hardcores is something that needs to change. It is certainly on its way. As the shopping list of environmental dangers is getting more and more attention, a growing number of people are starting to act 'greener'. And while government incentives are certainly helping out, there seems to be more to it than economics. People actually care.

Four years ago I didn't really care. I recycled because my parents told me to, left the TV on for hours after I left the room, had no idea what global warming was (and didn't care) and enjoyed spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere while doing donuts in a car.

But before you think I'm about to preach to you like an environmental convert, I haven't changed that much. I still love to drive, watch lots of TV, eat non-local, processed food and fly across Canada several times a year.

But I know the environment is important. I'm trying to do my part. I'm living a relatively 'greener' life. But I'm not perfect. But I consider myself an environmentalist.

You don't have to be a hardcore to care about the environment or to contribute in some way to helping it out.

Lastly, I would like to touch on the importance of using such a term. One might very easily toss aside this entire argument because self-labelling may not do anything when it comes to actual behaviour. This is true (cough, One million acts of green, cough), to a point. But feeling positive about your lifestyle is important. For years, the environmental strategy was to make people feel guilty about their behaviour. But it hasn't really worked and it may have exacerbated the problem.

But if people are more inclined to feel good about some of their actions rather than guilty about what they don't do, this whole environmental thing might be a lot more successful.

So ask yourself, even though you might hate the hardcores or don't strive to their standard, do you care about the environment in some way or another? Are you an environmentalist?

Looking for a skeptic? Check the comment box...

You may have noticed over the past few months that I frequently read the Globe & Mail online newspaper. According to the hundreds of comments received by most articles and columns, many others read it too.

The ability to publicly (and instantly) comment on the posted specials, articles and columns is one of the highlights of most online news sites. Some of the biggest online news sites (The New York Times, CTV, The National Post, The Globe and Mail) consistently receive thousands of comments daily. The Globe & Mail actually touts this ability in some of its advertisements, using cartoon bantering heads to showcase the comment area as an intellectual forum of sorts.

I used to think that there was a positive correlation between the number of comments received and the importance or relevance of an article. Often, this may be the case. However, when reading the increasingly common articles on climate change (and this phenomenon is not unique to climate change) I have come to realize that the commenting space is less of an intellectual forum and more of a politically-charged open house for skeptics.

Prior to the federal election in 2008, Stephane Dion's plan for a national carbon tax received much media attention and more comments online than I had ever seen. While going through many of the articles for some research, it became apparent that the majority of comments were from anti-climate change folks, who preached a business-first chorus and were often full out deniers of human beings' influence on climate changes. Some even denied the existence of climate change, offering up unfounded or inaccurate evidence for their beliefs.

However, at that point there were still some people who tried to have a reasonable discussion, skeptic or not. But since then, the number of comments from people wishing to have an open forum or even promote good climate change policy has significantly declined.

It's not a particularly surprising turn of events, considering the level of conversation taken by the skeptics. Rather than trying to talk with someone, they often (and I only marginally generalize) talk at them and ignore any view other than their own. This could also be said of the non-skeptics, but as the evidence crushing down skeptics' beliefs increases, the non-skeptic tends to warrant much greater credibility. Many probably feel it is a futile effort to try to have a decent discussion on the comment section, so no decent comments are actually left anymore.

The views held by the comment-dominating skeptics were once those of the world's policymakers and more importantly, shared by the general public. But these skeptical views are becoming less and less popular and are often dismissed for a variety of justified reasons. As a result, the extreme end of these views can only be found in the smallest, darkest pockets of popular media. Unfortunately, they're poisoning the wonderfully ideal notion of an online intellectual forum.

If you're looking for a decent laugh, I highly recommend a quick tour through some of the online comments received by the major news media articles on climate change.

Two sides to the climate change story...

Both these men acknowledge that climate change is happening, but are at odds over whether or not human beings are the central cause of it.

You probably recognize the first man, former Vice-President, Nobel-Prize winner and environmental crusader, Al Gore. He's of the camp that feels climate change is an impending doom and is by far the biggest problem the world is currently facing. He believes everything should be done to avert the dangers of climate change, which is primarily caused by human activities.

The second man is Danish political scientist and economist, Bjorn Lomborg, famed author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist". He feels that climate change is not nearly as serious as people like Gore make it out to be. It's a very important point because the measures needed to avert predicted climate change are going to be very expensive and that money could be spent on other problems throughout the world, such as HIV/AIDS. 

I tend to fall in line with Gore's camp, but it's very important to understand the views of all sides. I should also note that Lomborg is one of the more moderate climate change skeptics so he isn't completely representative of the anti-climate change extreme. He is however, a very bright guy and his ideas should be looked at.

It's very easy to jump on a bandwagon and ignore the other sides of the story. But to properly understand an issue, you should know as many of the perspectives as possible. Whether you're a Gore-like crusader, a skeptic or sitting somewhere in the middle, learning about the whole issue is worth a look. 

CCS Battlefield: CNN Advertising Airtime

                                                                                 vs.

The commercial breaks between CNN shows have become the latest battlefield in the adoption of controversial Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology. For many weeks, the folks over at the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) had been serving up commercials trying to cozy viewers up to the idea of a continued use of coal as a primary source of electricity generation in the United States. 

The commercials (found here) focus on the importance coal plays in the American electricity supply (approximately 50%), the cheapness of coal-produced electricity, the abundance of coal in America (take note of the whole energy independence issue in the US) and the prevalence of CCS as a means of capturing all the environmentally harmful emissions produced from coal. The last factor was the real sticking point.

As climate change gets more important, the coal industry has taken a real beating. Because coal is one of the dirtier energy sources (dirtier than oil and natural gas) in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, many are trying to get away from coal-fired electricity generation. Even in Canada, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has pledged to shutdown all of Ontario's coal-fired plants in due course. But if all the harmful emissions from coal could be captured and stored safely, the United States would be looking at a pretty nice energy supply for the next few hundred years.

This is where the folks at Reality.Org have decided to step in. Over the past month or so, the group (which is comprised of several environmental organizations) has been putting together commercials (one found here) showcasing the lack of CCS technology in the US. According to Reality.org, there are no CCS projects up and running in the US for clean coal.

This is true, but several are in the works. Whether or not they ever get completed is questionable.

I certainly don't back either organization, but they each have some decent points. The ACCCE is right that clean coal could be a very effective and dependable source of electricity in the United States, if it works. CCS is outrageously expensive and would lower coal's affordability significantly. Not to mention that CCS plants are not proven to capture 100% of emissions from any energy source, including coal. On the other hand it seems that Reality.Org is primarily focusing on the lack of CCS projects. If CCS starts to be implemented for clean coal facilities, the Reality.Org argument may be significantly weakened. 

The most important aspect of this battle is to look at the organizations themselves. The ACCCE is formed by the corporate coal industry who see that their dominant industry is in danger. Reality.Org is made up of a coalition of environmental groups who have traditionally been very opposed to CCS and are in complete favour of renewable energy, sometimes offering unrealistic rhetoric on the viability of renewable technologies. It should all be taken with a grain of salt.

Is the Polar Bear the right posterboy?...

There is currently a conference going on in Winnipeg, MB concerning climate change and Canada's implications. One of the primary discussion topics will be that of the polar bear, which has found itself as the posterboy for climate change.

Images of the polar bear (which lives primarily in Canada's melting Arctic) struggling to hunt and falling in and out of the frigid ocean waters as a result of the increasingly thinning ice in the Arctic have been pasted all over mainstream media outlets; from major motion pictures like An Inconvenient Truth to book covers and climate change coverage from news broadcasters. Whether it likes it or not, the polar bear is the face we have put to climate change.

But is the polar bear the right image we want to portray in the effort to mitigate climate change?

The polar bear is a magnificent creature that many are willing to protect. To lose such a creature is a thought that bothers a great deal of people. And the loss of other animals like elephants and whales has prompted a level of concern to deal with other environmental issues. To Canadians in particular it is a symbol of our national identity (even though the United States placed it on their Endangered Species list before Canada did). 

But climate change is such a complex problem with a variety of impacts. If we want human beings (especially in the developed world) to start taking climate change seriously, should we really be placing a lot of emphasis on an animal? Or should we instead begin to really highlight the aspects of climate change that will have immediate and direct effects on human beings? 

Severe droughts in the south-eastern United States, the eradication of BC and Alberta forests from the Mountain Pine Beetle, more frequent and powerful storms, loss of fresh water resources and more heat waves are just a few issues that could be the main face of climate change. 

The polar bear is a magnificent creature and losing it would be devastating. But human beings naturally place concern over something to a much greater degree when it affects them directly, so should we really be holding the polar bear as the climate change martyr?  

We're not in this to save the planet...

I attribute much of this entry to the late George Carlin, whose comedic rant about environmentalists got me thinking:

For decades many environmentalists have been parading around encouraging others to help in the battle to 'save the planet'. Moreover, as part of the recent indulgence of business to 'green itself', a myriad of advertising campaigns speak about their desire to 'help save the planet'. I think we need to make something clear: the planet doesn't need saving.

In its 4.7 billion year history, the planet has dealt with quite a bit. Ice ages to warm periods, asteroids and comets and who knows what else. And with each change the planet has promptly dealt with it and refreshed itself, without anything or anyone else helping out. And now humans believe that the planet needs our help to save itself from the problems we've caused since our 15,000 years or so on the planet. A tad arrogant, isn't it? As far as the planet is concerned, anthropogenic problems are simply an itch that needs to be scratched; it's faced far more significant issues before.

So what are we really trying to save? Ourselves probably; or if we're trying to sound a little less selfish, trying to save an environment that will allow us to keep living fairly comfortably. And sure, perhaps some are looking to save certain animals, species or ecosystems for their intrinsic value, which is justified.

But it's an important question to ask yourself: in the whole environmental issue, who or what is it that you think we're trying to save? Because it certainly isn't the planet.

Climate Change or Global Warming...

Climate change. Global warming. They're the same thing, right? 

As the world warms, so the climate changes. No biggie. The terms are interchangable. Not quite.

From an environmental communication point of view, the term used has very differing implications. Because of its complex seriousness and potential impact on so many aspects of our current lifestyles, climate change has a solid following of skeptics who wish (for a variety of often selfish reasons) to discredit any relationship between human beings and climate change, let alone the fact that climate change is actually happening.

You will see these skeptics more commonly using the 'global warming' term rather than 'climate change'. It isn't hard to see why. Even though the world is warming on average, this doesn't mean that every part of the world is warming nor are the warming areas necessarily going to be warming all the time. As a result, it's easy for skeptics to quickly dismiss any evidence of climate change, claiming that it must be a false phenomenon because certain areas are not warming. 

For instance, a writer for the National Post repeatedly refers to his unusually cold and wet week at his Ontario cottage as strict evidence that climate change does not exist. Last year there were icebergs floating off the coast of New Zealand. That certainly doesn't provide much evidence of global warming.

'Climate change' on the other hand embraces the entire issue. It acknowledges that parts of the world will warm, but other parts will cool. It's considerably harder for skeptics to discredit such a term. 

To those who are more accepting of the evidence surrounding climate change, the two terms may be interchangable. But for the purpose of communicating with the public and limiting the abilities of climate change skeptics, perhaps we should put more emphasis on 'climate change' than 'global warming'.