In a polarized world we live in, where greed became not only acceptable, but a virtue, this movie will not make any difference.The egotism and selfishness of our culture will be the end of us as species. Well, we all get what we deserve. Capitalism as destructive, seducing force, doesn't see any need to curb its lunacy. It must grow bigger and fatter, till explodes in our faces, and takes our cowardly world with it.And we all knew it might happen... But, we liked our trinkets and gadgets, our comforts and little pleasures, that became necessary to forget the out of control expanding of our work loads and demands. So, this is the gate in the near frightening future. I hope we all enjoy it.

It's a documentary about global warming or, more specifically, about anthropogenic global warming. Our host and narrator is a very serious Pete Postlethwaite. The opening shows us scenes, most computer-generated images, of a Las Vegas buried under sand dunes and a Sidney Opera House burning amidst the rubble. The message, repeated several times, is, "We could have saved ourselves." The producers are more certain about that than I am. The question is not whether the earth is heating up -- of course it is -- but how much our own activities contribute to that warming. If we ceased all emission of greenhouse gases at once, could we really "save ourselves"? The answer can't be a simple "yes" because we don't know for sure. The only correct answer is "probably" -- with a high degree of probability, and probably very high.However, my judgment is based on a scientific approach to social problems, a filthy tendency I picked up during a career in research. But this unnerving documentary isn't aimed at people like myself, who take science seriously. It's aimed at an audience who either haven't thought much about the ultimate effects of global warming or have managed to convince themselves -- or to let others convince them -- that the whole issue is a liberal-inspired hoax with Al Gore at the bottom of everything. That's almost as sad as the message of the film. The people who need most to see it will never watch it because it challenges an ideology to which they've committed themselves.The first example is presented by an eighty-two year old French guide to climbing in the Alps. He begins by leading a married couple down what appears to be a quarter mile of ladders bolted to a cliff face of rock, and he remarks that when he began his career there were no ladders because climbers could step directly off the cliff onto the glacier. Since then, the glacier has melted and dropped hundreds of feet. I didn't need convincing. I climbed, or rather walked, on the Columbia Icefield in Alberta, Canada, for the first time in 1953. I visited it again in 1988 and the edge of the ice had retreated about the length of a football field, one hundred yards or so, the glacier having melted to that extent over a mere 35 years.It's an important film but not a perfect one. The producers sort of skipped over the root cause of the processes they condemn. Regrettably, we can reduce our greenhouse gas emissions all we want, but there really is only one sure and final way to cut our contribution to global warming. As long as human being make use of an energy source there will be some environmental impact, large or small. Eventually we'll need to face the fact that there are simply too many of us. Nobody has exact figures on the world's population but the best estimate is that in 1950 there were about two billion of us. Today there are somewhat more than six billion. And, at current growth rates, by 2050 we should have doubled that figure to twelve billion. Every one of those twelve billion will be a contaminant, and China is the only nation currently addressing the problem -- in its own interest, not that of the globe. We all need a long-distance wake-up call from Thomas Malthus.And what is America doing? We're electing politicians who decry all science that doesn't fit their ideology, not just global warming but evolution. (Other countries have done such things before, proving the superiority of the Aryan race and the fact that acquired traits are inherited.) Two years ago, an elected representative stood on the floor of Congress, railing against the global warming hoax, took a deep breath, blew it out, and said, "That's carbon dioxide. See? It's not a poison gas!" A Missouri Congressman, a member of the House Science and Technology Committee, who believes that a woman can't conceived after being raped, recently told us, "I'm not anti-science. I'm pro-science. Only let's have science we can believe in." "The Age of Stupid." Even if everything else about the film were wrong, they'd have gotten the title right.

This film had some clever portrayals of critical concepts, especially in the animated segments. It initially did a good job of paring down the major issues. The story about the Mont Blanc guide who laments vanishing glaciers was the high point for me. There was dramatic footage of how much a glacier had receded in his lifetime.But the "personal stories" sent mixed messages, seemingly intentionally. They could have used a clearer moral angle. You couldn't tell if the characters were hypocrites or do-gooders. Maybe that was the whole point.Whatever the full intent was, it got lost on me when NIMBY attitudes toward 400-foot wind turbines were portrayed as ANTI-environmental, solely for the climate change aspect. The man pushing turbines had a righteous indignation that was one-sided in this coverage. Was he upset for lack of "greenness" or loss of personal profit? He was living on a farm, but seemed to have forgotten the value of nature itself vs. coddling human needs.Wind power development is often about short term gains for the developers. The outfits who build them are like oil wildcatters; not exactly people who respect nature. The locals end up stuck in an industrial zone when they had hoped for peace & quiet with unfettered sunsets and no shadow flicker or red flashing lights all night. Bird kills still happen with the large turbines, since their blade tips are fast-moving.The film singled out a scenario where a wind farm would be near a noisy speedway, but failed to mention that the cars aren't revving all night while people try to sleep. Turbine noise has been described as an insidious freight train that never arrives. Putting 400-foot structures on the viewshed is no trivial thing. It's an affront to nature in many ways. Those unwilling to cut back on fossil fuels are hypocritical to a point, but many are just tired of seeing the landscape wrecked to reduce our carbon footprint. What type of environmentalist can't see equal tragedy in Man's physical footprint?There was no effort to present solar panels on existing rooftops as a big alternative to wind. This is likely because the segments were done in Britain, which has minimal sunshine, but you can still generate solar power on cloudy days; just less of it. It's all relative. I'm not keen on industrial-scale solar plants that invade desert land, though they are much lower profile than turbines.For people who are tired of watching nature being industrialized, the amount of land being covered by turbines is just as depressing as the prospect of runaway climate change. Wind power seems like a classic Faustian bargain, and its emphasis spoiled this film for me.Piers Guy (the aforementioned wind developer) only had one small turbine on his farm. I wonder how ardent he'd remain if surrounded by dozens of giants? That's the true NIMBY test. Even if he'd personally be OK with it, it's still a travesty when turbines keep popping up in wild or bucolic landscapes, or can be easily seen from wilderness peaks and beaches. Future plans for their mass construction resemble a military invasion scenario.The segments about Nigeria and India (grossly overcrowded places) failed to emphasize the urgent need for birth control, which is arguably the best way to reduce overall energy demand and fix a host of other problems like urban sprawl and desecration of the landscape (see above). Poor people were portrayed as victims of circumstance, but they often dig their own holes by doing nothing to change overcrowded conditions.I did like the irony of the Indian airline entrepreneur, contrasted with flying as a wasteful, carbon-intensive activity.Global warming can be seen as primarily a population problem, and scientists say the Earth may only be able to support 2 billion people without fossil fuels (which the film noted indirectly in an animation). I found the emphasis on consumption vs. sheer human numbers to be overwrought, though still very important. Overall, this film was worth seeing but it sent too many mixed messages.

This is a good documentary. As agitprop, it's raised to the level of a must-see by the sharp manner in which honest, location documentary footage is intercut with a meticulously built up store of pertinent images and some really rather good animation (I had already seen a making-of video concerning the animation and it's actually better than I was expecting).Clearly, the 'gold'-standard for a polemic documentary such as this is the work of Michael Moore. For me this film is a cut above his oeuvre as there is a greater internal consistency about it. The voice-over is better tempered, a news- like patter delivered by a clearly on-board Pete Postlethwaite (although I didn't like Fanny Armstong's contrivance-curdled script with which he was saddled). Still, with the film rolling out at its own pace, the stories accrue credibility and one can see the clear difference between a blinkered oligarch-assumptive (Jeh Wadia) and the likes of Layefa Malini, a class apart in her poverty but a cut above in her optimism and positive humanity. 6/10