Age of Stupid

I attended a climate change seminar last year by Mark Lynas which talked about the green film ‘Age of Stupid’. I eventually got round to watching this film and it is so powerful and a sharp reflection of what the future could hold for us. I challenge anyone to watch this film not feel compelled to immediately change their lifestyle or at least attempt to.

Not only does this film focus on an issue which is really important to me – climate change – it also tells a story of how it can impact everyone’s lives from all over the world and why it is so important to do something about it now before its too late.

The film was first released on March 15^th 2009 after 3 years of filming. The London premiere for this green film was held in a cinema tent powered by solar energy.

The film is based in mainstream scientific projections and everything shown from the present day and past is real news and documentary footage.

To set the scene for the film, it begins in 2055 and shows a devastated future planet; where London is flooded, the Alps are snowless, Vegas is a desert, Sydney is on fire and India has been devastated by war.

The documentary style film focuses its attention on a character who is an archivist and safe keeper of the planets surviving art and knowledge. There are 7 main storylines which form the basis of the film, which are a series of documentary style recordings from the present time. These comprise the start up of a cheap airline company, a ski resort tourist guide, Hurricane Katrina, a wind farm developer, oil exploration and war derived from the need for oil.

Although each story tells a different story about how climate change is affecting them, much of the devastation relates back to oil exploration. It is fascinating to see how oil is related to everything we do, from the clothes we wear to the food we buy – for me this really was a reality check. Families have and will be destroyed by the need for oil. This resource is becoming scare and the film highlights the fact that war is an inevitable result.

Oil is THE resource worth fighting for around the world and surely this can only lead to bad things. Should we not use what’s left of the oil to think of new energy sources and to figure out how we can live without this resource?

In a time of record climates; i.e. hottest summers, worst floods, heaviest rainfalls, driest seasons and expanding ice melt – why aren’t we taking more actions to secure a future for ourselves and our loved ones?

The underlying messages throughout this film include: Why didn’t we save ourselves when we had the chance? Why did humankind fail to address climate change? Was it not our responsibility to leave earth in a better place than we found it?

Did our generation really cause these problems?

If you haven’t already seen the film, take a look at the clip below from YouTube.