Tonight I had the pleasure of seeing "Everything's Cool," an uplifting documentary about various people that have been trying to get the message out about the urgency of global warming and what we can do about it. The film has enough detail and basics on global warming to be accessible to everyone, while focusing on the fascinating and critical challenge of getting the public to believe and engage. Specifically, the movie follows the efforts of folks like Ross Gelbspan and Bill McKibben from late 2004 through late 2006.
The movie also does a great job of showing how the fossil fuel industry through their mouth pieces at Cato and CEI have waged such a successful disinformation campaign just by creating the fiction of uncertainty or debate around the reality of global warming and urgency of action. As part of this, the movie follows Rick Piltz, the whistle blower who exposed Bush administration censoring and editing science reports on global warming. (Check out Climate Science Watch to see the great work that Piltz is up to now.)
Part of makes the movie so uplifting is that in the period covered there has been such a sea-change in awareness and concern about global warming. So these visionary messengers (one nun calls McKibben a modern day prophet) actually go from feeling like Paul Revere without a horse to actually having a horse, as Gelbspan puts it. But of course, the big question we were left with at the end is will it all add up to action?
Well, the movie's directors are trying to leverage the movie for all the action it can drive. Check out their web site at www.everythingscool.org, and you can learn about ways that they're already using the movie to educate and inspire. And if you're in NYC or LA, you can find showings near you. For the rest of the country, keep you eye out at local colleges and Step It Up gatherings for showings and also watch for it on Net Flix.
I give the movie and the effort behind it two thumbs up.