The new green film from Franny Amstrong, director of "McLibel".  

I finally got round to watching "The Age of Stupid", with some apprehension, because I suspected it would be an angry movie. Also, some of us can't stop thinking of Pete Postlethwaite as a rather gruesome character, after all the ghastly roles he's played, including Kobayashi, the somber and loyal assistant of Kaiser Soze in Bryan Singer's "Usual Suspects". As it turns out, "gruesome" is perfect for the role, and Postlethwaite is perfectly cast as a man living alone in 2055 and moaning about the past destruction of the world.

I suspected the film would be Greenpeace meets Michael Moore meets the town vicar. It's all of those things. Then you have the totally anti-climatic recommendation of former major of London Ken Livingstone, who said that everyone should be forcibly made to see this film. Oh dear! London is such a happier place now that he and his Stalinist ethos are banished. In fact a recommendation from him would be in my eyes enough reason not to see the film, a very comprehensive anti-recommendation, but I thought that given that we don't have many environmental movies on at the moment, I might as well give it a chance.

Having said all those things, I think it's an interesting film. Do go and see it.  

It does help raise awareness, which is essential, given that most of us are in limbo, and quite literally sleep-walking into a global disaster. So, the film does greater good than harm, and as we are all in the same boat, -by "we" meaning those of us who're environmental activists- but we don't all articulate our thoughts in the same way. Personally I think that doom doesn't sell (and has no impact if it's not articulated logically, like in Al Gore's "An inconvenient truth", as opposed to the bag of emotions presented in this movie) and doesn't particularly fix problems either.

It is much more effective in the fight against climate change to start thinking of solutions rather than waste any amount of energy finding whom to blame.

And onto the subject of blame, of which there's plenty in the movie.

Obviously the pet hate here is the oil industry and the global mega-emitter, the United States. Well, actually an Eurovision "zero points" on both accounts. As it happens, the main culprit of the situation we find ourselves in is not oil, but coal, which is hardly mentioned in the movie. And the US may be the main emitter now, but it wasn't several decades ago, and we mustn't forget that the problem we have now is very much an inherited problem, and the outcome of decades of industrial activity, so it is the accumulation of past emissions (current emissions will have an impact in the future). In fact, our generation is probably the greenest ever after the industrial revolution, and we all try to do our bit, including with our recycling, etc. If we compare this with the situation in the 1950s in a big city like London, the Big Smog of 1952 was the outcome of such a universal use of coal in households that people back then had a carbon footprint of astronomically orders of magnitude greater than that of present-day Londoners.

In spite of the wastefulness of our present day, and rampant consumerism, our industrial activity, and disposal of waste etc, we are much more efficient and greener in our industrial production and as a result we have a fraction of the carbon footprint than most people had in industrialised countries during the best part of the twentieth century.

The movie is sentimental about the past and perhaps indulges too much in castigating the present generation.

One can go too far with the blame game and cause more havoc than good. This reminds me how the green movement inadvertently contributed in a significant measure to the situation we're in now, by opposing nuclear energy with such fanatism during the last decades. If we are emitting too much CO2 because of our dependence on fossil fuels (coal, gas and oil, in that order) to generate electricity is due to the fact that we sidelined nuclear energy as our main source of energy. There are reasons for this. There was a widespread fear of all things nuclear because of the Cold War, the safety issues, concern about waste disposal, etc. But the main reason was that the green movement stalked the nuclear industry and lobbied governments very successfully until the coffin was well and properly nailed.

Actually radioactive waste decays to safe emission levels within 100 years and the myth that was created around the fact that waste was active for millennia was played and replayed by the likes of Greenpeace, and very successfully spun in the media. We all found it awfully romantic to see these brave men on speedboats chasing the nuclear waste boats as they dumped the nasty looking barrels of concrete-sealed waste in the Atlantic. No one could fail to find this outrageous and feel indignant at these wanton acts of environmental terrorism.

The angry activist can be a force of evil, quite unwittingly. If back then the debate had been constructively focused on finding better ways of dealing with nuclear waste, investing more in nuclear research, then today we would be in all likelihood living in a totally decarbonised society, tapping from the endless energy source that we can derive from that wonderful "free meal" that nature gives us: the atom.

Brunella

brunella@carbonica.org 

James Lovelock, the father of the Gaia theory, has just published a new book "The Vanishing Face of Gaia" available from the Carbonica bookstore for just £11.99 (compared to £20 at shops).

In a brilliant article "Nuclear lies are keeping you afraid" published on The Sunday Times (15 Feb 09) he tells us that far from being dangerous, only nuclear power can solve the food and energy crises ahead.

I couldn't agree more.

The developed world has shied away from nuclear energy because it has played to our worst fears. During the Cold War, we all feared a nuclear attack and life in the aftermath of a nuclear war in a contaminated and radioactive planet. It was a chilling and very real possibility. The Chernobyl accident reinforced our apprehension and the green movement successfully campaigned to turn governments away from nuclear research and energy policy has since been predominantly fossil fuel based for this reason.

At the time it seemed like nuclear energy was the new Prometheus' fire and it wasn't wise for us to play with it.

Obviously with hindsight it's now clear that by turning away from nuclear energy we have played a more dangerous game. Coal does not have the stigma of plutonium, but it is not any less deadly - it has single-handedly landed us where we are now, with the planet's future threatened with runaway global warming and total destruction due to excessive CO₂ emissions.

Even today it still difficult to show open support for nuclear energy. It can land you an immediate fatwa from even relatively moderate greens.

In the Sunday Times article Lovelock tries to make a point about the fact that polonium-210 was used by Russians in the murder of former spy Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 in London. He jokes (I think - or half-jokes? surely he can't be serious..) that the Russians chose this rather expensive, complicated and deliberately cruel manner of killing for maximum PR impact, in order to re-ignite our fears about nuclear energy, radioactivity, etc. The idea being that Russia's worst fear is that if we'd take on nuclear energy with gusto then they'd have no one to sell their gas and oil to.

That is obviously true, but I think Lovelock is being colourful by connecting this with the Litvinenko murder. The FSB (and earlier the KGB) has a long tradition of using poisons against their targets - radioactive or not. It's all in rather poor taste, but there's a very valid point buried there regarding the vital trade interests of the gas and oil producing countries.

It is very true that it is in the UK's best interest to regain energy self-sufficiency. And this can only be achieved (in the shortest timescale) with nuclear energy. It would achieve the double objective of providing reliable and cheap energy in sufficiently large amounts (as any back-of-the-envelope calculation can predict the demand will sky-rocket as we increasingly turn to electricity to reduce carbon emissions - one significant element will be the predominance of electric cars in future), and the second objective of meeting our emission reduction target of 80% by 2050.

In fact the UK should go further and lobby the rest of the world (and in particular the largest polluters) to turn away from coal and into nuclear energy in the shortest time possible.

Wind and solar power are interesting alternatives and they should be developed in parallel with a nuclear programme. However nuclear energy should be the predominant ingredient of our energy policy. Nothing else is realistic to meet the demand that we can anticipate, and to do so in a sustainable way.

Brunella Bell

brunella@carbonica.org

"The Vanishing Face of Gaia" is published on February 26 by Allen Lane (Penguin) and can be ordered following the link above.

CARBONICA - PROTECTING THE WORLD'S RAINFORESTS 

Click  here to reduce your carbon footprint