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The
Age of Stupid is a 90-minute film about climate change, set in the
future, which will have its world premiere in London on March 15th 2009
and then be released in UK cinemas on March 20th 2009, followed by
other countries. Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite (In The Name of the
Father, Brassed Off) stars as a man living alone in the devasted world
of 2055, looking back at "archive" footage from 2007 and asking: why
didn’t we stop climate change when we had the chance?
I was fortunate to see a
sneak preview of this film last summer, and I would recommend it to
anybody. It juxtaposes various goings-on in today's world with the
"future-shock" scenario of 2055 in a remarkably powerful and effective
way. This is in marked contrast to "An Inconvenient Truth" - perhaps
the most shocking aspect of this film is how everyday the several 2007
storylines appear to be. That is the amazing thing - we have come to
accept, as everyday and routine, activities which are so wantonly,
thoughtlessly destructive.
I
look at my lifestyle sometimes and wonder how I can reduce my
non-renewable carbon-based energy usage. I try to minimalise private
car usage - it's pretty much restricted to photography trips these days
and many a week has gone by in recent months without it moving from its
parking-space. I heat my home with logs and don't mind wearing an extra
padded shirt if it's really cold, or even sleeping fully clothed if
it's absolutely freezing. I eat less meat than I used to. My dependance
on these non-renewables is still too great though.
It
is an appropriate week in which to premiere such a film, although I
doubt that, despite their obviously exceptional talents, Franny and
crew managed to bring this about on purpose! A week in which it has
emerged that ongoing climate developments in various parts of the world
have made the last IPCC review appear overly conservative in nature. A
week in which warnings have been given that unless we change our ways
we shall see climate-related problems that will cause the deaths of
hundreds of millions of people.
The
UK may well, as recently suggested by James Lovelock, be relatively
unaffected by the changes - apart from the minor detail of the
relocation of people living in low-lying areas (like many of our
cities) to new homes built higher above sea-level (and hopefully not on
major river flood-plains though perhaps that is a little ambitious). A
warmer North Polar region could well lead to a decrease in
baroclinicity across the North Atlantic, so that severe Autumn and
Winter storms are less frequent: on the other side of the coin, more
heat and moisture during the summer months would, under given
conditions (e.g. Biscay lows) lead to a greater frequency of
devastating flash-floods. But, because we live on an island on the
eastern side of a major ocean, over which the majority of our weather
originates, it is unlikely that we will see the UK as a desert, in 2055
or 2155.
That
is not the point. The "crunch" occurs when more drastic changes
elsewhere on the planet lead to the destruction of great swathes that
are today perfectly habitable. Yesterday, I had a drink with a friend
just back from Africa. He spoke of a farm operated by one of his
friends, in Zambia, where the topsoil is 18 metres deep (a benefit of,
unlike the UK, not having been glaciated at any time in the last 200
million years). In the upper part of my veg garden I have to make do
with 18cm! But such soils will only continue to produce if rainfall, in
appropriate amounts, continues to moisten them. If climate change leads
to large areas of land becoming unproductive, due to drought or to
sea-level rise, that's where the problem will get really serious. You
end up with an awful lot of displaced people. Where will they go?
"You'd see hundreds of millions, probably
billions of people who would have to move and we know that would cause
conflict, so we would see a very extended period of conflict around the
world, decades or centuries as hundreds of millions of people move."
Lord Stern, 12th March 2009.
And,
hand-in-hand with that we have ocean acidification, caused by the
dissolution of excess carbon dioxide. Aragonite is a polymorph of
calcium carbonate - calcite is the other. Aragonite has quite a
restricted stability field - it exists stably in weakly alkaline
conditions and seawater, typically at a pH of 8.2, is ideal. That's why
bivalves and some planktonic organisms make their shells from
aragonite: acidify the sea even to neutral and the very material their
shells are made from becomes unstable. Result: mass-exctinction in the
seas.
Whether
climate models predict that some of this occurs by 2055 or 2155 is
academic: the important fact is that we can prevent it occurring. We
can pull back from the brink of disaster.
And
if, like me, you have become depressed by the realtime stupidity of
climate change deniers, do what I have done recently. Switch off your
computer, go out there and grow your own veg. It is creative, gets you
fit and puts you back in touch with the Earth - our only home. Work
with it, not against it!
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