Cool It: The Movie
Movie Synopsis:
Climate catastrophe? The end of civilization as we know it? Cool It is based upon the book of the same name and lectures by Bjorn Lomborg, the controversial author of The Skeptical Environmentalist. Award-winning filmmaker Ondi Timoner travels the world with Lomborg exploring the real facts and true science of global warming and its impact. Lomborg is the founder and director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, a globally respected think tank that brings together the world’s leading economists to prioritize major global problems — among them malaria, the lack of potable water and HIV/AIDS — based upon a cost/benefit analysis of available solutions. Amidst the strong and polarized opinions within the global warming debate, Cool It follows Lomborg on his mission to bring the smartest solutions to climate change, environmental pollution, and other major problems in the world.
About BJORN LOMBORG:
Bjorn Lomborg is adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School and director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, which brings together some of the world’s top economists, including five Nobel laureates, to suggest priorities for solving the world’s most pressing problems. Time magazine named Lomborg one of the world’s 100 most influential people in 2004. In 2008, he was named “one of the 50 people who could save the planet” by the British newspaper The Guardian, “one of the top 100 public intellectuals” by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazine, and “one of the world’s 75 most influential people of the 21st century” by Esquire.
Lomborg’s 2007 book Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalists Guide to Global Warming, in which he challenged conventional wisdom about the best ways to deal with climate change, is the inspiration behind a documentary film of the same name, directed by Ondi Timoner, that was selected to premiere at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival.
My Thoughts:
I admit going into this movie as a skeptic which is fitting given the premise of the movie. Global Warming may or may not be happening because of man-made events. I’m not here to debate those topics. I was more interested in the fact that Bjorn views the whole debate from a different perspective. His books and presentations ruffled many feathers as he went against the flow. He quickly made headlines for his ideas.
As Christians, we do have the responsibility to take care of God’s Creation – humans, animals, plants, earth. We need to make sure that as we’re using the wonderful resources that the Lord has provided for us, we are also being responsible. That could be as simple as packing out what you pack in when you’re out exploring nature. But, I’m getting a bit side-tracked here.
While D and I didn’t agree with everything in the movie, Bjorn made some very good points including the fact that financial resources are being squandered on the current course of action for “curing” global warming. Whether or not a person agrees with global warming, I think we can all agree that the government only has limited resources, and those resources need to be used wisely. That is not currently taking place.
No matter what your stance on Global Warming and the environment, this movie will make you think.
Some of the interesting topics covered in the movie/documentary:
- Over the last 150 years, sea levels rose about a foot, but did anyone really notice?
- Al Gore asked people to believe that Hurricane Katrina was due to global warming, which is not true. Poor human engineering is to blame.
- Al Gore said that because of global warming mosquitoes have increased, causing a rise in malaria. We could fix 97 percent of that right now by solving the poverty in the countries most affected by malaria.
- In 1960 there were approximately 5,000 polar bears on the planet. Today, there are about 22,000. We lose about one polar bear a year due to global warming. However, humans shoot between 300-500 polar bears every year. Want to save the polar bears? Stop shooting them.
- If we all switched to driving a Prius, it would only cut one half of a percent of what we would need to cut by mid-century.
- If each person in the U.S. switched their light bulbs to energy-saving bulbs, we would cut less than two tenths of a percent of what is needed to be cut by mid-century.
Cool It The Movie hit theaters on November 19th.
I saw a free online screening of this movie to help facilitate the writing of a frank and honest review. All opinions are my own.
