Drought death: local people may believe God caused the lack of rain (Image: Scott Olson/Getty)
To engage the public, Years of Living Dangerously and Sand Wars take different approaches, one is a Hollywood behemoth, the other is shrewd and assailing
In the first episode of , a lavish nine-part US documentary series about the role humans play in climate change, actor Don Cheadle heads for drought-stricken Texas. He is on a mission to find out why the Bible Belt rejects the idea that we are failing as stewards of the planet.
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How could an argument so simple, so reasonable, so 鈥淐hristian鈥�, find no traction with them? Cheadle nails it: most people, he says, just want to avoid conflict. The bulk of the Texas faithful are trying to avoid blaming each other (and the rest of us) for their misfortunes: dead crops, shrinking herds, jobs gone and mortgages foreclosed. By instead attributing these hardships to divine power, they say that, if they must, they will open-handedly accept God鈥檚 judgement.
Perhaps the Texas evangelicals are wiser than they are given credit for. The trouble with blaming humans for climate change isn鈥檛 so much what you do about the climate, as what you do with your fellow men and women.
Later episodes promise to explore solutions to climate change, but by the end of episode one it is already clear that many people around the world have been pushed into an all-too-familiar local solution. Tom Friedman, a New York Times columnist, meets a young Syrian farmer languishing on the Turkish border. He is waiting for his wounds to heal. Is he going back to the fight the government that failed to help his starving family? For sure, he says, 鈥渢o finish what we were forced to start鈥�.
Didactic mission
Even mild-mannered Harrison Ford relishes the prospect of laying into Indonesia鈥檚 forestry minister for having failed to protect an important national park. The viewer is caught between the desire to catch Ford by the arm before he embarrasses himself, and an overwhelming urge to join him. If the rainforests being burned are the last on Earth, what do local sensitivities matter 鈥� isn鈥檛 fierce intervention our only reasonable response?
In government quarters, even that kind of response might be welcome, if only to punctuate the gathering quiet. Public policy researcher , says that from January 2007 to October 2009, the proportion of people in the US agreeing that 鈥渢here is solid evidence that Earth is warming鈥� dropped from 77 per cent to 57 per cent.
Belief in anthropogenic climate change has recovered a little since then, but an individual鈥檚 political affiliation still remains the most important determinant of their views. . And all that despite Al Gore鈥檚 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth, which set out on its unashamedly didactic mission, hurling one truth after another at its viewers.
On 26 March this year, the UK鈥檚 House of Commons Science and Technology Committee confronted its own public engagement problem. The UK government鈥檚 Climate Change Programme was put in place in 2000 to help meet targets in cutting carbon emissions 鈥� and to ensure that the public played a leading role in the process. It has been losing ground ever since. How could such an ambitious programme shrink to a mere call to inaction?
Celebrities report
The problem, says a report from the select committee, is how we tell the climate change story. Media reporting thrives on the new or controversial, it says, adding that evidence had been given suggesting that 鈥渋t was difficult to justify news time maintaining coverage of climate science where basic facts are established and the central story remains the same鈥�. The bottom line is that reporting on climate 鈥渞arely spends any time reflecting on the large areas of scientific agreement and easily becomes, instead, a political discussion on disputes over minutiae鈥�.
Years of Living Dangerously goes further. Its premise is that a scientist will never command the attention an actor or celebrity can. So the series interweaves the investigations of celebrity 鈥渃orrespondents鈥�, and because they are mainly household names, this hokey-sounding idea proves effective.
Like any other show, the documentary stands or falls by its script. This one, while sober enough, simple and accurate, suggests its writers were inspired by popular political drama, as it evolved through real-time TV thrillers and films such as 24 and Syriana.
This provenance shows up less in the dialogue than in the tracking shots, the dynamic yet unobtrusive use of steadicam, the stirring score by Richard Marvin and the pulse-quickening editing.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, the show鈥檚 鈥渃hief correspondent鈥� and one of its executive producers, has said: 鈥淚 always felt there was a communication gap in bringing ordinary people in and making them part of the movement.鈥� For him the environmental movement can only be successful if 鈥渋t鈥檚 simple and clear and makes it a human story鈥�.
All interconnected
It is a point frequently echoed by another of the show鈥檚 executive producers, the film director James Cameron. This series is arguably the best project Cameron has been involved in for years. It isn鈥檛 what you might expect from him or from Schwarzenegger. The horrifying, beautiful and simply told detective stories capture the complexity and interconnectedness of the challenges facing us, from water wars abroad to the closure of meat-packing factories at home. Years of Living Dangerously gives climate change immediate human relevance.
Then again, if public engagement is what you are after, why discuss climate change at all? Why not simply talk about resource depletion? It is visible, ungainsayable. Above all, it is motivating: we are all hardwired to respond if we see we are running out of something. And one unexpected thing we are running out of is sand.
Marine sand is in short supply (Image: Sand Wars)
In Sand Wars, a superb, French-made documentary directed by Denis Delestrac, a geologist explains that you can鈥檛 make cement out of desert sand because the grains won鈥檛 stick together. You make cement with marine sand, and that is a finite resource. We are building so many dams that our rivers barely reach the sea, and so the sand we consume in construction is no longer being replenished.
In fact, sand is now in such short supply that it is being smuggled around the world. The island of Singapore spreads, metre by metre, on foundations of smuggled sand. Moroccan hotels are rising in front of beaches annihilated to make them. In the Malay archipelago, whole islands are being dredged away to build apartments that are then kept empty for investment.
Sand Wars is being aired by PBS America, the British version of US network PBS. It doesn鈥檛 feel especially European, and there is no unbridgeable cultural divide between it and the Hollywood behemoth that is Years of Living Dangerously. The two documentaries are, however, built to different plans, with different audiences in mind.
Sand Wars picks a manageable target and assails it with every shot and every line. Years of Living Dangerously, by contrast, is a televisual 鈥渘ovel鈥�, like The Wire and Breaking Bad. Steadily and patiently, it seduces its viewers over several hours into an emotional engagement with its material. Its form, length and budget match its ambition: nothing less than establishing a new social consensus on climate change.
It remains to be seen what we will do with this consensus if we get it. Knowledge is power, right up to the bit where those in power beat you, and charge you with disturbing the peace. In Sand Wars, a man tells a class of ragged children how to save their island economy. Warn your parents, he says. Tell your teachers, write to the dredging companies.
Not in my back yard
The sense of futility is gut-wrenching. Calls to action of this sort assume the existence of civil structures: the rule of law, organs for public discourse and debate and the means of civil redress. History teaches us that these institutions are the first to disappear when vital resources become contested.
While the bread is still on the table and the roof is still attached to the house, it is easy to regard 鈥渘ot in my back yard鈥� opposition, quietism and evangelism as bad ideas 鈥� weak-minded, perverse, even dishonest.
Cheadle鈥檚 Bible Belt odyssey in Years of Living Dangerously bypassed the apocalyptic brand of evangelism that assumes, if the world is burning, that the fire must be holy, and therefore wholly welcome. As a consequence, we have not 鈥� yet 鈥� been forced to acknowledge that, as the fish begin to dissolve in the seas and the sky fills with ash from the last forests burning, millennial beliefs will be our best and perhaps only comfort, and Texas humanity鈥檚 best hope.
premiered on Showtime, 13 April. The first episode is free to view
is directed by Denis Delestrac, next showing on PBS America, 9 June
