The Age of Stupid at the Vancouver International Film Festival Special

The Vancouver International Film Festival takes place between October 1 and 16. One of the most talked about events was the British film The Age of Stupid, starring the Oscar-nominated actor Pete Postlethwaite.

He plays a man alone in a cultural ark in the Arctic Ocean in 2055 who tells us the environmental catastrophes that have befallen the world in the period 2005 - 2008 and asks why we didn’t act when we had the chance, before it was too late. These disasters were skillfully interwoven with the stories of 6 people around the world who have some part to play in the future of the planet. One of these was Fernand Pareau a mountain guide in Chamonix who, amongst many other things, was alarmed at the shrinkage of the glaciers in the Alps. At the beginning of the film, he was showing the area to an English family whose limited French caused a lot of amusement to the audience at the Vancouver showing of the film that I attended. It turned out though that this family is hugely environmentally aware and has their own wind-powered generator at their farm in Cornwall. Piers Guy, the father, designs and implements wind farm projects in the UK and one of the main threads of the film was his battle with the local NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard) in Bedfordshire who were against one of his projects because it would spoil their view. The site of the farm was a former US Air Force base and wasn’t particularly beautiful. One of the NIMBYs was a particularly hypocritical Englishwoman who claimed to be so aware of Global Warming and said she was trying everything in her power to stop it, yet she was 100 percent opposed to a wind farm near her property. She didn’t seem to realize that in 40 years the view would be spoiled anyway by the effects of Global Warming. Her name should be put forward for a monthly environmental hypocrite award. There was Layefa Malemi, a Nigerian woman, who wanted to be a doctor. She caught two fish in the Niger River and then had to wash them in Omo liquid detergent to remove all the oil before she could cook them. She showed an unfinished community centre that Shell refused to finish because they were scared of their workers being kidnapped. You’d think that they could pay some local militia people to guard their contractors and the cost wouldn’t make much difference to their profits of 13 billion pounds, but the centre would make a huge difference to the local people. Alvin DuVernay, whose heroism saved more than a hundred people in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, was made homeless by the hurricane. Alvin worked for an oil company and found them heir future oil fields by analyzing the types of fossils he found in rock and soil samples from miles under the ocean. There was Jeh Wadia, a Mumbai based airline entrepreneur, who wants to bring cheap flights to India. He wants to bring people out of poverty and feels that anyone should be able to fly. As flying is a major contributor of Greenhouse gases, Jeh’s idea is really alarming but what right does anyone have to say that Indians can’t enjoy the same benefits as people in the West? Finally Jamila and Adnan Bayyoud were orphans of the Iraq invasion, who were forced to live on the streets of Amman in Jordan. They told how the Americans destroyed their home and killed their father and their donkey. There was one particularly telling quote from Adnan which shows the true legacy of the oil-inspired American invasion of Iraq. He said that he wanted to kill any American that he came across because of the way that country’s troops killed his father and caused him to become exiled. It seems that there is a plan in place that has the approval of the European Union, the UK, China, The United Nations, and The World Bank. This plan will reduce carbon emissions drastically by 2065 and is being seen as the great remaining hope to save the human race. It will be discussed at the climate conference in Copenhagen in December. Of course, North America, especially the USA, aren’t backing the plan. It will be interesting to see whether the new Nobel Laureate President Obama goes to address the talks in Copenhagen – if you remember he was able to go to Copenhagen recently to speak on behalf of Chicago at the IOC meeting, deciding which city should get the 2016 Summer Olympics. Chicago was eliminated first of all. Let’s hope North America doesn’t stall these talks like they did with the Kyoto Treaty.