2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #27

A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, June 28 through Sat, July 4, 2020

Editor’s Choice

‘2040’: A funny, entertaining, upbeat climate documentary

A timely Australian documentary takes a ‘solutions’ approach, with the filmmaker inspired by visions of his young daughter as an adult.

Australian filmmaker Damon Gameau did not create “2040” for viewing during the coronavirus pandemic. Although only now being released, online, in the U.S., the documentary premiered in Australia in the spring of 2019.

Nevertheless, the film fits well with this summer 2020 moment. For a nation wondering what post-pandemic life will look like, “2040” provides an optimistic vision of a new normal, one that addresses issues of social justice while meeting challenges posed by climate change.

As such, “2040” is the most upbeat documentary about climate change since climatologist Richard Alley’s PBS series “Earth: An Operator’s Manual.” And it’s often funny, entertaining, and, in a family sitcom sort-of-way, touching.

“2040” begins with the movie-poster scene of Gameau planting a tree with his 4-year-old daughter, Velvet. In a voiceover, Gameau explains that he worries about how climate change will affect his daughter’s future. He knows the science; he briefly explains it using the heating, plumbing, and refrigeration systems of his house as analogies for different parts of the carbon cycles. And he says he often has felt overwhelmed by the doom-and-gloom depictions of climate change in popular media.

He wants to change this: “As a father, I think there’s room for a different story, a story that focuses on solutions.”

To write this new story, Gameau poses a question: “What [would] the world look like in 2040, if we just embraced the best that already exists?” And for “already exists” Gameau adopts a cardinal rule: “Everything I show in this 2040 has to exist today in some form. I can’t make it up.” Having laid down these ground rules, Gameau begins the work of assembling “the best that already exists” into a plausible depiction of his daughter’s life as an adult in 2040.

Click here to access the entire article as originally posted on the Yale Climate Connections website.

2040′: A funny, entertaining, upbeat climate documentary by Michael Svoboda, Article, Yale Climate Connections, June 29, 2020


Articles Linked to on Facebook

Sun, June 28, 2020

Mon, June 29, 2020

Tue, June 30, 2020

Wed, July 1, 2020

Thu, July 2, 2020

Fri, July 3, 2020

Sat, July 4, 2020