The very last film in our Reel Earth film series was the British movie The Age of Stupid http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1300563/. It’s actually a series of extremely thought provoking vignettes. I found the film quite sad, as the plot concerns a 2055 archivist in a world where the arctic ice sheet has melted, the global population has drastically shrunk, and it’s clear humanity is on the verge of extinction. The archivist’s children are still alive (barely), but his grandchildren have all died.

The most helpful vignettes for me were those featuring climate scientists clarifying the notion of the tipping point – the average temperature rise that will set off an unstoppable chain reaction putting further global warming beyond the control of mankind.

Two Degrees: the Magic Number

Average global temperature has already increased one degree since the start of the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century. Climate scientists (and most government leaders) agree there will be a tipping point if we allow temperature to rise one more degree. At an average temperature two degrees above pre-industrial levels, there will be a massive kill-off of trees (which absorb CO2) and a massive release of methane (the most damaging greenhouse gas) from the Siberian permafrost. This, in turn, will automatically send global temperatures shooting up another four degrees – making the earth to hot to sustain advanced life forms (mainly because their food sources will die out).

These scientific vignettes also helped me get my head around the time line associated with these events. It will take a minimum of thirty years for emissions from the fossil fuels we burn in 2010 to result in higher global temperatures. According to the mathematical model constructed by climate scientists, we have until 2013 to start steeply reducing CO2 emissions – by a rate that would cut the industrial world’s emissions 80% by 2050.

If we continue to increase emissions past 2013 (instead of reducing them), it will probably be too late. We can expect global temperatures to achieve their two degree increase by 2043 and then rapidly shoot up (due to tree destruction and methane release) rapidly by another four degrees.

We Still Make Poor Personal Choices

The other vignettes that really hit home for me were those showing how many of us (myself included) are very passionate about reducing carbon emissions. And yet continue to make personal choices incompatible with this goal.

Air travel for example. It makes no sense to change light bulbs and forgo car trips and to continue to use air travel for transportation. I was astonished to learn that a family of four can scrupulously reduce their carbon footprint by the requisite 80% and totally undo three years of good work with a single 2-3 hour plane trip.

The film makes no mention of purchasing carbon offsets to compensate for air trips (there are numerous schemes to allow air travelers to pay to plant trees to compensate for their CO2 emissions). However this approach does nothing to reduce demand for air travel – which is the only way to reduce total flights and the massive amount of CO2 they produce.

In fact, given we only have three years to begin drastic CO2 reduction, the time has come to challenge people who still fly frequently for business reasons. Especially with the ready availability of video conferencing facilities, they need to ask themselves the hard question every time they feel tempted to make an airline reservation:

Is getting on this plane – or even making  money – more important than ensuring the survival of my children and grandchildren?