“Years of Living Dangerously” Covers Climate Change in a Fantastically Interesting Way

Unfortunately, the masterpiece documentary series on climate change “Years of Living Dangerously” that aired from April to June of this year was made available only on the cable channel “Showtime,” and so had a fairly limited viewership.  That’s a pity, as last night at the University of California at Santa Barbara, my wife and I came to learn how incredibly well-done this series was; we attended a screening of one of the nine shows that were produced, after which Adam Bolt, one of the show’s writer/editors, participated in an interview, and then took questions from the audience.

I asked Adam to comment on something he had mentioned in that interview: audience pessimism.  “Obviously you don’t want the audience to conclude that the situation is hopeless,” I began, “and, what would be even worse, you don’t want them to think that climate change really isn’t a serious problem.  You probably want them to walk away believing what all of us here in this auditorium tonight probably think, i.e., that the outcome depends on the actions that each one of us takes, as individuals.  But how heavily do you want to ‘lay this on?’ When does that become ‘preachy’ and start turning people off?”

As I figured he would be, Adam was acutely aware of the nuances of getting an audience on your side.  He contrasted his project with “An Inconvenient Truth,” at the end of which viewers are presented with all kinds of things they can do to take action.  His belief, and I’m sure he’s correct, is that, where Al Gore’s movie was perfect for its time, “Years” is effective precisely because it doesn’t push people to act.  “People’s consciousness of this subject is changing slowly,” Adam said.  “It’s taking place over the course of years.”

When the show is available on DVD and Netflix, and gets aired on PBS to a far wider audience, I have every confidence that it will cause a huge number of people to become aware of the realities of climate change and the political challenges of dealing with it, thus engaging an enormous audience to get involved.

Here’s a post I put on RenewableEnergyWorld.com on the subject.