Go Greener, Australia

A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash is a documentary from 2006 about peak oil (yeah, I’m slow to get to watch these things!). It’s about how our addiction to oil, a non-renewable resource, is going to force us to reimagine our society. You can see a rather good preview of it on YouTube.

The directors, Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack, lay out the details of the problem without any hype or fear-mongering. Many of the people interviewed have worked as CEOs of oil companies, or have done extensive research into the issue. The other interviewees are non-experts who’ve taken an interest: a US politician, and a guy who runs a peak oil information website.

The film starts off showing the discovery of oil around the world, and the thousands of things we use it for. We then see the way it has influenced wars throughout the 20th century: it began as a strategic factor in WWII, but by the time of the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein, it was worth starting wars over.

The segment “The Numbers Don’t Add Up” covers the problems of reserves vs production vs consumption. We want more and more oil every day, but there’s only a finite amount of the black gold. The At The Movies website has some good clips from the movie that illustrate the situation.

So what happens when oil becomes more and more expensive to get hold of? The film discusses the suggestions people have put forward. They’re dismissive of alternatives like biofuels or hydrogen. Some say that new technology will make oil cheap again. Others say we’ll find new sources. More likely, we’ll keep tapping the more difficult sources, like tar sands. To me, that’s a bit like a junkie tapping veins in his toes, because he’s wrecked his arms already.

Finally, the movie looks into what might happen in a post-oil world. The experts speculate about everyday life, the stockmarket, population levels, etc. One or two of them seem to think we’ll end up living an Amish-style life. But I don’t think we can simply return to old ways of doing things - there’s too much water under the bridge to make it happen. If we’re to get past this addiction, we’ll have to be more imaginative.

Recommended? Yes, for everyone interested in learning about the challenges we’ll face over the next decade. A Crude Awakening isn’t a slick, hyped documentary, but a simple and down-to-earth presentation of the facts. You can read other reviews at Empire and At the Movies, or check out the official site.

Syriana is a fictional movie that asks serious questions: Who are the people involved in the oil industry? and what do they get out of it? Environmentalists already know that our addiction to oil is a problem we must solve; and yet other people are more than happy for things to stay just as they are now. Syriana is a political thriller that doesn’t give us any glib answers, but does try to uncover the extent of the problem.

I’d been warned that it was a difficult movie to follow, so I was ready to pay attention right from the start. There is no main character, unless you think of oil as the main character, so instead the movie follows people working at all levels of the oil industry. By seeing events all over the world, the audience gains more understanding of the whole process than any individual character in the movie can. It flits from one storyline to the next, and sometimes there’s a connection, and sometimes there isn’t. Stephen Gaghan’s previous movie Traffic, which was about the drug trade, had a similar structure.

George Clooney plays a CIA agent working in the Middle East region. He’s dedicated his life to the CIA, but they don’t have the same loyalty towards him, and abandon him after a mission goes wrong. Matt Damon plays a financial advisor who, through a tragic accident, becomes acquainted with an Arabic prince from an unnamed Middle Eastern country. This prince, played by Alexander Siddig, wants Damon to be his advisor as he reforms his nation, wanting to use their oil riches to create democracy and a better future for his people. However, his father (the emir) and his younger brother prefer to live the high life while letting the USA make all the decisions about where their oil will go.

Meanwhile, back in the USA, we see a young lawyer investigating the merger of two oil companies, and watch as his superiors and the oil company CEOs tell him how to make his decisions. This is the part I found most confusing: there’s only so many men in suits I can keep track of, so Chris Cooper’s oil man and Jeffrey Wright’s lawyer are the only ones I have a clear idea about. But this didn’t seem to stop me from understanding the plot, so maybe they were meant to be faceless and interchangeable after all.

Finally, we see two young Pakistani men, who used to work for an oil drilling station in the Middle East, but have now been laid off from their jobs. They want to learn Arabic in order to get more work in the oil region, since there’s very little work for them in their home country. They get to know a cleric at the Islamic school, who is friendly and understands their problems. These young men are the most sympathetic characters in the whole movie: they play games and laugh with their friends, while facing the same struggles any guy might if he lived in a country with no work and no support for the jobless. But where can they go from there?

Overall, I think Matt Damon’s character sums up the movie best when he tells the prince “What are they thinking? They’re thinking that it’s running out. It’s running out… and ninety percent of what’s left is in the Middle East. This is a fight to the death.” It’s a politically-charged movie, with just one good guy (I won’t spoil it by telling you who), and a lot of other people trying to justify their grey moral choices. The bleak outlook is a little lightened by the extras on the DVD, where the director and George Clooney chat about the usual movie-making things (exotic locations, getting celebrities for the roles) as well as giving their take on the issue of oil addiction.

You can see a preview at the official Syriana website, along with interviews with the Gaghan and Clooney. Metacritic has gathered many reviews of it, and you can see how the movie got it’s name at Wikipedia (warning: some spoilers on that page).

It’s been two years since Al Gore’s documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, was released in cinemas, and I decided to watch it again to see how it holds up. I bought the DVD, which has environmentally-friendly packaging: a slim cardboard sleeve instead of a hard plastic case, and the wrapper was biodegradable. Apparently a tree will be planted for each DVD sold, although I didn’t look into the details of that.

If you missed it first time around, I really recommend giving it a look. When I first saw it I was already interested in climate change as an issue (saw it at an ACF fund-raiser), but Gore’s presentation really clarified what the problem was, and what it’s consequences are likely to be. He uses clear and powerful graphics and photographs to explain what’s going on, and shows a wry sense of humour in his delivery. The director also decided it would be helpful to see how a man like Gore went from Vice-President of the USA to presenting slideshows to community groups, so we see an outline of Gore’s life and he explains his motivations. Altogether, it’s a very inspiring package - even if you were already convinced of the importance of the issue, Gore’s can-do attitude will give you a motivational boost.

The DVD also includes two commentaries which I haven’t listened to yet, plus an update from Gore on the evidence shown in the movie. The update presents more recent (2007) details of ice-cap melting, drought, flooding, and the impact on the oceans, again with powerful photographs to really bring home the consequences. It’s a bit more scary than the movie! Gore also recently gave an updated talk at the TED conference - more links and details on that soon, as I think it’s worthy of it’s own post.

What critics said

At the time, critics said the movie was preaching to the converted. It’s true that climate-change deniers won’t be convinced by the evidence on show here, since they’re not really interested in evidence anyway. But I don’t think this documentary is aimed at ‘the converted’ either. I think it’s more for the 80% of people (well, that’s a rough guess for Australia) who report in surveys that they care about the environment, but haven’t participated in any direct action or made changes to their lifestyle. Gore wants them to realise the urgency of the issue and take action, especially political action. As Gore found out, few politicians will do anything unless there’s votes in it, so he’s asking us to put it on the table as something we want addressed.

Climate-change deniers also came up with lists of supposed errors in the information presented. These have all been debunked, and most are based on willful misinterpretation of the movie. Actual climate scientists were only critical of the documentary in that Gore presents the average scenario, rather than the worst possibilities. This raises the question of how best to present important information, but I think they’d be satisfied with the update in the DVD extras.

We already have the solutions

What I get from An Inconvenient Truth is a reinforcement of the idea that we already have the tools to fix climate change. We don’t need to sit around waiting for new technology or a silver bullet solution. Gore illustrates the concept of stabilisation wedges very well: if we need to make 50% reductions in carbon emissions, then 10 different solutions that each achieve a 5% cut will work just as well as one magic 50% reduction. This applies when we’re working on reducing carbon emissions from our home: energy efficient appliances, plus turning them off at the wall, plus a solar hot water system, plus using Green Power sources will get us a pretty significant reduction in emissions. The same approach will work on a national and global level, if we get off our butts and make it happen.

And now that I’ve said I approve of making multiple small changes, I’m going to be inconsistent and quibble about the “what you can do” recommendations shown during the movie credits. Switching lightbulbs really is important: it’s an easy first step that lets people dip their toes in the water and see that it’s fine. But after someone has just shown you ice-shelves collapsing and climate-change refugees in distress, it doesn’t *feel* like enough. Later in the credits, vague suggestions about political action are given, but I think more specific ones would match the impact of the movie better.

Perhaps this just feels inadequate because the public has moved on a bit since the movie was released. But I credit a lot of that shift in public perception to key figures in the media (Kochie on Sunrise, Margaret and David on the movie show, etc) seeing the movie and using their influence to promote it and push the issue as one of importance, so there you go. I bet Gore would be love his movie to be successful enough that one day it becomes hopelessly outdated as we all move towards a bright green future. Already we’ve got a lot of people making small changes in their homes to ‘help the environment’, and it was definitely a political issue in the federal election last year. An Inconvenient Truth got the ball rolling, but now it’s up to Aussie environmentalists to keep the momentum going.

PS: I haven’t done movie reviews before, but I’d like to do more this year. If there’s a movie with an environmental theme that you’re interested in, but aren’t sure if it’s worth spending your time on, leave a comment with it’s title. I’ll take the hit for the team then report back if it’s any good If you’ve seen one you think is great, leave a comment too and I’ll add it to my list.