The Age of Stupid Gives a Coin-Flip Chance of Avoiding Climate Catastrophe

If you put yeast into a jar with some sugar, they will gobble up the energy as quickly as possible, reproduce wildly out of control and then wipe themselves out in their own waste products.

So far, our collective response to climate change has been of the yeast variety. All the talking, all the documentaries, all the international negotiations have resulted in a net achievement of less than nothing: global emissions just keep going up and up.

As Pete Postlethwaite's character says in our, er, documentary, The Age of Stupid, "We wouldn't be the first life form to wipe itself out. But what would be unique about us is that we did it knowingly." And there's the crux of it. We are the most intelligent creature ever to evolve and yet we are about to make the stupidest mistake in all of geological time. Hence the film's name.

So, what to do?

Clearly we should have started tackling the problem as soon as the seriousness was understood, back in the '80s. But given that we didn't and we are where we are, we must now come together to agree a binding international treaty which quickly and massively cuts total global emissions. Our last chance to agree this treaty within the timescale of the physics of the planet is at the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen in December this year. It is being called "the most important meeting in human history" for good reason.

Obviously the treaty isn't just made up on the spot, they've been working on it for years. The best deal currently on the table is that from the EU, but even this would only give us about a 50/50 chance of not hitting the dreaded two degrees. Two degrees is where we trigger runaway climate change: two leads to three, three to four, four to five, five to six ... by which time it's about over for most of life on Earth.

In other words, our elected leaders are giving us -- at best -- a coin-flip chance of avoiding catastrophe. It is hard to think of a more total failing of our political system. Imagine if they were standing at a plane door ... "Come on citizens, please take your seats, 50/50 chance of landing safely... "

And this is the EU's position. If America wins the argument at Copenhagen we will have pretty much no chance of avoiding two degrees.

All of which means that we non-politician human beings who depend on the climate remaining habitable had best jump into action. We are launching The Age of Stupid on September 21st from a solar-powered cinema tent in New York, linked by satellite to 444 cinemas across America - plus 300 cinemas in 45 countries from France and Finland to Argentina and Indonesia. (Full list of participating cinemas here). The date is not coincidental: about a hundred Heads of State will be in New York for the UN General Assembly and we have joined forces with groups such as Greenpeace, tcktcktck and Avaaz, who are calling for 21st September to be the Global Wake Up call. The day the world finally wakes up to the desperate urgency of the climate crisis.

The solar-powered green-carpet event will feature contributions from Kofi Annan, Gillian Anderson, Moby, James Hansen, Mary Robinson and the star of the film, Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite. Plus there will be live music from Radiohead's Thom Yorke and satellite link-ups to scientists at a melting glacier in the Himalayas and a rainforest in Indonesia. The evening will conclude with the international launch of Stupid's solution to the climate crisis: 10:10.

I was born in the '70s as part of the MTV generation who were told by a squillion adverts that the point of our existence was to shop more. Daunting though the task ahead may be, I feel enormously inspired and quite relieved that it turns out that we have something important to do. The people who came before us didn't know about climate change and the ones who come after will be powerless to stop it. So it's down to us. Other generations came together to overturn slavery or end apartheid or win the vote for women. There is nothing intrinsically more useless about our generation and there is no doubt about what we have to do. The only question which remains is whether or not we give it a go.

Follow Franny Armstrong on Twitter: www.twitter.com/frannyarmstrong

Comments

[Steve Brant - Huffpost Blogger]

Hi Franny,

I've published a review of your film..

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-g-brant/the-brilliance-and-stupid_b_295518.html

It's a critical but respectful review, because - while I really do respect all the work you did - it's obvious to me that you see the world's challenges as separate from each other, rather than interconnected. As a result, you don't see how all these crises function under the umbrellas of the world's sociological reality, which - itself - is in crisis, because we still think fighting is an acceptable way to solve our differences.

My review contains critically important information for those who truly want to solve the global warming crisis (not just keep fighting about it). Please read what I've written and let me know what you think.

Beyond that, however, please help me post a link to my review on your film's Wikipedia page. I posted it this morning, and my link was removed. I have since requested help in making my link permanent on your movie's Wikipedia page's Talk page ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:The_Age_of_Stupid )

Thanks very much for letting me know what you think of my review... and for helping me make my link permanent.

I trust that you believe that "outside the box" thinking regarding find solutions should be make available to the widest audience possible, especially if that new thinking is presented in a manner that respects the work of the people it is commenting on.

[climate science teacher]

Please consider comments by leading climate scientists who have seen the movie.

Top climate scientists and educators gathered to screen this motion picture in May of 2009. See their comments and reviews. In addition, are summaries of the motion picture from a science perspective, provided by two climate science graduate students.

The Age of Stupid is strong in many respects, but comes with a major
difficulty -- the claim that climate change is likely to cause the
extinction of the human species by 2055 -- and that this is the assessment
of mainstream science.

Recommendation by leading IPCC scientist, Dr. Stephen Schneider:
http://www.climatechangeeducation.org/art/feat/age_of_stupid/reviews/schneider.html

Comments by Michael Wehner, Senior Climate Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley
Nation Lab:
http://www.climatechangeeducation.org/art/feat/age_of_stupid/reviews/wehner.html

Summary/Synopsis of The Age of Stupid:
http://www.climatechangeeducation.org/art/feat/age_of_stupid/reviews/synopsis.html


Recommendations to educators, by ClimateChangeEducation.org:
http://www.climatechangeeducation.org/art/feat/age_of_stupid/reviews/cc-ed.html

Who was at the North American theater premier of the Age of Stupid in May
of 2009:
http://www.climatechangeeducation.org/art/feat/age_of_stupid/premier/who.html

Photos:
http://www.climatechangeeducation.org/art/feat/age_of_stupid/photos/franny_armstrong.html

The quotes provided above can greatly strenthen your coverage of The Age of Stupid. Where is this film factual scientifically, and where is it off?

-- Alice Hendricks, Associate Editor
http://climatechangeeducation.org

[doctorkosan]

Ample low cost energy (renewable) can solve 9 of the worlds top 10 problems. The only one that is not ameliorated is population.
There are simply too many people on this planet to raise all their living standards to that of the USA. This is a serious global problem that no one is tackling in any serious way.
By the way, all fundamental religions exacerbate this problem by promoting (mandating) unconsionable reproduction rates. The planet is increasing in population by over 132,000 people per day.
If we do not start to manage this problem, nature will handle it in ways we will not want to see.

[Featherdust]

This commentary on The Age of Stupid
http://www.ecohearth.com/eco-blogs/small-earth/915-the-age-of-stupid-an-environmental-film-aimed-at-the-third-kind-of-horse.html
asks an important question: Will The Age of Stupid reach the stupids who richly profit from the highest greenhouse­-gas-pollu­ting activities­—executive­s from carbon-intensive industries and those who benefit the most from its largesse? And will world leaders have the courage to rein them in?

I would argue that we've been in the Age of Stupid for at least 5,000 years in our pursuit of empire with little regard for the free ecosystem services that keep us alive. I think you give human cleverness too much credit as the "most intelligent creature ever to evolve." Slimemold and bees are pretty smart. They can abstract, find the fastest route to their food source, and live within their means.

[kendraro]

it may be "the most important meeting in human history" but HP has buried the story.

[lwaxanatroi]

Love the yeast analogy. For those who are still skeptical re global warming, think about this: the yeast gobble up all the sugar because they don't know what a jar is. They gobble sugar now and--well, if they had tiny yeasty little minds--assume there will be more sugar somewhere else. They don't know this is all there is.

We have one planet. We know there's a jar. Even if you think global warming theory is a complete overreaction, you must agree that we have only one planet. We're in a jar. There is no somewhere else that will give us more sugar. As a species, we have to wake up and realize that this is all there is. This ocean water, this fresh water, this oil, this cache of mineral deposits, this atmosphere. We won't be able to find more somewhere else. So prudent management of what we have on this planet is imperative.

Read COLLAPSE by Jared Diamond. How did the Easter Islanders manage to cut down all the trees on their island and wipe themselves out? Why did the Norse settlements on Greenland fail? Narrow self-interest is only part of it. And those societies were homogeneous. It's far easier to grab as many resources for yourself as you can and blow off others if those others are different from you.

Bottom line: we need to get smarter than yeast. We need to rise above tribalism and self-interest. We need to evolve.

Not holding breath.

[RMankovitz]

As a research scientist and author of several books on health, I subscribe to the hypothesis that the current human population far exceeds the planet’s carrying capacity, perhaps by double. Feeding the population is only part of the problem. We seem to be running out of safe places to dump the toxic wastes we generate, and may well drown in our own effluent.

GM Frankenfoods might just solve the world hunger, population, and climate problems over the next few generations, but not in the way you would expect.

From research on the effects of GM foods on animals (illness and failure to reproduce), it could be just a matter of time until humans will feel the same effects of eating this junk- susceptibility to illnesses (such as pandemics and epidemics) for which there are no cures (perhaps already happening), and low sperm count in men and infertility in women (perhaps already happening). The resulting increase in death rate and decrease in birth rate will speed up the process used by nature to deal with other species that exceed the carrying capacity of their environment – a path toward sustainability - or extinction.

I see nothing in the climate change proposals that deals with the population issue, so nature will do it for us.

In "The Wellness Project," I explore ways to increase the chances of being one of those still standing, based on paying close attention to clues from Nature.

Roy Mankovitz, Director
http://www.MontecitoWellness.com

[JShep]

One of the major obstacles to the climate change movement is the lack of sincere debate on the amount of the man-made impact. Natural and man-made warming are interchanged to the point of sheer confusion. Anyone skeptical about the impact of man is called names (i.e. stupid) and ridiculed. There is a claim of scientific consensus, but no one has producerd a list of all credible scientists on the subject with the believers and dis-believers clearly delineated to prove a consensus. There are claims of irrefutable proof, yet the 20 most used climate models are unable to replicate past climate history. What we need is more debate on the subject to the polint where one side or the other is clearly the winner, if such an occurrance is possible at all. Quit the name calling and produce the proof...an­d please don't try to pass off any signs of actual global warming as strictly man-made global warming.

[ceckel]

Very good points here. I agree that we should have started to tackle this issue as soon as it became a problem, but nothing we can do about it now besides try and come up with a solution to prevent catastrophe. It will be interesting to see what happens in Copenhagen, I hope there is more than a 50/50 chance of a working solution. I did find this video, www.newsy.com/videos/cooling_the_planet_down, that talks about the conference and all the issues leading up to it. Hopefully the things talked about in the video can be resolved, along with all our other problems!

[seawolf77]

A very good post. The ideology of a cancer cell is perpetual growth. Yet we have embraced our long feared enemy as if it were the messiah. Why? I have asked myself that question so many times I have come to one terrifying inescapeable conclusion. THAT'S HOW THEY WANT IT.

[RedDogBear]

Who exactly are "they", sorry "THEY"?