Years of Living Dangerously

We are often told that rich people are evil. This documentary proves otherwise. The rich people in the series have a heart of gold.

Indeed. These super-rich people briefly left their mansions and glorious life styles to tell us that we really, really don't want to have their mansions and glorious life styles. The fate of the world is at stake. They flew around the world in private jets (the film crews flew coach, we hope) telling us to "cool it".

You see, there are still parts on this blue planet where it is common for a 20-year-old mother to have seen two or three of her children die from diseases that are entirely preventable. Something as simple as access to electricity would do it (i.e. cheap energy with which to boil water). However, these super-rich people are telling her she cannot have an electric generator because, they say, 95% of scientists hypothesize it "could" harm the planet. And, shrug, the death of her children is the price to pay to save the planet from doom.

According to the World Health Organization, I quote, "more 6 million children under the age of five died in 2012. More than half of these early child deaths are due to conditions that could be prevented or treated with access to simple, affordable interventions".

The bottom line of the documentary? The children of the poor need to continue dying so that the children of the super-rich inherit a better world. And if it turns out that the fate of the world is not at stake, well, the children that have died are the children of the poor.

To call this mess propaganda would be to misuse the word. There's presenting facts selectively in an effort to further an agenda, and then there's ignoring fact, logic, and reason altogether and making a contention based entirely on the premise of "because I said so". "Years of Living Dangerously" is decidedly in the latter category. It is a convoluted hodgepodge of fallacies and misleading information peddled in such a way as to make Dan Rather blush.

Should one ignore the blatant hypocrisy of a bunch of well to do actors jetting around the world, while burning more jet fuel and creating more "greenhouse" gasses than the average person does in their lifetime, the show is clearly written by people who are entirely convinced that the viewing public are comprised of brainless amoeba. This outright contempt for the intelligence of the audience speaks volumes to the audience the show has received, which is approximately 400% less than a COPS rerun on Spike at four in the morning.

As someone who already understands the basics of climate change, I find little to learn from this show. It's basically celebrities asking very naive questions, softballs to get an easily impactful line. Cheadle, Ford, and Friedman are boring and humorless. The camera pans to closeups of handshakes and guns, trying a little too hard to create an atmosphere of foreboding. The typical Gore-bashing argument of flying in private jets etc. does seem especially on display here, although somebody has to fly around doing some journalism if messages are to be spread. The actual content of the show is educational. If you don't know anything about climate change and respect actors, you can get something out of this.

A must-see series, but rather obviously aimed at a mass audience, comfortable in their well-insulated houses. Nevertheless, must-see! Arguments presented for and against the global-warming theory are trivial at best. Perhaps the most interesting part is wondering whether the journalists and "scientists" portrayed realize that the hypocrisy of their luxurious and obviously energy-intensive life-styles shown here is the very reason that ordinary people do not take them seriously.

There is an excellent interview with President Obama which has totally countered my previous negative impression of him.

This series of films explore many different stories around climate change in order to illuminate some of what is happening locally in our world.

Unfortunately there are not more documentaries on TV of this quality and prescience. It's extremely well written, produced and researched.

Why do some people rate this so badly? I can only guess that they are either extremely closed minded to the world we live in or they are lying selfishly for their own interests.

If you are skeptical then watch it and make your own mind up, otherwise you remain ignorant of the most important issue humanity has ever faced.