I just saw a showing of this documentary at a local college followed by an extensive Q&A with the producer, Peter Byck. The film managed to be informative, conveying both dire consequences of increasing atmospheric CO2 along with what is being done to combat this. The brilliance of the film is it remains upbeat by focusing on individuals who are using techniques both within the ecosystem and the world economy that are effective.
He starts with a cartoon of Mr. CO2, with two little oxygen ears, that is disarming without being insulting. There are the stock images of glens that had been glaciers not that long ago, with explanations of what is lost beyond scenic views. There is enough earth science, botany and microbiology to be challenging without the need to pull out a notebook.
Byck, who made this film over the course of four years with only his wife as a co-creator, weaved the many individual interviews together perfectly, including a man who had organized small Texas farmers into a large cooperative wind farm, they had a steady income for the first time, as we all benefited, when the farmer stated that he did it single handedly, we were all in on the joke since his loss of one arm had been evident from the beginning of his interview.
The flaw, I hope not fatal, was the minimization of the political opposition to what he is suggesting, which will take an expansion of "big government" to implement. His choice of the major human interest subject, Van Jones, a person who was forced out of his Obama White House position, based on his documented left wing radical statements, was a bit of unfortunate self indulgence.
It will be difficult enough to convert those industrialists who are profiting from the status quo, without further supporting the right wing canard that green is not the new Red, White and Blue, but just the new Red.
