Seeing can aid believing. Two great films bring the growing impact of man-made climate change into stark view. One is Joshua Fox’s How To Let Go Of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change. The other is Leonardo DiCaprio’s, Before the Flood. If you care about the planet earth, see these movies or don’t.
I leave it up to you, because I don’t know if you will find the experience of viewing these films uplifting and hopeful or downright devastating. I found both to be true. Of the two, DiCaprio was the most devastating. Fox the more uplifting.
Before the Flood, brought to you by National Geographic, star power and money, is easy to find for free. HHow To Let Go Of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change, less so and Fox could use your help.
I encountered Mr. Fox at a screening of his film. He and his associates have been on the road, rails, and in the sky bringing his film to the people. He tends to go to the same places frequented by a local grassroots environmental activist group. When I saw him, he took a moment to call a number to register his dissent regarding the approval of an area fracking oil pipeline. He took another couple of minutes to take some images of the crowd in the high school auditorium where his film was viewed, some holding signs for line posting.
How To Let Go for me started out with holy shit, I didn’t know things were this bad, getting worse and pretty much hopeless. I grew restless in my seat and had no idea how the “Love” was going to come into the picture, until it did.
Fox loves activism, particularly activism that has heart and art. Fox’s film celebrates environmental activism, as being good in and of itself, beyond the effectiveness of the activism meeting its desired goals, regardless of its ability to lead to the reversal of ever-increasing global ocean tides. The showing of Fox’s film I went to had people literally dancing in the aisles at its conclusion.
Today’s climate change deniers are people who don’t want to think about the land currently under water due to this change and the increasing volume of this land.
Things have progressed way past feeling good about owning a hybrid automobile or bringing your own shopping bags to the grocery store. It is past time to start relocating massive amounts of people and shore-hugging power plants to higher ground and to build dams and giant pumps.
It is time to pray. It is time to take personal responsibility for what has been done.
How To Let Go features the recording of the creative and courageous stands of several groups and individuals addressing climate change. Their examples beg the question as to when and where and how will you act to try and make a difference.
In the film, Fox makes the basic point, that climate is changed by how people generate and use power, and that people use power to get their needs met.
Activism is an alternative form of energy.
Activism meets the need of people to feel fully alive and connected with each other and the earth. Activisim, often involves the burning of some fossil fuel, but can be more then offset by fossil fuel saved in the longer run.
Fox speaks of the human capacity for moral imagination, ways to stimulate it, and to put it into action. One way is to help Joshua Fox promote his film. For suggestions on this and much more go to HowToLetGoMovie.com.
◊♦◊
Another important film maker is Jon Bowermaster. His Dear Governor Como, anti-fracking film, has been credited for having a great impact on governor Como supporting a fracking ban for NY State. This was a very unpopular position for the governor to take in many quarters.
Bowermaster’s, Dear President Obama, takes the cause of putting an end to fracking a step further. His Hudson River In Peril series is keeping the pressure on to reduce the risks of environmental catastrophes in New Yorks’ Hudson River Valley region.
Increasingly, there will be a focus less on liberating oppressed groups and more talk and action on how we can all stay dry. For as long as possible. Climate change has us all in harm’s way.
All to slowly, the world is turning its attention to those who use their political power to meet their need for more political power. People want to know more about how petroleum prices determine the value of the US dollar and who is paying for the media propaganda to draw attention away from these questions.
Men have long been wary of the power of Nation States and their political parties. More recently they have become wary of the power of international corporations. Corporations that have their money in one place to save on taxes, their labor from another to save on wages, their parts and raw materials obtained from areas with lax protective regulations and politicians on the take worldwide.
Men have long been wary of the power wielded by “Alpha males” and their families. Power that is wielded across institutional and governmental lines. Internet shared information is laying bare how this works.
Men increasingly have their eyes on such matters, because it is mainly men who go to war to defend institutions. And so men seek to find their souls in nature.
Check out some or all of the movies mentioned above to save what you can of the planet, to save what you can of your soul.
__
The role of men is changing in the 21st century. Want to keep up? Get the best stories from The Good Men Project delivered straight to your inbox, here.
Photo credit: Getty Images