In the last few months, Republican candidates have made clear their lack of faith in science. Few candidates will admit they believe in evolution, for example. And fewer still admit the scientific truth supporting climate change and its horrific consequences. Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann declared in a recent interview that she thinks climate change and “green” jobs are issues that “have to be settled on the base of real science, not manufactured science.” Texas Governor Rick Perry argues that "there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects." These claims look misguided based in ignorance at best, but these candidates’ assertions are relished by conservatives.
Climate skeptics love Perry because he valorizes their deluded points of view, but there is one film that may begin to soften the bias against climate change: How to Boil a Frog (2009). By infusing comedy into arguments for climate change and for actions we can take to address it, Jon Cooksey offers a viable argument for change that includes fun activities like making friends and making trouble. He’s not trying to save the planet; he’s trying to save himself. As Jon tells us jokingly, “I’m no tree hugger. I’m a people hugger.”
How to Boil a Frog compares our own experiences with climate change and its repercussions to a frog in a pot of water that starts out cool and then heats up slowly till it boils. The frog doesn’t jump out of the pot because it has become acclimated, just as we have become used to our warming environment. The problem with this acclimation is that we’re on a death course, the film suggests. But the film doesn’t stop there. It definitely demonstrates the horrific mess we’ve made of Earth’s environment, through a structured comedic argument. But it also provides multiple solutions that move the film beyond rhetorical documentaries like An Inconvenient Truth (2006), which rely on individual and collective nostalgia—a look to the past—for their arguments.
As Cooksey makes clear, warnings about global warming have been around at least since 1827, when Jean-Baptiste Fournier suggested that an atmospheric effect kept the earth warmer than it would otherwise be – he used the analogy of a greenhouse. But Cooksey doesn’t emphasize global warming as a problem but as a symptom of our “overshooting” nature’s curve. When we go past things nature can give us, we “over shoot,” Cooksey explains. There are too many of us, and we keep on growing, and we consume too many resources.
Cooksey outlines the problem first, as a way to highlight the solutions. First of all, overpopulation is a problem that isn’t addressed because of religion and sex. The war on nature is a second problem that hasn’t been addressed but is destroying oceans (with gyres and plastic plankton) and fish, trees, animal species, and land and air. In 50 years, at the current rate of population growth and polluting, the world’s population will double; all the ocean’s fish will die; half of animal species will be extinct. Yet conservatives argue that we can’t do anything to hurt the economy so the third problem is the conflict between rich and poor. Cooksey also argues that oil production has reached its peak, and now extracting oil takes as much energy as the energy the oil produces. Overconsumption, though, is a problem we all can address through conservation.
For Cooksey, individuals can address all of these problems by making a few lifestyle changes. He tells us to drive past Exxon/Mobile gas stations because they have produced more than three percent of global warming since 1982. He tells us to change our “life bulbs” instead of our light bulbs, as Al Gore suggests, cutting our own emissions in multiple ways (stop eating beef because they cause more than ten percent of global warming, have no more than one child, buy used, and live in smaller dwellings with locally grown produce. Most importantly, however, he tells us to make trouble by posting video of environmental disasters on YouTube.
This last solution lines up well with the conclusion of the film, scenes of devastation meant to parallel the crash films from Driver’s Education classes. Cooksey says we should “view it so we don’t have to do it” before showing scenes of eco-disasters: garbage, pollution, nuclear explosions, oil spills, human deaths, and spectacular fires and smoke. Cooksey ends his film by again encouraging viewers to make trouble. Perhaps that trouble should include posting How to Boil a Frog on Michele Bachman’s and Rick Perry’s websites.
Probably the most fun someone can have learning about the catastrophic ills that plague the planet is watching this film. Jon is not just a hoot, but a smart hoot, showing ways we can save our own butts. Oh, and the earth's butt, too.
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