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REELIN' IN THE GREEN - SUNDANCE GOES GREEN AS ENVIRONMENT TAKES SPOTLIGHT Environmental movies with a message are taking center stage at the 25th Sundance Film Festival, with films ranging from vanishing bees and threatened dolphins being screened here. "We are ravaging the earth. We need to think how we treat our resources but more importantly how we treat the people," said director Joe Berlinger in an interview with AFP. Berlinger's latest documentary "Crude" in the US Documentary Competition is the riveting story of five Ecuadoran tribes as they seek justice from oil giant Chevron. We as a society fill our gas tanks but don't think where these products come from. It's our moral responsibility to know. I hope that's what people get out of this film," Berlinger said. Berlinger deftly introduces the tribes and their way of life deep in the jungle rainforests of the Amazon. Gradually the "paradise" quiet jungle life is revealed to have been poisoned decades earlier by oil producers. Waste pits from oil production are visited by both legal teams as charges and counter charges are leveled. The inspections, delays, arguments and legal wrangling are coupled with endless frustration. "It's a great David and Goliath story," Berlinger said, adding, "It will be decades before this is decided. In the meantime the people will suffer. It's a shameful chapter in our history." Lawyers for the tribes go on a marathon legal run to harness evidence, witnesses and support before ever hoping for a chance against resources employed by Chevron. Berlinger clearly knows about balance in covering an important issue. Lawyers and scientists representing Chevron appear throughout the movie offering their viewpoint. "It's a film about the process about the process of justice. I'm not saying who is guilty. The film doesn't try to solve who is responsible. I let each side have their say," said Berlinger. The film also shows how legal teams prepare for court appearances and how they strive to have their side presented in the media spotlight. The legal war is accompanied by a public relations battle that features radio and television appearances along with efforts to bring government pressure to bear on the issue. Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa sides with the tribes' dilemma and rock star Sting and his wife Trudie Styler trumpet their plight. "I consider it our fight as well," said Trudie Styler in the film. Berlinger is no stranger to Sundance where he won the audience award with "Brother's Keeper" (1992). Other credits include "Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills" and "Metallica: Some Kind of Monster." Other Sundance films serving up environmental green to movie audiences include "Earth Days," directed by Robert Stone. Stone's film explores the environmental movement through those heavily involved in it. Director Rupert Murray's "The End of the Line" is based on a book by journalist Charles Clover and reveals the impact of overfishing on the oceans. Using humor "Dirt! The Movie," directed by Bill Beneson and Gene Rosow, shows how humans are destroying the last natural resource on earth. "The Beekeepers" screening in the New Frontiers category uses an experimental approach to entice audience-goers. Director Richard Robinson mixes ancient accounts of beekeeping, black and white film clips, contemporary film with his own artistic narrative to get peoples' attention. "The bees tell us what is going on in the environment," said Robinson. Robinson himself is a beekeeper and says he interviewed beekeepers in the United States including a NASA scientist who tracks global warming by studying bees. Robinson points to Colony Collapse Disorder which is killing bees worldwide. "You're going to have a host of problems. The bees are like a tractor for a farmer. They pollinate the crops and increase yields on the crops," said Robinson. "The Cove" directed by Louie Psihoyos follows the demise of dolphins and disappearing whales off a coastal village in Japan. A group of activists led by Ric O'Barry (Flipper) reveal the environmental crisis. (Agence France-Presse) TRANSIT FOOTPRINT - TRANSPORT MINISTERS PLOT CLIMATE ACTION IN JAPAN Officials from 20 nations met in mid-January in Japan to find ways to tackle global warming related to transport, which causes nearly one-quarter of carbon emissions but has partly evaded strict regulation. Transport ministers or envoys from nations including all members of the Group of Eight industrial powers opened two days of talks in Tokyo as momentum builds to draft a post-Kyoto treaty on climate change. "The countries present at this meeting recognize that we need to get emissions from the transport sector under control," UN climate chief Yvo de Boer told reporters on the sidelines of the meeting. The participating nations realize that "especially in order to advance emission reductions regarding shipping and aviation, we need international cooperation," he said. It is one of a series of meetings to lay the groundwork ahead of a December conference in Copenhagen which is supposed to approve a treaty for climate action for after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol's obligations expire. Transport - air, sea and land - accounts for 23 percent of carbon emissions, topping all sectors except electricity generation and indoor heating, according to the International Energy Agency. Host Japan had invited transport ministers from 22 nations including key polluters such as the United States, China and India. But the United States and India eventually sent diplomatic envoys instead while China did not show up, the Japanese transport ministry said. An April meeting in Bangkok agreed to look at reducing emissions from air and sea travel, a growing source of emissions left out of the Kyoto Protocol due to the problem's international nature. But nations have already been toughening standards for car emissions -- decisions mostly taken before the current economic crisis which has battered the auto industry. De Boer said the causes of the economic crisis and global warming were linked. "Solving both together is the one chance that we have to drive fundamental change now," he said. "The unlimited high-emission, debt-driven economic model is broken and any economic recovery that tries to allow it again will fail." US President Barack Obama, who recently took office, has promised strong US leadership on climate change and investment in a "green economy." It marks a major shift from his predecessor George W. Bush who dismissed the Kyoto Protocol as too costly for the world's largest economy. Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso earlier appealed for action in an opening speech, saying: "Everyone living on the Earth is expected to take responsible actions to protect our planet." "I would like each participating country to accelerate its efforts to reduce C02 emissions from the transport sector, as well as to enhance its support for developing countries, utilizing its technologies and experiences," Aso said. Japan hosted the 1997 negotiations for the landmark Kyoto Protocol but is well behind in meeting its obligations. It has set a long-term goal of slashing carbon emissions by 60 to 80 percent from current levels but, to the disappointment of environmentalists, has not yet set mid-term goals. The UN climate chief said he heard Japan would set the mid-term goals in June, around the time of another climate conference. "The world is keenly waiting for Japan to announce its mid-term target," de Boer said. (Agence France-Presse) MORE BAD NEWS FOR FORESTS - EXPERTS PLEAD TO SAVE TROPICAL FORESTS IN PERIL In mid-January, U.S. experts pleaded for boosted efforts to protect tropical forests, which are key to ensuring biodiversity and fighting climate change but are increasingly threatened by deforestation. "I am gravely concerned about what is happening with tropical forests," William Laurance, a researcher with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama told AFP. "There is a very high rate of destruction of the old growth, ancient forests." He said the equivalent of 50 football pitches of virgin rainforest was being destroyed every minute amid global warming, large scale habitat fragmentation, and changes in rainfall. Intense hunting in areas of the tropics was also leading to the disappearance of "hundreds of species of amphibians," he said. "Now we have synergy among those different threats," Laurance said. "So when you talk about global warming for example because it's getting hotter, species in the tropics, where it's possible, will naturally try to move up to higher elevations where it's a little bit cooler. "In many cases they will be trapped by habitat construction, cattle pass, degraded lands," he warned. Laurance is one of the authors of a report presented Monday to a conference organized in Washington by the Smithsonian Natural History museum. "Indonesia is now in terrible shape, losing more than two million hectares (4.9 million acres) of forest per year. Borneo is being devastated," he said. More than half of the planet's 20 million square kilometers (eight million square miles) of rainforests has already been cleared for human use, while another five million square kilometers (two million square miles) has been selectively logged, said Greg Asner from the Carnegie Institution. But he said major swathes of land, or some 350,000 square kilometers (140,000 square miles), have been abandoned by human inhabitants and are beginning to grow back. "Moreover, the regrowth is relatively quick. The forest canopy closes after just 15 years. After 20 years, about half of the original biomass weight has grown back," he said. (Agence France-Presse) GREENLAND RISING? MASSIVE GREENLAND MELTDOWN? NOT SO FAST, SAY SCIENTISTS The recent acceleration of glacier melt-off in Greenland, which some scientists fear could dramatically raise sea levels, may only be a temporary phenomenon, according to a study published Sunday. Researchers in Britain and the United States devised computer models to test three scenarios that could account for rapid - by the standards applied to glaciers - melting of the Helheim Glacier, one of Greenland's largest. Two were based on changes caused directly by global warming: an increase in the flow of water that greases the underbelly of the glacier as it slides toward the sea, and a general thinning due to melting. If confirmed, either of these explanations would point to a sustained increase in runoff over the coming decades, fueling speculation that sea level could rise faster and higher than once thought. The stakes are enormous: the rate at which the global ocean water mark rises could have a devastating impact on hundreds of millions of people living in low-lying areas around the world. But a team led by Faezeh Nick of Durham University in Britain found that neither of these scenarios matched the data. "They simply don't fit what we have observed," said colleague and co-author Andreas Vieli in an interview. By contrast, the third computer model - which hypothesized that melt-off was triggered by changing conditions in the confined area where the glacier meets the sea - fit like a glove, he said. "Whatever happens at the terminus provokes a strong and rapid reaction in the rest of the glacier. The result has been a significant loss of mass" as huge chunks of ice drop into the ocean, a process known as calving, Vieli explained. These changes are also set in motion by global warming, but are not likely to last, he said. "You cannot maintain these very high rates of peak mass loss for very long. The glaciers start to retreat and settle into a new an relatively stable state," he said. The Helheim Glacier, along with several others in Greenland, started to slow down in 2007. Vieli also noted that the data alarming the scientific community only covers a span of a few years. It may be ill-advised, he suggested, to project a trend on the basis of what may turn out to be a short-term phenomenon. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted in 2007 that sea levels could creep up by 18 to 59 centimeters (7.2 to 23.2 inches) by 2100 due to thermal expansion driven by global warming. Such an increase would be enough to wipe out several small island nations and seriously disrupt mega-deltas home in Asia and Africa. But IPCC failed to take into account recent studies on the observed and potential impact of the melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, prompting the Nobel-winning body to later remove the upward bracket from its end-of-century forecast. A new consensus has formed among experts that levels could rise by a metre or more by 2100, according to Mark Serreze of the National Now and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. "What has puzzled us is that the changes are even faster than we would have though possible," he said in a recent interview. Vieli cautioned that his findings, published in Nature Geoscience, are narrowly focused on one glacier, and that sea levels could still rise higher than the IPCC's original projections. Other Greenland glaciers behave differently, and the dynamics of the Antarctic ice sheet are still poorly understood, he noted. Nor should the new study "be taken out of context to suggest that climate change is not a serious threat -- it is," he added. The ice sitting atop Greenland could lift oceans by seven meters, though even the gloomiest of climate change projections do not include such a scenario. (Agence France-Presse) |