If We Had Listened To James Burke In 1989, We Wouldn’t Be Here Now
This week, I dutifully lined up and bought my copy of An Inconvenient Truth (which I greatly enjoyed in the theatre — it’s just a really well-made documentary.)
What I found especially sad is the “before and after” photos, particularly those of great national glaciers and Mount Kilimanjaro.
I remember watching James Burke’s “Connections” series on PBS as a kid - as a family we were addicted to science programmes, all that Science International, Tomorrow’s World kind of stuff. David Suzuki was like that distant uncle in BC who came to visit through the television.
Around 1989 Burke put together a one-off special called After The Warming, which incorporated sophisticated computer graphics to show the history of global warming from the perspective of a TV presenter in the year 2050. It was a clever narrative device which allowed him to show a series of progressively worsening warning signs which (the show being British, and thus realistic) people ignored until it was too late to do anything.
Literally every topic Al Gore covers in An Inconvenient Truth was covered in this special, which aired some 16 years ago. At the time, of course, it was slagged off as hyperbolic fearmongering. If we’d have listened to him then, might we be in such a mess now?
You can find this documentary in two volumes on VHS; there still might be some new copies out there but most are used. I don’t think it was ever re-released on DVD, so here’s hoping someone out there does the right thing and puts it up on YouTube or Google Video.
In the meantime, check out Who Killed The Electric Car?, which also hit DVD shelves this week, and Robert Newman (ex-Newman & Baddiel)’s one-man show A History Of Oil, available in its bicycle-generator-lit entirety on Google Video.
December 19, 2006 11:30 PM
