A few days ago, I tried to talk to my roommates about climate change. They know I’m in this class and I talk about it all the time because I’ve learned so much, but they just don’t see things the same way. They laugh, saying “Oh yeah, of course it’s climate change” in a sarcastic tone, then change the subject. But this past weekend, we went to a movie and one of the previews was for a special screening of a documentary about climate change. Oddly enough, they seemed incredibly interested in the preview.
The documentary was called “Chasing Ice”. The basic information we got about it from the preview is that it was an idea started by a National Geographic photographer who noticed Icelandic icebergs melting and wanted to prove to other people that this is a cause of a warming planet. This turned into a project, with cameras across icy locations in the world, taking one picture every day lit hour, for three years and then creating a time-lapse of the results. During the preview, we got a glimpse of the time-lapse, and there’s no denying the ice melted. Sometimes it only melted a bit, but other times, it disappeared all together. I turned to look at the reactions of my friends, and they were shocked. “Yeah, do you believe in it now?” I asked.
After the movie, we were driving home and I brought up the documentary again. They were shocked. They said the thing that made it real to them is that they saw the results of a warming planet. They saw the ice actually melt in front of their eyes, hey saw the pictures and the videos that these photographers captured. They believed it, because it was physical evidence, it was proof. That got me thinking, maybe that’s one of the problems as to why people don’t seem concerned about climate change; all they see are numbers and statistics, which are hard to understand. People don’t see the visual implications enough to care.
I decided to do a little more research into this documentary, and as it turns out, it’s been very successful. It’s been shown in over 170 countries, 75 film festivals, and 70 universities. It has been screened in the White House, the US Congress, the United Nations, and many other notable places. It has been shown at Sundance Film Festival, one of the most distinguished festivals for independent and documentary films. It has reached millions of people in hundreds of places. It’s been a start to the movement of educating people on our warming planet through visual representation. As so elegantly stated in a synopsis, “Chasing Ice is the story of one man’s mission to change the tide of history by gathering undeniable evidence against our changing planet”.
Seeing just the preview of the documentary sparked a concern in my friends. If a five-minute preview can do that, what can the entire documentary do to someone’s opinion of global warming? And what can multiple documentaries like this do to our world? Things like these, these conversations, documentaries, and attempts to show how rather than just what, are what gives me hope. We may not be able to stop it, but the first step in doing anything is talking about it, and this five-minute preview did just that.
If you’re interested, this is the official trailer. The documentary is currently on Netflix.
Thanks for posting about this film! Chasing Ice is really fantastic, and I wish we had had time this term to watch it in class. I’d definitely encourage you (and everyone else who hasn’t before) to see it. You make a keen point about the importance of “seeing the evidence” and, one might say, viscerally witnessing climate change. Of course, as we’ve been learning this term, climate change affects (or will affect) nearly everything we do whether we know it or not, but there is something powerful about seeing a massive glacier recede and disappear. As you note, the film has been incredibly popular and successful. I thought you might be interested in this short video and article:
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/11/28/1250151/watch-self-described-climate-skeptic-says-shes-changed-by-chasing-ice-documentary/
It is an interview with a woman who didn’t believe in climate change and then saw the film Chasing Ice and now does believe.
That is crazy because I had a conversation with my best friend from home and she was very interested in the topic. We both agreed that the earth is getting destroyed and we as people don’t take care of our planet. However, most people don’t know anything about climate change and just laugh about it. The documentary I think will open a lot of people’s eyes to what is going on right now. It’s sad to say that so many people are just in denial about climate change. The video shows how ice is melting and the earth’s temperature is going to keep increasing.