If the Academy Award received by filmmakers of “An Inconvenient Truth” is any indication, movies with an environmental message are making big waves these days.
“We have everything we need to get started, with the possible exception of the will to act, and that’s a renewable resource,” Al Gore said as he accepted 2007’s Best Documentary Feature Award. “Let’s renew it.”
In the spirit of Gore’s message, for the next two Saturdays, Park City’s Recycle Utah will host nine documentary screenings that aim to change the tides where global warming is concerned.
The films will be shown in honor of the first National Day of Climate Change “Step It Up!” on April 14 and Earth Day on April 22.
“I really believe this: we are a can-do nation,” said Recycle Utah Executive Director Insa Riepen. “Once people have gotten the information that it’s now time to do something.”
Recycle Utah will show three films in recognition of “Step It Up!” a national campaign to pressure congress to cut carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050 spearheaded by Bill McKibben, a writer for environmental magazine, “Grist.”
On April 14, McKibben called for a nationwide “do-it-yourself mass protest” for climate change at iconic landmarks across the country. So far, the Web site reports that 1,364 sites throughout the country have registered to participate in the event.
To “Step it Up,” Park City Mountain Resort will host an event at 9,500 feet to mark the effects global warming could have on future snow conditions, and Recycle Utah has chosen Old Town’s Miners Hospital from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., to screen “Who Killed the Electric Car?,” “Kilowatt Hours,” and “An Inconvenient Truth,” and to stage a march.
As far as being proactive about the environment, Parkites are “doing splendidly” according to Riepen. In recent years, the city has embraced a switch to biodiesel fuel in resort grooming operations and buses, a green building movement and a boost to recycling efforts. This year, local businesses have also signed up to learn from Recycle Utah how to run their companies with the environment in mind.
Yet Park City residents could do more, Riepen says.
“We’re doing very well, but we have a long way to go,” she says, “There are a lot of nations doing much better than we are We need to do it now.”
In the U.S., Riepen points to Portland, Oregon’s public transportation system and Austin, Texas’ healthy homebuilding programs as model cities, though she says it’s European cities, whose resources have already been stressed by population growth, that are at the forefront when it comes to environmental practices. “They don’t have the luxury of space and money like we have and they have to use public transportation,” she says. “The source of their energy is 95 percent renewable.”
In stark contrast, right now 95 percent of all energy produced in Utah is culled from coal-burning plants, which physicians have recently blamed for the rise in children’s asthma, Riepen says.
But “Recycle Utah’s mission is not about telling you what’s wrong, we’re about giving you suggestions we’re here to tell you what you can do,” she said.
“Some people have seen ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ or ‘Who Killed the Electric car’ and some people have seen ‘Kilowatt Hours’ all of these movies came around through Sundance,” she added. “But these movies are doing the same thing. They say here’s what’s happening and look what you can do about it.”
The bookend festival to this Saturday’s screenings will be the Energy Film Festival on April 21, an encore festival hosted by Utah’s Sierra Club activist Tim Wagner, who helped to host a similar event for Westminster College in February.
“Certainly right now there’s no environmental issue that’s as front-and-center as global warming and probably no film that’s furthered the cause more than ‘An Inconvenient Truth,'” he said. “Film continues to help people become more informed and better citizens if they have more information, they are more likely to take action.”
One of the festival films Wagner highlights is the “Power of Community,” a documentary that focuses on Cuban citizens who managed to rebuild their economy after the Soviet Union cut off their crude oil supply. “One big farmers market is what they created by implementing a lot of solar energy and using old agrarian practices,” Wagner explains. “It’s an incredible story about how to find new ways to structure an economy.”
The films at the festival range from humorous to devastating, peppered with shorts that document Mayor Rocky Anderson and Robert Redford’s “Sundance Summit” and the possibilities of wind power as a source for a third of the nation’s energy.
The idea behind the festival is to steer people away from “energy apathy” toward “energy awareness” explains Wagner. “If we get people aware we can put a dent on energy consumption and we can make changes that will improve our economy and our lifestyle,” he said.