Piers Guy, a wind farm
supporter and a wind turbine developer, tried to develop a wind farm in central
England, but faced severe opposition from the neighbors. Eventually, he failed
to persuade the neighbors, as they were so opposed of building a wind farm near
their town just because it would harm the aesthetics of their views. Even
though they were cognizant of the importance of wind farm for saving the
environment, they just didn’t want to change their conventional and comfortable
way of living and overcome their NIMBY mentality. Human instinct definitely
seeks not for any loss but for profit, which becomes an obstacle in other
situations, especially when it is related to saving the environment. It is an
evident truth that we must overcome this in order to save ourselves.
The development of
human civilization is also causing an extreme amount of harm to the
environment. ‘The
big problem is flying. Just one return flight, say London to New York, would
blow our entire carbon-budget for about three and a half years.’, said Lisa
Guy. Apparently, apart from ‘crimes’ such as dumping oils to the river and
setting the forest on fire, flying is one of the most disastrous thing an
individual can do to the environment. However, most individuals are not aware
of this. Who of us would have thought that we were doing one of the worst thing
we could do to the environment when we were on an airplane? This film shows
that the advanced human civilization, along with the ‘stupidity’ of human race,
may make it harder for us to protect the environment. Of course, scientific
development may act as an effective way to soothe the environmental problems. Scientific
technology can be used in various situations, such as developing ecofriendly
energy, and capturing CO2 gas. Thus, we will need to have an insight about the
consequences that would occur from every footstep that we make.
The
film tries to make a pathos appeal in order to bring sympathy to people’s mind.
Fernand Pareau, who has experienced the climatic change and its effect on Mont
Blanc for the last 50 years, explains to the Guy family that the glacier had
melted by 7 to 10 meters in that year while taking them on a tour.
Nevertheless, it is quite evident that the environment is now starting to get
out of control. Such evidence can be found in current natural disasters like
Hurricane Katrina, which was a disastrous hurricane that struck regions
including New Orleans. Natural disasters nowadays are becoming stronger. According
to a report by Oxfam, the rate of natural disasters has risen by 400 percent in
the last two decades. It also concluded that the rise of the number of natural
disasters was mainly due to the effect of global warming
As
the archivist ends his recording, he says ‘I find it surprising, that after so much effort the final act of
our existence should be suicide. So why build this archive? It's a cautionary
tale. Not for us. It's too late for us. But for, well, for whomever, whatever
eventually finds this recording.’ The archivist is from a fictional future, a
future that we might have to face. The archivist has made this record for us
living in ‘The Age of Stupid’, facing the same situation that the archivist
would have faced before the end of his factional world. In the film, we saw not
only the selfish and ignorant attitudes of people, but also the ones who
changed. The people from Chamonix made a protest in order to stop the tunnel
from being widened. The Guy family changed their way of living in order to
reduce the amount of CO2 they emit. Having watched this film, we must not be
stupid anymore. We should not only be cognizant of the danger we are facing but
also the importance of the changes we have to make. As the aphorism ‘Little
drops fill the mighty sea’ tells us, every change we make will come into a big change
that might save both the environment and ourselves.
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