Long weekend viewing: Years Of Living Dangerously

This is the trailer for Years Of Living Dangerously, a nine part documentary about the impacts of climate change by James Cameron and a bunch of Hollywood filmmakers, working with some of the USA’s top TV journalists and a team of top climate scientists. There are some big names involved: Harrison Ford, Matt Damon, Jessica Alba, and Arnold Schwarzenegger investigate various aspects of how climate impacts are already being felt. It’s being shown on Showtime (cable TV) in the US, and I imagine it will eventually turn up elsewhere around the world. For the time being you can watch the first episode in its entirety here:

For background info on how the Years Of Living Dangerously project was put together and financed, I recommend this excellent (long) article by Michael Peltz at Institutional Investor, Climate change and the years of investing dangerously, which looks at the work of Jeremy Grantham and others to persuade big business to take climate risks seriously.

6 thoughts on “Long weekend viewing: Years Of Living Dangerously”

  1. I was struck by the parallel between Syria and the USA. Was the hidden message that if there is a collapse in the supply of food due to drought the USA would suffer civil disturbance? When things go wrong they can go very wrong and out of control.

  3. That article you link to isn’t exactly uplifting.

    Eg: consider the details it gives about Grantham, who is one of the main backers of the movie Years of Living Dangerously. Grantham is described as not only the co-founder of an investment firm that manages $117 billion in assets, but he is its “chief investment strategist”. So, how does Grantham’s awareness that climate change is serious affect the strategy he comes up with for investing that $117 billion? The author had to go to Grantham’s executive director Ramsay Ravenal for a quote. Ravenal says, basically, the fund is doing nothing. “They haven’t been in a trying-something-new mode”. What does Grantham himself say? According to the author of the article, Grantham “won’t comment about the reluctance of GMO [the investment firm he co-founded and decides strategy for] to incorporate climate change and resource efficiency into its research process”.

    The idea of taking the fund out of investments aimed at accelerating the use of fossil fuels is carefully avoided not discussed.

    Basically, you read the article about these actual good people who backed the very good effort that “Years of Living Dangerously” is and you conclude, its blast the planet full time during your working life with everything you’ve got, then in your spare time or when you retire, send a few token dollars into the save the climate fund.

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