Cut! Cut!
There's no much time for a applause and there's certainly not much time for climate change.
There's no question about what it is that our generation has to do
and how we are going to be remembered
and so, there's nothing intrinsically more stupid or more useless about us,
the only question is, whether we give it a go or not.
Ten years ago today, my film The Age of Stupid,
launched at its green carpet premiere in a solar-powered cinema tent
in London's Leicester Square.
Age of Stupid stars the late Pete Postlethwaite
as one of the last people living on the devastated world of 2055,
looking back at us now and asking:
Why didn't we save ourselves when we had the chance?
At the premiere, Pete confronted the then climate change minister,
Ed Miliband.
If you commission a new dirty coal power station,
I promise to return to her majesty the Queen the OBE that I was given in 2002.
Ed went on to actually change UK coal policy.
And then, in collaboration with the Guardian
we launched 1010 which asked everyone,
individuals, schools, football teams, the government,
to cut 10% of their emissions in a year.
So things were looking quite promising back in 2009.
Back how have we got on since?
Did we get ourselves off the path to the catastrophic future depicted in the film?
To find out, I'm going to catch up
with some of the stars of Age of Stupid.
We could have saved ourselves.
But we didn't.
First stop, a shed in a back garden in Oxford,
to meet climate author Mark Lynas.
So we have to act now to stop something happening in the future.
If we wait until the full temperature effects that are already upon us,
then it's far too late to stop.
If you remember one single number above all else, make it two degrees.
Crucially to keep the temperature rise within two degrees.
This point of stabilisation needs to be at around 2015.
Hello!
Hello.
Hi Mark.
Hi.
You alright?
You're even wearing the same shirt.
No, it's slightly a tread-bare but it is the same one.
I remember long discussions here in the shed
about how bad are we going to make the future.
What temperature rise have we already had?
We've already got one degree.
We've got one degree?
We are actually…
This is the emission's curve, right?
So now we are back on this line?
Yeah.
And where are we heading then?
We are heading to, you know, four, five, six, seven degrees.
Yeah.
Which is… I mean…
The end.
Well, beyond the end.
If it's possible to get slightly worst than the total collapse of civilisation
and the apocalypse, whatever it is, that's the path…
…the path we are currently on, OK.
But that does depend on continuing to increase emissions.
You said we mustn't go over two degrees and now you're saying it's 1.5…
So, this is even steeper.
Not just than it was but…
Just because we haven't done anything.
It's also not 80%, so we have to cross this line of neutrality.
Right, which means what?
Like zero by 2050.
And after that point, we then have this… we only go carbon negative
so we have to start removing the carbon from the atmosphere
that we have emitted over the past decades.
So maybe the good news is that we are not passed, at the moment,
we are not passed tipping points which make the situation in uncontrollable,
it's still up to us how much we continue to emit.
Yeah.
How does that feel?
Good news?
Search 'visible impacts of climate change leading up to 2010'.
The original film also features the oldest mountain guide in France,
Fernand Pareau,
who'd witnessed the alpine glacier slowly vanishing during the course of his long life.
I went back to Chamonix and asked Fernand, now aged 95 but still skiing,
how much more has the glacier melted?
One of the most popular characters in the film
is larger than life indian entrepreneur Jeh Wadia,
who's trying to open low cost flying to ordinary Indian people.
In the year 2005, I mean, having the elite class who can fly
in a country of a billion people is ridiculous.
The first flight you were there.
The first ever flight I was there, yeah.
They had just one plane then.
Flying to four destinations
and now 24 domestic and 4 international
now flying outside.
His career is hugely successful.
I would call that a huge success.
So Jeh's business has gone global meaning many more Indian people
can now go on holiday like we in richer countries have done for decades.
But as flying as the most carbon intensive form of travel,
this is yet more bad news for climate change.
News presenter: It is our fault after years of debate,
some of the world's top scientists have concluded…
… 'unequivocable' is the word they use, human activity is…
…contributing to changes in our earth's climate
and that issue is no longer up to debate.
Age of Stupid also stars Piers and Lisa Guy
who are trying to go carbon neutral on their farm in Cornwall.
In his day job, windfarm developer Piers
was waging a battle to build 16 wind turbines
in a field in Bedfordshire but he was up against fierce local opposition,
trying to stop or at least limit his project.
The problem really is that this is one of the least windy sites in the country.
Well, it normally always comes down to wind farms is the aesthetics.
You know, everything else is basically put together
to try and back up the ultimate thing
and the ultimate thing is that they don't want to spoil their view.
But I'm a bit concerned about the low level noise as well.
Yeah, I feel really really fucked off with it.
I mean, you must be feeling the same as me.
Just, I mean, how long have we got?
So we are back at Airfield farm.
12 years since we last filmed here.
And what everybody has always asked me since the film came out:
did Piers finish that wind farm or not?
Yeah and the answer's yes.
Here it is.
Wow.
Yeah.
You did it!
They exist.
Thirteen years, hard labour to get three turbines on.
Yeah.
Beautiful.
Symbols of hope.
Yeah exactly.
Well, more than symbols because they are actually producing.
They're actually doing it, that's true.
Very simple really, they probably actually did the installation of this,
you know, it probably only took them three days.
Really?
Yeah.
It's really fast.
Symbolic of the whole problem, isn't it?
We've got the technology, we've got the land,
we've got the resource, the wind.
Correct.
We just got to do it.
Yeah, you could do it very rapidly if you had a will.
Yeah.
You know, Brexit is rather sucked the oxygen out of a lot of stuff,
you know, we just haven't had the right focus
and we really need to get back to it because it's not getting any better,
I mean, today it's almost summer weather here in February
which is no surprise at all.
Yesterday was a new record, it was the hottest day in winter ever in Britain.
Yesterday.
Yeah, very nice but it's a terrifying prospect.
I find it terrifying, yeah.
My worry, I think, now is, I really feel that it's possible
that it's too late.
Throughout our history, the deal was,
we left the world in a better place that we found it.
That was progress.
The wheel, rule of law, penicillin …
It was our covenant to our children and grandchildren.
Governments only go as far as the population demands
and that means mass protests on an unprecedented scale.
Is it too late or is there any hope?
We are finally starting to see the beginnings of the popular uprising
George dreamed of.
But at the same time:
News presenter: Charred earth as far as the eye can see.
We are talking about instant frostbite.
Three of the hottest years on record.
I think something's happening, something's changing
and it will change back again.
Wild fires will grow in intensity, costing billions in damages and lives lost.
I don't want you to be hopeful, I want you to panic.
You think of the first world war where the old just push the young
over the top and into the machine guns.
We do this again and again.
Even our own children we are prepared to sacrifice for own self interest,
it's an extraordinary thing.
When I say 'we', actually is now we as society as a whole,
you're not like that, I'm not like that,
it's the bloody psychopaths who govern our nations.
Do you remember what you said in Age of Stupid?
No, I don't remember what I said a moment ago.
I'll remind you.
Basically you said we need a revolution.
How do you think that's going ten years later?
Well, at last, I think we are getting one.
The immediacy of what we are facing hadn't appealed to people's minds.
Life support!
This is our life support system that we are talking about
and we are ripping it up.
But as up today we got hope.
As up today we are not ripping up anymore.
We are still ripping it up right now and here.
This is just so exciting because we are seeing a global youth movement.
Well, it's important to do it because if I don't
then I am not going to have a very nice future, I guess?
Chanting: Climate change has got to go.
Say hey, say ho, say climate change has got to go…!