Cool It

Climate catastrophe? The end of civilization as we know it? Are the current staggeringly expensive actions now being considered really helping to save the world - or are we just burning money? In this “eye-opening” (Los Angeles Times) documentary, author Bjorn Lomborg (“The Skeptical Environmentalist”) asks us to question the facts and the solutions. Why in the world are we spending so much money on “green” initiatives…for such little gain? Are there better ways to solve the problems? How else could that money be spent? No matter what our opinions are on the environmental movement, Cool It is an “engrossing” film (The New York Times) that asks us to rethink our polarized views. After all, nothing less than the planet is at stake. .com ---- The documentary Cool It presents itself as the "alternative" view to Al Gore's award-winning An Inconvenient Truth on the issue of global warming. But the reality is that Cool It, which focuses on the boyish and controversial Danish scientist Bjørn Lomborg, presents solutions and theories on global warming that actually complement Gore's position, but without the "e tactics" that Lomborg believes are breeding worldwide hysteria on the subject. Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, is apparently not skeptical at all when it comes to believing whether human impact and carbon emissions are causing the earth to warm. But Lomborg's proposals steer away from Gore's proposed caps on carbon emissions as being "completely un-cost-effective," and suggest several other tactics world and energy leaders might take. Lomborg is a fan of making alternative energy sources like solar, wind, and even wave power more affordable, and exploring more radical ideas like a revamped approach to nuclear energy. Cool It is slow to get traction, as it first lays the background of how controversial Lomborg's book is and how disliked Lomborg is among certain policymakers and academicians. It's only in the second half of Cool It that Lomborg finally delivers his own proposals about global warming, in lectures to students and in a series of interviews. And once he begins to unveil his suggestions, most of which he makes a fairly strong case for, the viewer becomes eager to hear a third party ask both Lomborg and Gore together what each thinks of the other's ideas, and how they might work on the same team. Whether the viewer ultimately agrees with Lomborg or not, Cool It is a must-see for anyone interested in the science--and politics--of global warming. --A.T. Hurley

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