The Age of Stupid Gives a Coin-Flip Chance of Avoiding Climate Catastrophe

Franny Armstrong
Director of The Age of Stupid climate movie and founder of 10:10

If you put yeast into a jar with some sugar, they will gobble up the energy as quickly as possible, reproduce wildly out of control and then wipe themselves out in their own waste products.

So far, our collective response to climate change has been of the yeast variety. All the talking, all the documentaries, all the international negotiations have resulted in a net achievement of less than nothing: global emissions just keep going up and up.

As Pete Postlethwaite's character says in our, er, documentary, The Age of Stupid, "We wouldn't be the first life form to wipe itself out. But what would be unique about us is that we did it knowingly." And there's the crux of it. We are the most intelligent creature ever to evolve and yet we are about to make the stupidest mistake in all of geological time. Hence the film's name.

So, what to do?

Clearly we should have started tackling the problem as soon as the seriousness was understood, back in the '80s. But given that we didn't and we are where we are, we must now come together to agree a binding international treaty which quickly and massively cuts total global emissions. Our last chance to agree this treaty within the timescale of the physics of the planet is at the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen in December this year. It is being called "the most important meeting in human history" for good reason.

Obviously the treaty isn't just made up on the spot, they've been working on it for years. The best deal currently on the table is that from the EU, but even this would only give us about a 50/50 chance of not hitting the dreaded two degrees. Two degrees is where we trigger runaway climate change: two leads to three, three to four, four to five, five to six ... by which time it's about over for most of life on Earth.

In other words, our elected leaders are giving us -- at best -- a coin-flip chance of avoiding catastrophe. It is hard to think of a more total failing of our political system. Imagine if they were standing at a plane door ... "Come on citizens, please take your seats, 50/50 chance of landing safely... "

And this is the EU's position. If America wins the argument at Copenhagen we will have pretty much no chance of avoiding two degrees.

All of which means that we non-politician human beings who depend on the climate remaining habitable had best jump into action. We are launching The Age of Stupid on September 21st from a solar-powered cinema tent in New York, linked by satellite to 444 cinemas across America - plus 300 cinemas in 45 countries from France and Finland to Argentina and Indonesia. (Full list of participating cinemas here). The date is not coincidental: about a hundred Heads of State will be in New York for the UN General Assembly and we have joined forces with groups such as Greenpeace, tcktcktck and Avaaz, who are calling for 21st September to be the Global Wake Up call. The day the world finally wakes up to the desperate urgency of the climate crisis.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/franny-armstrong/the-age-of-stupid-gives-a_b_281903.html

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Hear me, four quarters of the world - a relative I am! Give me the strength to walk the soft earth, a relative to all that is! Give me the eyes to see and the strength to understand, that I may be like you. With your power only can I face the winds.

~ Black Elk, Oglala Sioux holy man

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh