The environment used to not be a political issue; it was Richard Nixon who started the Environmental Protection Agency. Now Nixon’s own party tries its very best to dismantle the agency and discredit climate chance even when every major scientist suggests its real with mountains of fact to back it up. Showtime’s nine part documentary series Years of Living Dangerously is meant to spread a light on many climate issues. Sure the right will probably try to discredit the series as leftist propaganda, but the series is being executive produced by former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the opening sequence features former president George HW Bush talking about the pearls of climate change.
Okay, aside from Arnold, the series does featured some of the very left leaning celebrities you would expect on a self serving series like this including Matt Damon and Don Cheadle. And it will be easy to attack these celebrities for using very bad for the environment (probably private) jets to cross the globe to highlight regions devastated by climate change. It does not help that the first scene of the series is Harrison Ford flying a fighter jet just to collect CO2 levels (spoiler alert: they are very high).
Pretentiousness aside, these celebrities do have facts on their side. Ford is in the first two episodes looking at why we are destroying our forests which is the main cause for the high CO2 levels (forests absorb the gas) which is something called palm oil, check your ingredients list in your pantry, it is a lot of thing you eat. The most interesting parts of his segment come next week when Ford confronts forest minister of Indonesia and gives him the “get off my plane” look to the guy when he openly admits he is corrupt.
Joining Ford tonight is Cheadle who travels to Texas to a town who has resorted to praying for rain because a drought forced the closing of a meat-packing plant, the biggest employer in the area. Don also finds the rare evangelical Christian who is also a climate scientist who believes that climate change is affecting the Earth. Then Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas Friedman how climate change is affecting civil war in Syria. It is just Harrison and Arnold next week, the latter of which will be joining an elite team of wild-land firefighters as they battle a new breed of forest fighters that are cause by climate change.
Also this season, Jessica Alba follows three Climate Corps fellows as they attempt to green the corporate sector. Food journalist Mark Bittman shoots two pieces: he explores rising sea levels and the aftermath of Super Storm Sandy, with a focus on Union Beach, New Jersey; and, in an investigation that takes him all across the country, he tries to determine just how clean natural gas is. Matt Damon examines the public health impact of heat waves as they sweep across Los Angeles and other cities around the globe. America Ferrera explores wind and solar power: if they're so good, why are so many people trying to block them? Journalist Thomas Friedman investigates how climate change impacts national sovereignty in the Middle East. Michael C. Hall goes to Bangladesh to see a vision of our climate-changed future.
Chris Hayes shoots two pieces involving Super Storm Sandy: a U.S. congressman comes face to face with climate change when extreme weather hits close to home; two Far Rockaway families endure the winter following the destructive storm. Olivia Munn) reports from Washington State as a new governor makes combating global warming a top priority. Dr. M. Sanjayan (lead scientist at The Nature Conservancy) sets out on an epic journey around the world to see the effects of climate change firsthand. Will he be convinced that climate change is real? Ian Somerhalder follows Anna Jane Joyner, the 28-year-old daughter of Evangelical preacher Rick Joyner, as she tries to convince congregations and preachers across North Carolina – including her father – that they need to join the fight. And Lesley Stahl travels to Greenland to explore the fate of the Arctic as global temperature increases melt the ice sheet at an unprecedented rate and unlock all sorts of new riches.
The main problem with Years of Living Dangerously will likely be preaching to the choir and those that would benefit from watching the documentary will probably not watch it. I bet the only far right conservatives that will watch are the ones who will try to twist facts, get angry at the facts (the Susan Rice interview will not help) or want to make fun of the celebrities and their pet cause. Pretentious celebrities aside, everyone should check out the documentary series because you will undoubtedly learn something.
Years of Living Dangerously airs Sundays at 10:00 on Showtime.
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