Everything's Cool

A funny and intelligent look at America's denial of climate change.

Judith Helfand & Daniel B. Gold / USA / 2008 / 94 min

SYNOPSIS:

A REAL-LIFE DISASTER MOVIE

EVERYTHING'S COOL is a film about America finally "getting" global warming in the wake of the most dangerous chasm ever to emerge between scientific understanding and political action. While industry funded nay-sayers sing what just might be their swan song of pseudo- scientific deception, a group of global warming messengers are on a high stakes quest to find the iconic image, the magic language, the points of leverage that will finally create the political will to move the United States from its reliance on fossil fuels to the new clean energy economy - AND FAST.

We follow the country and our global warming messengers through an extraordinary three years of transformation, from 2003-to the eve of 2007:

Bill McKibben:"The Poet Laureate" of global warming literally wrote the book on this issue when he published The End of Nature in 1987. After 20 years of impassioned writing, speaking, blogging and advocacy, he finally takes to the streets. He realizes "The thing that has been missing from the movement is THE MOVEMENT!", and he and others stage the largest global warming demonstration in U.S. history (to date). There might be hope for our democracy and our planet.

Ross Gelbspan:The "Columbo of Climate Change" has recently come to believe that his decade of writings, interviews, public readings and policy discussions have come to nothing and he is more than ready to retire. Yet, like a "firehouse dog," every time the alarm bell rings he is back on the job.

Dr. Heidi Cullen:Heidi is the first on-air climatologist in America exclusively dedicated to covering the global warming beat. As a PhD from Columbia University and an expert in multi-decadal oscillation, can she distill her vast scientific knowledge into 30-second sound bites for The Weather Channel?

Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus:Two thirty-something Berkeley, CA based "eco-messiahs", otherwise known as the "Bad Boys of Environmentalism" rise to the top of the green charts for levying a radical critique of the movement, The Death of Environmentalism. The self-published essay challenged what has, until now, been the basis of almost all climate change messaging - the "I have a nightmare" speech of polar bears floating away on ice caps.

Rick Piltz:His job was to prepare scientific reports to congress on the latest research on climate change. Repressed and depressed by political censorship, Rick Piltz went from downtrodden public servant to front page news when he blew the lid off the White House's scandalous manipulation of global warming science.

Bish Neuhouser:A frustrated snow groomer (who has less and less snow to groom) at the Canyons resort near Park City, determined to convert first his 1970s Mercedes, then all of the Canyons' vehicles, to biodiesel.

As much about messaging as it is about the messengers, as much about human nature as it is about humans' impact on nature, Everything's Cool explores what it will take to move America from laggard nation to world leader on global warming.

The ultimate challenge is to show urgent this situation really is - and still leave people optimistic and willing to do something. That perhaps is the ultimate challenge to all global warming messengers. Hold on... this is bigger than changing your light bulbs.

Trailer

Credits

Awards & Festivals

2007 Nominated, Sundance Film Festival, Grand Jury Prize

Film site & Reviews

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