Everyday Activist - The Age of Consequences (MLJFF 2016)

Posted on Tuesday, November 15, 2016 at 11:30 AM

The Age of Consequences (MLJFF 2016)

Movie Review by Everyday Activist X CalgaryMovies.com

Global warming causes a number of issues, such as melting polar ice, which endangers habitats. Pine beetles need consistently cold temperatures or they decimate forests. Rising oceans cause fluctuations in weather patterns, which cause increases in natural disasters. These are just samples of what happens. In The Age of Consequences, the film maker tries to argue that global warming contributes to wars in the Middle East and sets the stage for impending political disasters, complete with loss of life.

Throughout the film I never felt convinced that they made their point. Many of their global warming concerns especially around agriculture felt like the world was at mercy of the weather. When crops fail due to drought, people migrate to look for food. This I understand, but the roots of drought come from deforestation and poor soil from mono-cropping. In the Israeli Palestine conflict, many ancient olive trees were up rooted to make room for more walls. To me the problems of war in Africa and the Middle East are due to the copious amounts of weaponry cached everywhere. Before the Rwandan Genocide happened the international community knew about the weapons caches placed throughout, but no one did anything.

If anyone wanted to take initiative to help the situation of the most vulnerable by using techniques of permaculture, agro-forestry or natural agriculture to rebuild the soil to create more food, there’s constant fear of looters, getting shot or landmines. We aren’t victims of weather in these situations, just politics and the weapons economy. The film talked about the Chinese buying up the agricultural land in Africa to make sure it could feed its people, clearly taking advantage of lesser effort of modern colonialism rather than use available technology to reverse the effects of desertification within China. It’s in China’s best interest to make sure tribes and people in the region keep fighting and exhausting their local resources, so China can “save them” by giving money to local governments for land to maintain the costs of fighting.

India and Bangladesh, due to their massive populations on small amounts of land, are vulnerable to sea rises, temperature changes and drought. The film talks about the heavily guarded fence India builds between it and Bangladesh to maintain its borders and calls it a climate change fence. Again when looking at the politics, the fence has less to do with climate and more to do with colonialism. After the British left they carved up India into India and East and West Pakistan dividing it along the lines of religion. Because of this, the once peaceful nation has had huge problems ever since. With the first migration of Muslims and Hindus to the “right places” caused huge numbers of violence and death that had nothing to do with climate change. Again in 1971 the country of Bangladesh was created from the former East Pakistan resulting in more violence and death. The fence reinforces the politics created, that the Bangladeshis are not Indians and India is not interested in any foreigners. Non- Indians owning property have to give it up or risk the government taking it. This applies to ALL foreigners.

The documentary makes some other claims, which if you don’t know world politics could be rather convincing; however, I tend to have my nose into everything so to me it wasn’t my favorite. The Age of Consequences will screen Saturday November 19th at River Park Church at 4:10 pm as part of the Marda Loop Justice Film Festival 2016.

The guest speaker will be Chris Turner, an author of five books and one of Canada’s leading writers and speakers on energy and sustainability. His bestsellers The Leap and The Geography of Hope were both National Business Book Award finalists. His most recent book, How to Breathe Underwater won the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize. Turner's writing and research has long focused on how the issue of climate change is framed in the public debate, and the national security frame depicted in The Age of Consequences is a compelling way of engaging diverse audiences about its impact. He lives in Calgary with his wife and two children. He is working on a new book about the oil sands, which will be published in Canada and internationally by Simon & Schuster in 2017. 

Calgary Showtimes: Marda Loop Justice Film Festival 2016 > | The Age of Consequences >