Everythingโs Cool is the story of a group of self-appointed global-warming messengers striving to understand why a crisis they see as urgent and terrifying is greeted by their fellow citizens as distant and irrelevant and by their government with apathy, denial, and perhaps, even criminalย neglect.
The underlying theme of the documentary reads like the DeSmogBlog mission statement โ find the right image, the perfect frame, the hot-button language that will finally persuade citizens and elected officials to take meaningful action on climateย change.
Their nemesis, not surprisingly, is the lick-spittle politicians, fossil-fuel corporations, think tanks and toadies that work tirelessly to obscure the science and subvert government to quash climate-friendly legislation and promote unrestrained use of fossilย fuels.
Sound familiar? It should, because the top-billed performer is DeSmogBlogโs own Ross Gelbspan , the โColumbo of Climate Change.โ In the film, Gelbspan 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 โfirehouse dog,โ every time the alarm bell rings he is back on theย job.
Gelbspan and fellow climate-change crusaders Heidi Cullen, Michael Shellenberger, Ted Nordhaus, Rick Piltz and Bish Neuhouser, take a journey that becomes a snapshot of what might eventually become known as โthose last years of U.S. global warming denial – that halcyon time when America finally ‘got it’ and then had about three minutes to join the rest of the globe in dealing withย it.โ
Directed by Daniel B. Gold and Judith Helfand, Everythingโs Cool makes its worldโs premier at Sundance on Januaryย 19.
