Film Reviews
Climate Refugees (2009)
This documentary film has won two dozen awards for showing the catastrophic consequences of climate change that many nations are already experiencing. For these people, climate change is a matter of life and death, not partisan politics or academic debates. In Bangladesh and Indonesia, for example, where most of the population lives near sea level, cyclones have slammed their countries — thousands killed, millions displaced, and food production lost. A one meter rise in the sea level, which could happen in just ten years, would mean a loss of 40% of Bangladesh's rice lands. In the next 25 years, 40-50 island nations will totally disappear. Tuvalu will be gone in ten years. In Africa, the snows of Kilimanjaro have receded, the Saharan desert has expanded, rivers and lakes have disappeared, and environmental ghost towns have been left in the dust. The film draws upon dozens of experts to highlight how climate change drives issues of global security, the gap between what international law provides and what human beings need, between national sovereignty and mass displacement of millions with no place to go. Our climate future is here and now.
