Well, Louie has had quite a week since then. On Sunday, his feature documentary, The Cove, won the Oscar. On Tuesday, news spread around the world that the sting operation he was working on secretly video-taped the illegal sale of whale meat at one of southern California’s most prominent sushi restaurants, The Hump.
Killing marine mammals is a federal crime, as is importation of marine mammal products. Violators face fines and prison time. Yesterday, my colleague Joel Reynolds, director of NRDC’s Marine Mammal Protection Project, wrote a letter to the Santa Monica City Council urging them to “take immediate action to investigate and, if the allegations are confirmed, take whatever actions are necessary to ensure that this activity will cease, including revoking the business license for this and any other restaurant that is serving or has served whale meat.”
I can’t imagine why anyone would want to eat these intelligent and majestic creatures. Perhaps it’s safe to assume that the big spenders willing to throw down $600 for an “exotic” sushi dinner aren’t that concerned about the ethical use of animals. But morals aside, there’s another reason marine mammals are a peculiar choice for dinner: their meat is toxic.
That’s right: whales and dolphins are at the top of the ocean food chain, where the toxins we blithely pump into the ocean become most highly concentrated. So whales have insanely high concentrations of mercury, PCBs, DDT and other harmful toxins. Poison on a plate.
I guess Hollywood’s cool patrol hasn’t read that memo yet. Maybe Louie Psihoyos’ latest piece of daring journalism will wake them up. Go Louie.
]]>Before an enthusiastic audience of 470 NRDC supporters, Cameron screened excerpts of Avatar and then spoke with Elvis Mitchell, host of The Treatment on KCRW 89.9 FM, about the environmental message of his Oscar nominated, sci-fi blockbuster. Here’s coverage of the event by The New York Times.
Cameron said that Avatar, which has been attacked by right-wing commentators, was meant to grab audiences by the heart and motivate them to defend the natural world. Just as in Avatar, Cameron said, all of Earth’s creatures must work together to meet the challenges of global warming and ocean acidification.
After the interview, Cameron screened NRDC’s new This is Our Moment PSA with Leonardo DiCaprio and friends, www.thisisourmoment.org. It was the perfect way to end an inspiring evening all about taking a stand to defend our environment.
Suzy Amis Cameron, the filmmaker’s wife, is a member of NRDC’s L.A. Leadership Council, and worked with NRDC’s L.A. development team in make this terrific event happen.
Update: I've included a slideshow of more photos from the event.
Sigourney’s other environmentally themed film this year is called ACID TEST, a documentary I co-directed about the global challenge of ocean acidification.
Since having the opportunity to work with Sigourney, it’s been a real treat to go back and watch, with new perspective, her performances in films like The Ice Storm, Working Girl, Gorillas in the Mist, and Alien. I can’t wait to see how Sigourney inhabits the role of Dr. Grace Augustine, the botanist she plays in AVATAR.
Since ACID TEST premiered on Discovery Planet Green in August, Sigourney has done a brilliant job raising awareness about the threat to our oceans from rising acidity caused by CO2 pollution. She’s given TV, radio print and web interviews, appeared at screenings, including one on Capitol Hill for U.S. senators and their staff, and pulled off an amazing Trojan Horse gambit on Fox and Friends, using a segment that was supposed to be largely about AVATAR to focus exclusively on ACID TEST and the looming crisis of ocean acidification.
Sigourney’s commitment to environmental protection is really admirable, and it’s great that her new blockbuster will bring a message about respect for nature to an audience of millions.
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It's great that the film made an impression on him, and he's trying to raise awareness among his colleagues about the threat to marine life (and therefore people) of rising ocean acidity.
]]>We decided to make Acid Test about a year ago when it seemed no one outside of scientific circles had ever heard of ocean acidification. Besides a few people who'd read Elizabeth Kolbert's New Yorker article, The Darkening Sea, folks just looked back blankly when I mentioned the term. And yet acidification poses a fundamental challenge to life in the ocean -- and therefore to life on land.
We wanted to raise awareness, and with it, pressure on our policy makers to tackle the carbon pollution problem and better protect marine life. Ocean lovers tend to be committed and resourceful people in my experience, and getting them engaged in the fight for a strong "climate bill" (we really should call it a "carbon bill") just might make the difference.
Our idea was simple on paper: present the latest science on ocean acidification from the mouths of the world's leading experts in a way that is both intellectually and emotionally engaging. We wanted viewers to realize that each of us has a momentous decision to make, and to feel motivated by that, not scared or hopeless. Sounds easy enough.
But as we started to hear what the experts had to say, the goal of motivating audiences instead of depressing them started to seem nearly unattainable. Our experts (Ken Calderia, Steve Palumbi, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Victoria Fabry, Bruce Steele, and NRDC's own Lisa Suatoni and Ralph Cavanagh) all believe it's possible to solve the carbon pollution problem if we really want to, but they all expressed deep concern that we'll collectively make that choice soon enough to avert serious harm to our world. We wanted Acid Test to present that view honestly, not paper it over with Pollyanna enthusiasm.
Our biggest practical challenge was to find the resources, and our break came from the Entertainment Industry Foundation, which granted NRDC the core funds to make the film. It's humbling, frankly, when a person or an institution believes in what you're doing enough to write you a large check. Suddenly it was our job to spend that money wisely and to leverage it as much as possible - to make every dollar we had look like $1,000 on the screen.
That actually became possible when people like Howard and Michele Hall, two of the world's greatest underwater cinematographers, and Nel Boshoff, an amazing aerial cinematographer, offered us beautiful footage that we could never have shot or affordably licensed. Again the word "humbling" comes to mind. Many people from the worlds of Hollywood (e.g. Alan Horn and Kelly Meyer), science (e.g. Dick Feely, Dana Greely, Tony Haymet and the brilliant subjects who are actually in the film), and independent filmmaking (e.g. Wolfgang Bayer, the father of my co-director and Acid Test's DP, Tristan Bayer, and Tristan's colleagues at The Masses) happily did anything they could to help us make the best film possible.
When Sigourney agreed to narrate the film, and even go on camera for a couple of key moments, we knew the stars were aligning. Sigourney is a committed advocate for the oceans and has a strong affiliation with NRDC - in fact she's a life-long friend of NRDC's president, Frances Beinecke (whom Sigourney says was the model for the character Ellen Ripley in the Alien series).
It was thrilling to direct Sigourney. Not only is she a brilliant actress, but she cares deeply about environmental issues, and that is reflected in the power of her performance in Acid Test. I have to admit, directing Sigourney was also a bit daunting, particularly when she responded to one suggestion by asking for a line reading. Somehow I talked my way out of that one! Sigourney actually ad-libbed what I consider one of the best lines in the movie. And even after watching the film dozens of times, her question at the end: "What will we choose?" sends chills down my spine.
At the core of Acid Test is an incredibly talented and committed group of people. My co-director and our DP, Tristan Bayer; co-producer Erin Kiley; our editor Christopher Johnson; associate producers Lisa Whiteman and Lisa Suatoni; and production assistant, Sherry Goldberg. This group of people put in an amazing amount of work and creativity to make Acid Test, as did our team of composers, Kevin Haskins, Peter Distefano and Andrew Troy, and our visual effects supervisor, Jake Maymudes.
Discovery Planet Green agreed to air Acid Test on the basis of a very rough cut. Now our film is out there for millions of people to see. All we hope is that it makes a difference.
]]>ACID TEST will premiere this August on Discovery Planet Green. Watch the trailer:
The word "startling" above is not hype. Ocean acidification seems to be the best kept secret in environmental science despite that it may, in a matter of a few decades, devastate our oceans. Although I've worked at NRDC for six years (and covered environmental issues as a reporter for years before that) I knew virtually nothing about ocean acidification before NRDC Films began making the movie in conjunction with Lisa Suatoni, a scientist in NRDC's ocean's program.
That goes for most of the people I know: the organic food eating, Prius driving, urban professionals whom one expects to be well aware of every looming environmental crisis.
That knowledge gap seems particularly weird once you start talking to the scientists who work on this issue. They are FREAKED OUT. They are so alarmed about what the future holds for the oceans (if we don't change our carbon emitting ways) that they seem to be losing a battle against despair.
There ARE solutions, of course, but first, here's a basic explanation of ocean acidification: The atmosphere touches the ocean over about 70% of Earth's surface, so a significant percentage of the carbon dioxide we emit by burning fossil fuels ultimately mixes with ocean water. That interaction produces carbonic acid. The more CO2 we put into the atmosphere, the more CO2 ends up in the ocean and the higher ocean acidity goes.
The models show that unless we significantly cut CO2 emissions, ocean acidity will double compared to pre-industrial times by the end of the century. As NRDC's Lisa Suatoni says in the film with characteristic understatement: "That is a big problem."
It's a big problem because it will mean that water in large parts of the ocean will be so acidic as to be corrosive to shells. That includes the "shellfish," which probably first come to mind (lobsters, shrimp, crabs, etc.), but perhaps more significant, the small, shelled creatures such as plankton and corals that help form the foundation of the ocean food web.
What happens if thousands of shelled species can't build their shells? Scientists aren't entirely sure, but the likely scenario isn't pretty. (To learn more about acidification, check out this NRDC web page.)
So if ocean acidification is about to kill off our coral reefs and contribute significantly to an unraveling of the ocean food web (an unraveling that could have huge implications for how the human race feeds itself), how come you've never heard of it before? What explains that knowledge gap between the scientific community and the light green world of average environmentally conscious citizens?
Part of the answer seems to be that there was a peculiar, collective lapse on the part of the scientific community. Although the chemistry of ocean acidification is quite straightforward and has been understood for many decades, it was only about five years ago that scientists started to think rigorously about the biology. Until then, they hadn't considered what rapidly rising acidity would mean for life in the ocean.
One theory I've heard to explain that lapse is that scientists have been preoccupied with global warming, and since the ocean's ability to absorb carbon dioxide actually slows the pace of global warming, the fact that large amounts of CO2 were going into the ocean was considered (at least in a superficial way) a GOOD thing. Were it not for the ocean absorbing about a quarter of the CO2 we've emitted since the industrial revolution (and otherwise keeping the planet cool), Earth would already have the climate now predicted for 2050.
Add to the mix the fact that ocean issues are generally out of sight and therefore out of mind, and you see how we got to this weird point at which even opinion leaders are almost totally unaware of one of the most grave and immediate environmental threats we face.
My hope is that our new film, ACID TEST, will help get us out of that situation; that it will help to put ocean acidification at the top of the agenda. Not just the agenda at ocean policy conferences, but at the dinner tables of all those Whole Food shopping, bike commuting urban professionals I know whose engagement is vital if we're to have any hope of getting out of this mess.
And there IS a way out of this mess if we act quickly. The most important step is to accelerate our transition to a new energy economy. We simply need to power our lives without emitting huge quantities of CO2. But we can also help the ocean defend itself against the twin attacks of global warming and ocean acidification by making sure its systems are as healthy as possible. That's why marine protected areas (like national parks in the ocean) and sustainable fishing practices are so important.
So is there hope?
Well, as Bruce Steele, a fisherman we interviewed for ACID TEST says wisely at the end of the film: "I have hope. You can't fish and not have hope."
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