Before the Flood Discussion- PT 1

Before the Flood

I watched Fisher Stevens’s Before the Flood on climate change starring Leonardo Dicaprio as the narrator. I’m going to talk about its major points, starting with the facts and frame that the film presents, and then moving on to why it is our responsibility individually to take action, why the climate movement is facing such great opposition, and what our hope for the future is.

The documentary begins with Leonardo describing a painting that hung above his crib as a child, “The Garden of Earthly Delights” by Hieronymus Bosch. It's hard to see in the picture, but you can find it online easy. As Leonardo describes his perception of the painting, the left 1st half is meant to represent paradise, perfect weather, perfect harmony. The middle section is labeled "Humankind" and shows our tendency to overpopulation and excess. The third, last section reflects the result of such excess: a decayed, burnt land that was violated and destroyed. The land as well as the humans are destroyed in the last picture. Leonardo discusses the parallelism of our world and the painting. We lie somewhere in the middle section, living in excess and destruction, able to see that we're heading for the last landscape: loss. 

One of the major aspects that seems to haunt Dicaprio is the fact that we know what we're doing. We are aware that the actions we're taking are causing serious harm to the environment and we have a pretty good estimate of what that is going to look like for us in the long run. We have the science at hand, 97% of scientists in the world agree on this science, according to NASA. Scientists should be considered the most credible humans on earth, they are the ones providing us with the warnings, yet most people tune out when the words "climate change" or "global warming" is even whispered. News casts and government officials have the audacity to name it a "hoax", even to this day. We've known about the effects of our industrialization for half a century. In the film, a clip is shown from 1958 of scientists discussing the warming of our atmosphere do to fossil fuels. Since that clip, our human population has increased by over 5 billion people. That means more electricity, more food, more power, more destruction. We've seen the danger coming a mile away and have turned away only to look back to see it's on our doorstep, tripled in size. He visits with Miami city beach Mayor, Philip Levine, who is an advocate for environmentalism. Levine talks about how Miami today experiences "sunny day flooding", where the ocean levels are rising and backflowing through the city drains. On high tide, he said you would have to use a canoe to navigate the streets. For now, the city built pumps to control the issue, and when asked how long those would be effective, Levine answers only 50 years. He says South Florida will be underwater sooner than anyone thinks. All of the "solutions" we have now of dealing with the issue are only temporary, we need a global shift towards renewable energy for anything permanent to be done. Dicaprio travels the Artic to talk to native peoples about how climate change is effecting them right now. A native man shows that the ice used to be a solid blue, deep blue and now he walks on an "ice cream ice". This is man whose way of life depends on the stability of the ice. This illuminates one of the most heartbreaking truths about climate change: the people and countries who are contributing the least to climate change are among the first to feel its wrath. The islands along the equator, the tribes of the artic north, the third world countries that do not even have access to electricity do not have the means to protect themselves from heat waves and drought and storms. Eventually, climate change will catch up to every human on earth. In the film, Dicaprio visits the island Abaiang, Kiribati. 12 years ago the island was habitable, now it is flooded and there are only a handful of people remaining. They do not have the means to relocate. This part in the film hit me like a train. 12 years. 12 years ago I was 9 years old! These effects are happening in our lifetime. Right now. We are living in a strange time, we are teetering on the edge of two options: clean energy or say goodbye to humanity. It's hard to conceptualize, that we are living so close to a crisis and it's all unfolding right before our eyes. But this is our reality, this is what's happening, whether we are on board or not. The most important aspect to remember about climate change that I think a lot of people do not understand is that the world, nature in all her glory, is going to adapt and change to fight against the root cause: us. The film shows an excellent example of this. Greenland is covered in ice, as you may know, but the ice is melting and the landscape is changing to a grey instead of white. A white landscape reflects light, a grey landscape absorbs light and acts a self-heater. So now that we have warmed the climate enough to change the ice, the landscape is re-enforcing itself and now is heating faster than ever. Another example of the irony of climate change are rainforests. Trees absorb CO2, helping purify the air around us. We cut down those rainforests, in order to manufacture, which causes more CO2 to be released, with less trees to absorb the dangerous chemical. When we burn those forests (to clear) it acts as a powerhouse, releasing massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. We're destroying the ecosystems that help us restabilize the climate. As shown in the film, there are three main tropical rainforests left in the world: the Amazon, the Congo Basin, and Indonesia. The palm oil industry controls about 80% of the Indonesian rain forest, which is where Dicaprio flys out to. To clear the land for palm oil farming, they burn the forest. In 2015, the forest fires emitted more carbon daily than the entire US economy. The carbon poses a death threat to not only the peoples of the area but also to the wildlife. The Indonesian rain forest is actually the last place on earth where tigers, elephants, rhinos, and orangutan live in the same place. We're losing the diversity of our planet. The greatest lesson to learn about the palm oil industry is that is continues because people keep buying it. The decisions we make in our grocery store affect the lives of animals and human all the way across the world. There is palm oil in a lot of retail items in the grocery store, as well as cosmetics. Some of the brands mentioned that take advantage of the destructive palm oil industry are: Kraft, KraftHeinz, Tyson, Walgreen's, Sara Lee, Nissin (ramen noodles), PEPSICO, Doritos, Quaker. These are everyday items that are causing a devastating chain of events that will eventually snake back to hit us in the face. Another ironic example of human activity on the climate is the mass production of beef. The statistics blew my mind. So here's how it works. According to Gidon Eshel, Ph.D., beef is one of the most inefficient use of resources on the planet. In the U.S., 47% of land is used for food production. Of that, 70% of that land is used just to feed the cattle. Only 1% is used for fruits, vegetables, etc. Cows produce methane (the irony, we mass produce cows, they mass produce a harmful substance), which is far more impactful than CO2. Every molecule of methane is equal to 23 molecules of CO2. about 10-12% of US emissions is due to beef production. A 1/2 pound hamburger= 24 hours of air conditioning use. Gidon believes the minimum amount you can do for the climate is change your diet. He even concedes that switching to chicken or pig would be more environmentally conscious than beef. We have to get over ourselves and our steaks, our steakhouses, our love for cheeseburgers. These actions we're taking; deforestation, burning, tar sands, beef production; it's deplorable enough that we are killing the home on which we live, but we're killing ourselves. These actions have a sinister boomerang effect that we're only just beginning to see.

Above is a picture of the Indonesia rain forest, and you can see where the palm oil industry has taken over. 

On the next installment, I'll go over the responsibility we bear as humans, the opposition the climate movement faces, and what our hope for the future is.