279. The Failure (1988-2012)

279. I want a climate movie, a good one, seen from the perspective of a climate refugee in 2050. It should include the retrospective, blanket condemnation of politicians and their oil company, mass utilities, agribusiness backers. It should depict the history of the Failure (1988-2012) when everyone in the know knew about climate change -the politicians, the journalists, the academics- and (most) sneezed, looked the other way, accepted corporate backing, feigned skepticism, and pleaded being busy. The Failure should be part of every child's vocabulary. And instead of the term "Global Weirding", which sounds like all we have to do is fend off Halloween on more days than once a year, the term would be "Global Hurting" -for none of the life on this planet evolved to handle what we've managed to create, including ourselves. The movie would show the kids of Generation Hot (Hertsgaard's apt term) and convey messages of the elderly dying of heatstroke in the tens of thousands, of children sick from saline water and fresh water shortages near shores encroaching inland from sea level rise, and of a duller colored planet -a planet without coral reefs and with extinctions as common as leaves crunching underfoot in Autumn. The Rockies will be barren in this film, eaten out by beetle infestations and then washed out by soil erosion. And many states will have imploded as Sudan has under the pressure of desertification. In this 2050 world, the refugee will rely on the kindness of strangers, which is real. New, globally integrated political forms will have sprung up to help out, but everyone will be stressed and angry at the stupidity and daft selfishness, the utter human tragedy which is us, now -- people of the Failure.