It’s been the hottest summer on record, the Great Barrier Reef is perishing before our eyes, climate emergencies have been declared, one million species are at risk of extinction, the planet could warm by two degrees by 2060…
While sinking into misery might feel like the easiest way to process it all, a new Australian documentary wants to lift those feeling crippled by ‘ecoanxiety’ out of their funk.
Damon Gameau, actor-turned-filmmaker’s new film 2040 bills itself as a “journey to explore what the future could look like by the year 2040 if we simply embraced the best solutions already available to us.”
The concept was inspired by Damon Gameau’s five-year-old daughter.
“It was just kind of overwhelming to see the constant negative news about the climate and the future and what kind of world she was going to inherit,” Damon says. “So I just spent about a year looking at the solutions and researching to see what was out there that we could actually do about it, and was pretty blown away by how many things we can do.”
Throughout the film, Damon argues that the answers to climate change are right under our noses – some small shifts in policy are just needed to give them the green light.
Take Bangladesh, for example, where micro solar power networks are providing a renewable energy solution – by allowing residents to quite literally take power into their own hands and share it peer-to-peer.
Will we really solve climate change by 2040?
Damon Gameau says if the world has deteriorated so quickly, we can restore it at a similarly rapid pace.
“And I think there’s such a push for it at the moment all around the world. There’s the kid’s climate strikes, people want to create a new version of the world we’re living in. I think there’s a chance that we might get there. But we’ve got to be able to see it first to even know that it’s possible.
And that’s why I made the film.”
The task is so urgent, Damon says, that it will become his only topic of interest as a filmmaker from now on.
“What else is there? This is the topic,” Damon says, “Because if we don’t get this right, there is no other film worth making.”
(Source: ABC – Ange McCormack)