Also see Rosalee’s review of The Age of Stupid.

With ice caps melting in the Arctic and the rising of global temperatures, how many more years do we really have on Earth? The Age of Stupid is a documentary which combines fiction, personal accounts from real people, and animation to illustrate how our ignorance will lead to our demise. The Age of Stupid opens in the United States on September 21, 2009, as part of the United Nations’ Climate Week. The producers want us all to take action against climate change as soon as possible, and they tell you how at notstupid.net.

The film opens in the year 2055. An archivist living in the melted Arctic uses scenes from the early 21st century, a time when we could have saved ourselves, to demonstrate the effects of climate change. The personal accounts come from a young Nigerian woman who hopes to be a doctor, a British family fighting for the environment, a New Orleans seismologist who lived through Hurricane Katrina, an Indian entrepreneur who wants to create a low-cost airline, a mountaineer in the French Alps, and Iraqi refugees in Jordan who have been affected by the war. The fact that these people are from completely different backgrounds goes to show that environmental problems affect everyone.

The film begins by depicting how the Earth could look in another 40 years. London is underwater and Las Vegas is submerged under sand. Then the archivist pulls out videos that demonstrate how climate change is taking its toll today. The mountaineer describes in heartfelt terms what global warming has already done to his home. He needs ladders to climb down onto glaciers he used to walk upon because the glaciers have melted so much.

The British family is environmentally conscious and does everything they can to save energy. They use wind turbines. The people in their community think the turbines are spoiling their view, and ban more turbines. A woman who was against the turbines is asked whether she is concerned about global warming. She says yes over and over, but how can anybody claim to care about global warming and rejoice over banning wind turbines? Not long after the wind-turbine fight, this community suffered severe, unprecedented flooding, probably due to climate change.

Oil also is a major problem for some characters in The Age of Stupid. The United States’ main purpose in declaring war on Iraq was cheap oil that does nothing but feed consumption and destroys the environment. In the film, we meet two Iraqi kids without a father who are refugees in Jordan. They hate Americans for all the misfortune they have caused. One child says, “If I see an American, I will kill him.” The video shows them pretending to be soldiers and killing each other. The war also affected them psychologically because now murder is a game. They don’t understand how serious the war is.

In Nigeria, an oil-rich country, oil goes to the wealthy who put the nation’s health at risk. Near an oil refinery, water is dirty and crawling with diseases. The young Nigerian woman wants to be a doctor and make a difference. She fished in the polluted waters to make money for school, but she cannot earn enough. She hopes that one day, her home will be healthy and she and her neighbors can a live better lives.

India has only two planes in the entire country. So, an Indian businessman is on a mission to create a new cheap airline, making it easier for people to travel. But air travel contributes a great deal to global warming. Even though the Indian’s intentions are good, the outcomes will be destructive. The question right now is whether the good he is doing outweighs the bad. It can be argued many ways, but the film clearly shows how dangerous the effects of global warming can become.

The Age of Stupid will become more than a documentary if we don’t change our ways; it will become reality. Resources won’t last forever and the Earth is literally falling apart. The Age of Stupid emphasizes that if there was ever a moment to make a change, it’s now. Every little thing we do can help as long as everybody participates. The first step to accomplishing this is to acknowledge that climate change is a threat. It’s difficult for people to accept this but it’s time to stop ignoring or denying that it’s occurring. Natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina is due to climate change. The archivist’s first and last words in the film are that the human race committed suicide. We could have stopped climate change, but we did nothing. Let’s prove him wrong!