COOL IT
★★ out of four stars
Rating: PG for thematic elements.
Opening: Lagoon
The new documentary "Cool It" casts Danish political scientist Bjorn Lomborg as the man with the courage and insight to challenge the ecological establishment.
The film positions Lomborg as a great guy: articulate, affable, kind to his mom, and committed to challenging conventional wisdom on how climate change should be addressed. His critics, such as the late Stephen Schneider, a 2007 Nobel laureate for his work in climate science, are edited to look irritable and pompous. More tellingly, they're cast as a powerful cabal resistant to change.
Lomborg accepts that global warming exists, but argues that predictions of a looming environmental disaster are grossly exaggerated and that actually we've never had it so good. Second, he criticizes current policy responses to the issue, such as the greenhouse gas-limiting Kyoto Protocol, as vastly expensive undertakings that will produce negligible results. And he decries emotional scare-mongering as a tactic to motivate public support of large-scale national engineering projects. True enough, but similar appeals got us the Transcontinental Railroad, the Manhattan Project and the space program.
Lomborg persuasively calls for coherent, cost-effective, science-led policy, but isn't that already here? In the U.S., no important environmental policies are set without lively debate between scientists, politicians and economic interests. The film champions such cutting-edge technological solutions as high-tech sea walls to prevent another Katrina, biofuels and new-design clean nuclear plants. All well and good, but Lomborg fails to mention that those very technologies have been championed by the same greens he chastises. It's soothing when a film suggests that there are neat, simple solutions to vastly complex problems. But it's probably wrong.
COLIN COVERT
