2015 film changes the conversation about climate change

On Feb 3rd at Laney College, “This Changes Everything” played to a near-capacity crowd at Odell Johnson Theatre. The ASLC and Laney’s Career and Technical Education (CTE) Programs hosted the event celebrate the opening of the Building Efficiency for a Sustainable Tomorrow (BEST) Center.
Peter Crabtree, Dean of Career and Technical Education and Principal Investigator of the BEST Center’s prestigious $3.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation, introduced the movie. The subject of the movie is a personal one for Dean Crabtree, having spent time with indigenous people during his trip to Australia three years ago.
The movie changes the story we’ve been telling ourselves for the past 400 years, that the earth is a machine and we are the master. There is much to learn from indigenous people, who lived symbiotically with the land until Westerners came. After that, human activity turned the mother into the mother lode. The new story of how we go forward in the face of climate change will determine the future of the planet.
The film, based on Naomi Klein’s book of the same name, highlights the fight of the Bear Creek Nation in Canada who has changed the old story of human’s one-way relationship with the land. The Nation believes that the land owns us, and that we are visitors on this planet. The forest that supports them is the largest in the Northern Hemisphere, 220 square kilometers.
A disastrous oil spill took place when Canadian oil companies drilled and turned the forest into a tar and sand pit, stripping the forest bare, poisoning the land that has supported the Bear Creek Nation for thousands of years. Now, traditional life is impossible. Oil continues to ooze out of Black Oak Lake. The land was once their livelihood of hunting, fishing and foraging. When filmmakers tried to accompany them into the area, law enforcers barred them from entering the land that belongs to them. The film highlights the irony that the people least responsible for damage to the ecosystem are those most affected by environmental injustice.
The Nation, however, would not give up. They united and filed a lawsuit against the Canadian Oil Company and the Canadian Government. Spokesperson Crystal Lameman of Bear Creek Nation said that they will not give up. They have made their cause an international one. “Some people may have to be sacrificed as some areas are sacrificed,” Crystal said.
Americans believe that they are unassailable, invincible, and that we can use the earth until we use it up. But nature strikes back. After Hurricane Sandy tore through New York, one resident of hard-hit Far Rockaway area admitted, “We can get evicted for bad behavior.”
It is usually true, however, that the areas hardest hit by environmental disasters are the ones who are the most marginalized. But this is changing, and FEMA and the RedCross aren’t capable handling such disasters. Klein points out that we set ourselves up for disaster by our relationship with the earth.
We need to understand what our carbon footprint is as countries, as global consumers and as individuals, and what we can do to make a difference. If government policies continue as they are, there will be more Sandys. The film asks: if people don’t stand up against the forces who are creating more Sandys, who will? In order to change the story of global warming we need to understand what our carbon footprint is as countries, as global consumers and as individuals, and what we can do to make a difference.
By admitting the reality of climate change we can begin to approach the problem, and look at global warming as a geothermal experiment from an altogether new perspective. If we ask the right questions and come together, we can begin to change the economic system into a radically better one. We can organize and challenge those in power, and reclaim the land before big economic interests further poison the earth that supports us.