James Cameron’s new global warming documentary features a slew of celebrities turned environmental activists, including Harrison Ford who says that he found “a kind of God” in nature.
“I needed something outside of myself to believe in and I found in nature a kind of God,” Ford said, in Cameron’s new film “Years of Living Dangerously.” “An organization of beauty that for me supplied inspiration.”
Ford is one of several eco-activist celebrities to appear in Cameron’s film. Other big names include actors Don Cheadle, Jessica Alba, Matt Damon and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The film also includes liberal pundits Chris Hayes of MSNBC and Thomas Friedman of The New York Times.
Ford’s contributions to the film include flying over areas such as Indonesia to document deforestation occurring in the area to produce palm oil — an edible vegetable oil and a common cooking ingredient in that part of the world.
“Conservation and corruption, they’re not meant to be side-by-side,” Ford said. “Nature doesn’t need people … people need nature, to survive, to thrive. … And when it’s gone it’s gone.”
Environmentalists and liberals have hailed the series as the “most important television series ever” because of how it highlights the effects of “the most important issue humanity has ever faced” — global warming.
“If the world’s political and economic leaders continue not to address climate change adequately, it will be the greatest political failure ever,” wrote Lawrence Lewis for the Daily Kos. “Public will must be galvanized. Politicians and business leaders must have no choice. And that makes teaching the realities about climate change the most important task in the history of mass communication.”
But not all environmentalists have been won over by the film. Some argue that it simply plays on people’s fears and makes exaggerated claims about global warming that will ultimately turn people off to constructive ideas about how to tackle the issue.
“If you were looking for ways to increase public skepticism about global warming, you could hardly do better than the forthcoming nine-part series on climate change and natural disasters, starting this Sunday on Showtime,” environmentalists Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute wrote in The New York Times last week.
“Claims that current disasters are connected to climate change do seem to motivate many liberals to support action,” write Nordhaus and Shellenberger. “But they alienate conservatives in roughly equal measure.”
“While the urgency that motivates exaggerated claims is understandable, turning down the rhetoric and embracing solutions like nuclear energy will better serve efforts to slow global warming,” the two authors concluded.
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