The Age of Stupid is a new film about climate change and on Sunday 15th March it hits our screens with the World's first INclusive premiere. Unlike those stuffy carbon-heavy red-carpet affairs that stars fly to from all over the world, The Age Of Stupid will be screened in a solar powered tent in Leicester Square and linked via satellite with over 60 cinemas across the UK including The Eden Project. 16,000 people are expected to attend - making it officially the largest ever premiere. Pete Postlethwaite, who stars as the narrator of the film, will arrive by solar car and will be joined on the green carpet by a glittering array of British talent all lending their support to the film and the new climate campaign, Not Stupid, supported by Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and Stop Climate Chaos.
According to the official synopsis, The Age Of Stupid is a documentary-drama-animation hybrid from Director Franny Armstrong (McLibel, Drowned Out) and Oscar-winning Producer John Battsek (One Day In September, Live Forever, In the Shadow of the Moon). Pete Postlethwaite (In The Name of the Father, Brassed Off, The Usual Suspects) stars as an old man living in the devastated world of 2055 who watches 'archive' footage from 2008 and asks: Why didn't we stop climate change when we had the chance?
The movie focuses on six human stories:
- Alvin DuVernay, is a paleontogolist helping Shell find more oil off the coast of New Orleans. He also rescued more than 100 people after Hurricane Katrina, which, by 2055, is well known as one of the first “major climate change events”.
- Jeh Wadia in Mumbai aims to start-up a new low-cost airline and gets a million Indians flying.
- Layefa Malemi lives in absolute poverty in a small village in Nigeria from which Shell extracts tens of millions of dollars worth of oil every week. She dreams of becoming a doctor, but must fish in the oil-infested waters for four years to raise the funds.
- Jamila Bayyoud, aged 8, is an Iraqi refugee living on the streets of Jordan after her home was destroyed - and father killed - during the US-led invasion of 2003. She’s trying to help her elder brother make it across the border to safety.
- Piers Guy is a windfarm developer from Cornwall fighting the NIMBYs of Middle England.
- Fernand Pareau, an 82-year-old French mountain guide, has witnessed his beloved Alpine glaciers melt by 150 metres.
The climax of the evening will be the official launch of the
Not Stupid campaign, when Pete Postlethwaite will start a giant countdown to the Copenhagen Climate Summit in December. Copenhagen is being called “the most important meeting in human history”, where the successor to the Kyoto Treaty must be finalised. Not Stupid is an epic mission to turn 250 million viewers into climate activists, all focused on making sure the deal agreed at Copenhagen is both just and truly as strong as the science demands. More information on taking part from the
official website.
Ethical Performance this month reports that responsibletravel.com has removed the facility for its customers to offset their travel emissions, arguing that effort needs to be reinvested into actually reducing greenhouse gases. The travel agent was established in 2001 with backing from private investors including Anita Roddick and was one of the first in the tourism industry to introduce an offset scheme. However, it now feels that carbon mitigation must be its first priority and that offseting distracts from the real issues. 
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