Movie warning over global warming …

By James Drew

Date: 03/06/04

"CLIMATE change is real," says Environment Commissioner Margot Wallström. "The issue is to fight it, starting today and not the day after tomorrow, when it might be too late."

A thumbs up, then, for positive benefits that may result from the latest blockbuster to hit cinema screens.

Wallström attended the Belgian premiere of The Day After Tomorrow last week, and, while the film's premise - a change of climate within a few days brings cataclysmic weather and the onset of a new ice age onto the entire northern hemisphere - is "pure fiction", the commissioner believes, however, that "the film reminds us of a simple reality".

The film's director and writer Roland Emmerich, best known for his Earth versus aliens epic Independence Day (1996), has made the weather the villain of the piece this time around - but there are concessions made in the story that the US has a high level of culpability when it comes to environmental abuse.

Wallström is adamant: "Climate change is happening, and will have very serious consequences for future generations unless we manage to curb it."

And the facts back her position - most scientists agree that climate change, which began decades ago, is due to increasing amounts of 'heat-trapping' greenhouse gases that are produced by modern society.

The gas with the greatest capacity for damage is carbon dioxide (CO2), released when fossil fuels - coal, oil or gas - are burned. The global-warming trend would appear to be accelerating - the three warmest years on record are 2003, 2002 and 1998. Last year, more than 20,000 people died prematurely from heat stress, forest fires raged in southern Europe and there were multi-billion euro losses to agriculture.

But it can be stopped, Wallström believes. "It is in our hands to prevent this - we need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and, in the long term, to find new ways of producing energy without damaging the climate.

"The Kyoto Protocol [on climate change] is the only real instrument we have - it is so important that it enters into force."

The Swede is convinced that the fight against climate change can also be won at a more prosaic level, with the support of citizens.

"There are many things that we can do in our daily lives. Do we need to take the car each time we go out? If we cannot live without a car, we could choose a fuel-efficient model.

"How often do we forget to switch off lights, how often do we run half-full washing machines, how often do we throw away paper when we could still write on the other side? Even small changes in our behaviour can make a big difference - not using standby mode on a TV, for example, can reduce its average annual energy consumption by 45%."

However unlikely the film's timeframe of events is considered to be, there is no doubt that its subject matter is being seized upon by environment campaigners.

Coinciding with the opening of the movie across Europe, the European Green Party has distributed leaflets outside cinemas in Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the UK, highlighting ongoing campaigns to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, make appliances more efficient and promote renewable energy, as well as urging cinemagoers to vote Green in the upcoming European elections.

Green MEP Daniel Cohn-Bendit said: "Europeans need to see this film to understand the potential consequences of climate change. Its events are fictional and dramatized, but its message is clear: if we do not deal with climate change now we are gambling - not only with our future, but with the future of the planet."

The Hollywood movie 'The day after tomorrow', although fiction, 'reminds of a simple reality', according to European Commissioner for the Environment, Margot Wallström. The film concerns cataclysmic weather and the onset of a new ice age for the northern hemisphere.

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