Friday, January 29, 2010

Climate Refugees: The Human Face of Climate Change

Today was The Northeast Quadrant’s last day in Utah and what better way to end the excursion than the Sundance Film Festival and a documentary about climate change?

Independent Director, Michael Nash spent the last eighteen months traveling the world, documenting the planet’s most pressing issue: global warming! In his film Climate Refugees, Nash visited with and obtained testimony from Earth’s imminent victims of climate change.

From submerging islands in the south-Pacific to melting coastlines of Alaska, and from drought-stricken regions in Africa to storm-battered susceptible coastlines in the United States and abroad, what will happen when these areas and other hot spots are unable to inhabit humans? This film helps sounds the alarm for what could and will happen if the world does not come together to cope with this crisis.

After seeing Climate Refugees, it became quite apparent that if global warming continues and the rapid pace it’s occurring, large-scale population displacement in the form of international and continental migration would be the ultimate human consequence.

I don’t know that Climate Refugees will ever make it to the big screen, but since the issue happens to be the number two item on the United States’ domestic homeland security agenda (as stated in the film, quoting Sen. John Kerry), I definitely recommend seeing or looking into it.