“2040” (G) *** and a half

FOLLOWING 2014’s “That Sugar Film”, Australian documentarist Damon Gameau made this “hybrid feature documentary” to show his four-year-old daughter Zoe how her life might be at age 25 by suggesting how, in the coming two decades, technologies available in 2019 might help humankind avoid extinction.

Is his message capable of guiding humanity into a survivable reality? Or merely wishful thinking? Two decades hence, much will depend on how today’s single-digit-age cohort steers a tired generation of decision makers away from denying climate change. Only a complete curmudgeon would deny success in pursuing that outcome to him, Zoe and the children appearing in the film.

Let’s face it. Politicians are the worst imaginable people to make the kind of decisions that the world needs to steer our planet clear of the behavioural course on which it now seems hell bent.

Don’t believe me? Gameau’s film doesn’t venture to foresee how today’s vested interests will respond to the challenges it illustrates. But it is one of two made-in-Australia pieces currently considering how science and technology might forestall the looming environmental disaster.

The other is as scary a book as any I’ve ever read. Telling it how it is with hard data supporting convincing science in “Sunburnt Country” (Melbourne University Press, 2018), Dr Joëlle Gergis offers this optimistic observation: “We are living in historic times that are asking us to imagine that another world is possible, to try to believe that there is a fundamental goodness in people that will rise to meet the greatest moral challenge in human history”.

In the wake of an election in which climate change was a significant issue, “2040” and “Sunburnt Country” make a forceful combination – her definition of the issues, his offering of 2019-model solutions. See the film, read the book, talk with your kids.

At Palace Electric, Dendy and Capitol 6