Climate Change Movies Analysis: This Changes Everything And Chasing Ice

Climate change has been around since the 19th century but, as time goes by the earth is coming to an end. Also, the effect of us realizing greenhouse gases into the air started around 1896. Climate change can be described as a change in climate patterns that happen globally and regionally. Climate change occurs when certain changes in Earth's climate structure result in new weather modifications that remain in place for an amount of time. This time can be as short as a few years or as long as a decade. Watching the two movies and the two readings have opened my mind to view other options from a different perspective. Personally, I feel like these movies were made for us humans so that we can see how changes can affect the earth and later affect us. I also feel like the message of the movies is about how we destroy our planet, but we never give back to it.

In the Movie “This changes everything” by Avi Lewis (2015), Lewis takes us through five different points of view in five different parts of the world but talks about the same topic which is the effects of Oil spills, Mining for coal, and drilling for oils. The film presents us with seven powerful communities on the lines, from Montana’s Powder River Basin to the Alberta Tar Sands, to the coast of South India and Beijing and others too. It begins in Montana were a couple who wanted to have a life and own a farm had to give it all up due to the flood from the river which was contaminated with oils that seeped threw the ground.

After that, every other community was fighting for there land and trying to stop people mining, drilling, or pumping, but personally, I feel like that this movie was about how we can size the increase of climate change to transform our bad economic system and turn it into something better. In the movie Crystal, a young indigenous leader in Tar Sands country quotes that where the oil spill was at her ancestors were buried there. Crystal quotes “

Our ancestors from Beaver lake here are buried in the southwest part of that lake and the spill happened in the southern part of that lake” Crystal (17:18). As she quotes this she said with pain and with anger. She was upset because there was a spill after a spill after a spill that has been seeping threw the ground were people that she cherished who have passed away have to go threw this. Throughout the movie, it talked more about how it affected people. People would protest and die every day just to get rid of all the stuff they did to there environment. Crystal then ends us with a high note saying that the government is finally hearing them out and also giving them a clue that she and her culter are not going to leave that land. She quotes “ were here today to say we never went anywhere, and nor do we plan to” Crystal (01:23:04). She is trying to say no matter whats happing she isn't going to move because she is like a seed in a pot that will continue to grow and grow and help demolish what they have done to her land.

In the second movie “ Chasing Ice” by Jeff Orlowski ( 2012), Orlowski talks about a person named James Balog and his team who are people that studied and are apart of the Extreme Ice Survey assemble a year to year picture laps of glaciers melting rapidly due to so much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In the movie, it is Balog's mission to change the way how history was by taking pictures which is his evidence to show people how our planet is coming to an end. In the first few months of that trip to Iceland, the photographer made a system called The Extreme Ice Survey. With a group of young people to adventurers with, Balog began to set time-lapse cameras across the Arctic to capture a multi-year record of the world’s change in glaciers. Balogs is sad that the glaciers are changing rapidly. In the movie, he pulls a chip from a camera and tells us that this ice glacier is never gonna be seen by the human eye anymore because its all gone but is still here recorded on this Chip. James Quotes “This is the memory of the landscape.

That landscape is gone. Never be seen again in the history of civilization and it's stored right here” (James). When he sad this he said it in some type of pain due to the fact that humanity is killing it. Lastly from this film, the Photographer himself quoted “ If you had an abscess in your tooth, would you keep going to the dentist after dentist until you found a dentist that said, ah, don't worry about it. Leave that rotten tooth in. Or would you pull it out because more of the other dentists told you you had a problem? That's sort of what we're doing with Climate Change” ( Chasing Ice). This quote is trying to explain to us that climate change is like a rotten tooth. If you leave it without treating it, it can cause some serious damage. In this case that “rotten tooth” has already caused damage by melting the ice glacier away. The only reason why this is actually happing is due to the amount of Carbon dioxide w release in the air.

In a Scholarly article that I read by BBC news, they talk about how sea levels have risen due to climate change. Sea levels have risen due to the ice glaciers melting and the water going into the ocean. Matt Mcgrath quotes “ Sea-level rise has accelerated significantly over the same period, as CO2 emissions have hit new highs. Recognizing that global temperatures have risen by 1.1 degrees C since 1850, the paper notes they have gone up by 0.2C between 2011 and 2015” (McGrath). This means that throughout the years of 2011 and 2015 temperatures have gone up tremendously. In another article, they also talk about the same thing, about how Climate change is also melting the ice sheets, sea levels rising and more. Rte has stated that climate change has changed in the past 5 years.

In a report from Rte they quote “ Deadly heatwaves, bearing the hallmark of climate change and causing record high temperatures, devastating hurricanes, Sea levels have been rising by an average of 5mm a year in the past five years, compared to 3.2mm a year on average since 1993, with much of the rise coming from glaciers and ice sheets that are melting ever more quickly and ice sheet has witnessed a considerable acceleration in ice loss since the turn of the millennium” (Rte). This means that if we do not control climate change and if it keeps increasing then we will an increase in temperatures rising, more ice glaciers melting, and hotter summers.

In reading and watching movies and articles, made me think from a different perspective. They all talk about the same thing, about how humanity not caring for the world and not giving back. After this, I propose to reduce my own carbon footprint and planting as many plants As I can so the temperatures can go down and give us more clean air.