‘EVERYTHING’S Cool,” yet another alarmist talking- heads documentary about global warming, hits all the familiar notes as its crew travels the country interviewing various journalists and activists about the problem.
Once again, the science is buried under a cheesy good-vs.-evil narrative in which the villain is America, especially Republicans, especially Republicans at oil companies. Yet again we are presented with the tale of global warming’s No. 1 boogeyman, Phil Cooney, the ex-Bush administration official who softened a global-warming report three years ago – and was instantly fired for it.
The movie falls into all the usual rhetorical traps.
There is the straw man (President Bush is repeatedly called hostile to the idea that global warming is real; he is not), the ad hominem attack (all employees of any think tank that has ever accepted funding from oil companies are dismissed – an argument that could be used against Bill Moyers, who works for longtime ExxonMobil beneficiary PBS), and the Al Gore bait-and-switch: The movie hopes we don’t notice when it leaps from a true statement (scientists agree that the Earth is warming) to a ridiculous one (the Earth will be uninhabitable in 10 years).
No one who has read more than a couple of articles about global warming will learn anything from this movie, but there is some amusement value.
There’s a scene in which a Weather Channel scientist is pressured into blaming Hurricane Katrina on global warming (she properly resists, because no one event can be blamed on the warming), two scenes (an hour apart) where different activists pin both blizzards and a bare ski slope in Utah on the warming, and some choice oxymorons: “Hansen spoke out about being silenced,” intones a narrator.
There’s also a classic 2004 clip of Al Gore, caught saying the following about the global-warming popcorn flick “The Day After Tomorrow”: “We’re dealing with two fictions. First is the honest fiction of this movie, which distorts for entertainment purposes and is upfront and honest about it.” (He goes on to bash the Bush administration.)
Something must have clicked inside Gore’s head. Two years later he won an Oscar by distorting for entertainment purposes.
EVERYTHING’S COOL
Running time: 90 minutes. Not rated (nothing objectionable). At the Cinema Village, 22 E. 12 St.