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- Bjorn Lomborg, “Smart Solutions to Climate Change.”
Bjorn Lomborg and Ondi Timoner’s approach to the Macro Theme of Global Climate Change is simple: Dollars & Cents
“I support the carbon tax,” said filmmaker Ondi Timoner in a recent interview with Greening Hollywood. “It’s only 6 cents at the gas pump and it would raise $270 Billion.” Money, she says, that could be used to fund R&D of new clean energy sources and also green jobs.
The best way to silence someone is to destroy their reputation,” said Timoner.
Cool It! the documentary about Global Climate Change that opens in major U.S. markets today, follows scientist and professor Bjorn Lomborg as he discusses the issues of global climate change with experts around the world. This Dane is the editor of the book Smart Solutions to Climate Change, and the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, which The Guardian U.K. says are two very different outlooks on the same issue by the same person.
In his new book, Lomborg concludes, “Investing $100bn annually would mean that we could essentially resolve the climate change problem by the end of this century.”
In his own defense, Lomborg explained to Greening Hollywood in a telephone interview that, “My fundamental point is not that we shouldn’t worry [about climate change]. It’s that we need to be led by good information, good judgment. We have to keep asking How big is the problem? And not focusing only on people who shout the loudest or have the cutest animal. We have to worry about [climate change] in the smartest possible way so that we end up doing a lot of good. Not just feeling good.”
Ondi Timoner, a Sundance Kid, whose previous documentaries “We Live In Public,” and “Dig!” very candidly admitted that she knew very little about the issue of climate change when she first met with Lomborg to discuss the for-hire film project.
About that first creative meeting, Timoner recalled, “I didn’t know if Bjorn was legitimate or not but I grilled him for five hours. He expressed his ideas in such interesting ways that when I left that meeting I was convinced that he was worth hearing; he was worth knowing about. The best way to silence someone is to destroy their reputation,” said Timoner.
“I was also overwhelmed by the subject matter. I felt challenged to make climate change an entertaining subject matter, not so dry. I saw that after 18 years of climate change conferences there was no forward motion. I wanted to make a movie where I could engage the audience so they feel empowered to do something.”
One point that Timoner and Lomborg agree on is that there’s a need for solutions when it comes to the Climate Change debate. They both recognize that there’s a polarization between the left and the right and their approaches to Climate Change. Lomborg, a scientist who has become comfortable with and around cameras in recent years, has a good response that just might cut to the quick of that polarization:
“Think forward to our kids and grandkids…It doesn’t matter if we’ve spoken beautifully about climate change. It matters if we have done something about it.” – Bjorn Lomborg
Greening Hollywood 