I was recently invited, by the student run ‘Sustainitechs’ Society of King’s College London, to attend a screening of Chasing Ice – a new film that follows one man’s tireless pursuit to document the melting of glaciers through what can only be described as extreme photography.
The Sustainitechs – run by students studying for a Masters in Sustainable Cities – were interested in having a member of their local Greenpeace group along to talk about the arctic campaign and get sign ups at the end of their screening, which was also going to be followed by a Q&A session with Balog’s eldest daughter who appears in the film. Happy to have an opportunity to see Chasing Ice, a film that everyone seems to have been talking about, and to spread the arctic campaign at my old university, I went along hopeful but with no expectations. Unprepared for an evening that would stick, vividly, in my mind and re-inspire me to carry on campaigning.
Initially, in fact, I was a bit disappointed by the film.
In it, one time climate sceptic and professional photographer James Balog sets up the Extreme Ice Survey – a company dedicated to mapping the recession of glaciers using time lapse cameras. The majority of the film is about his journey, the troubles he faces, the emotions experienced when they experience technical set backs, and multiple surgeries he has to have on his knee just to hold it together. For a signed up, card carrying, Greenpeace member expecting a film about the climate, this was a little disappointing. And then, they reached the last ten minutes, which blew my mind.
In those last ten minutes, the largest iceberg calve up ever-witnessed floods the screen. The cameraman describes it as watching all the buildings in Manhattan fall down, roll over, jump back up again, before falling into the sea. But this iceberg isn’t just the size of Manhattan, it’s three times the height. The calve up reportedly lasted for nearly 80 minutes, with towers of ice plummeting into the ocean, being thrown back up 60 feet, like some icy hell on earth. Watching it, particularly getting to see it on a big screen, was jaw dropping. Phenomenal. Scary. And then Balog started talking more about climate change – delivering one key message – ‘In the future, when my daughters ask what I did, I’m going to tell them that I did everything that I could’. At that point a chill when down my spine and all my other reservations about the film were forgotten. Chasing Ice made the point it needed to make, in a spectacular, different and intelligent way.
So, in the Q&A with Balog’s daughter Simone, I asked Simone whether she felt that Chasing Ice had been able to do more than preach the converted. Was it getting the message across to new people? To the people who weren’t already on board? She said she thought it was. In fact, she said she thought it was being successful because it wasn’t gauged as a Climate Change film. People were coming to see it to see James Balog’s story. People were coming to see it who were interested in photography – and then they were getting hooked into the end of the story – just like I had been.
Most telling, Simone said she had been at one of the early screenings in America, where one woman had emerged from the building crying. She had always been a climate denier, she explained to Simone. She had trusted Fox news. She had told her friends that climate change didn’t exist and was just a hoax. She had even told people to get out of her house when they disagreed with her. (Hopefully that’s a habit she’ll now grow out of…) But watching Chasing Ice had shown her the error of her ways.
So, if you know any climate sceptics take them to see Chasing Ice. Preferably on a big screen so you can get the full impact of that calve up. I recommend it, 100%.
Oh. And at the end of the evening I stood up and asked peopled to sign up to the arctic campaign. After watching Chasing Ice everyone was pretty happy to sign up.
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