A FIERCE GREEN FIRE

Short Synopsis

A Fierce Green Fire is a documentary which tells stories of environmental activism – people trying to save the planet, their homes, their lives, the future. The first overview of the environmental movement, the film spans five decades and brings together all the issues and causes.

Description/Treatment

It’s the largest movement the world has ever seen – and maybe the most important, in terms of what’s at stake. Yet it’s not easy being green. Environmentalists have been reviled as much as revered, for being killjoys and Cassandras. Every battle begins as a lost cause and even the victories have to be fought for again and again. Still, environmentalism is one of the great causes of the twentieth century, and one of the keys to the twenty-first. It has arisen at a juncture in history when humans have come to rival nature as a power determining the fate of the earth.

A Fierce Green Fire tells stories of environmental activism – people trying to save the planet, their homes, their lives, the future. The first overview of the environmental movement, the film spans five decades and brings together all the issues and causes. Our aim is to create the big picture, weave the elements of environmentalism into a full understanding of the challenges we face.

A Fierce Green Fire unfolds in five acts, each with a key story and a compelling character:

• David Brower and the Sierra Club’s battle to halt dams in the Grand Canyon

• Lois Gibbs and the Love Canal residents’ struggle against 20,000 tons of toxic chemicals

• Paul Watson and Greenpeace’s campaigns to save whales and baby harp seals

• Chico Mendes and the rubbertappers’ fight to save the Amazon rainforest

• Al Gore and the collective effort to address issues of climate change

Each act also sketches the broader picture of an era:

• the ‘60s conservation movement that focused on saving wildness

• air pollution in the 1970's and the environmental justice movement

• alternative and radical strands, the ecology wing of the movement, through the ‘80s

• the rise of global issues like resources and biodiversity loss, into the ‘90s

• climate change and sustainability as the unifying issues through the last two decades

The film combines stories and sketches -- the most important and dramatic events and people, interspersed with the evolution of strands of environmentalism. Balancing breadth and depth, the film builds connections between issues and shows how what began as a fringe grew into a national and international movement.

Two things about our approach stand out and make A Fierce Green Fire unique. First is the focus on activism; it’s about movements more than issues. The best way to reveal the issues is to see how people acted on them. It’s a more engaging approach,emphasizing drama and passion. It’s also a more open-ended approach than the usual cant and rant. Second is our emphasis on what we call a grand synthesis –bringing together all the pieces of the environmental picture to explore interconnections, resonance and relevance, larger visions and deeper meanings. Never has a film told the full story of environmentalism. This will be a defining film that reaches and teaches a huge and hungry audience.

The good news is A Fierce Green Fire is more than half-done. Eighteen interviews have been shot. A wealth of archival material has been assembled. Four of five acts have been scripted and edited. A recent grant will enable us to make the final act on climate change and finish the rough-cut by March of 2010. Plans are to fine-cut and complete the film for release at the beginning of 2011.

Think of A Fierce Green Fire as the Eyes on the Prize of environmentalism – a comprehensive history of an important social movement, made in an accessible style that puts story and ideas first. Mark Kitchell, producer/director, made Berkeley in the Sixties – which was nominated for an Academy Award, won other top honors, and has become one of the defining films about the 1960s. A Fierce Green Fire is similar – only it concerns a much bigger movement that’s still unfolding and is as relevant as they come.

The film is composed of interviews and archival material. Some interviewees are central characters, like Lois Gibbs and Paul Watson. Others are key figures, like biologist Tom Lovejoy and author/activist Bill McKibben. Some were discovered through extensive research: Barbara Bramble, whose work on environmental impacts of World Bank loans led her to Chico Mendes and the rubbertappers' struggle to save the Amazon; and Hugh Kaufman, Chief of Hazardous Waste at EPA, who created Superfund and fought off Reagan’s counter-attack. Russell Train, second head of EPA, tells of Nixon’s involvement. Bob Bullard, author/advocate, talks about the rise of environmental justice. Eighteen interviews have been shot and plans are for fourteen more. Among them should be: Al Gore, whose odyssey captures the climate change issue; Jim Hansen, the scientist who uncovered the issue; Elizabeth Kolbert and Philip Shabecoff, whose reporting has been galvanizing; Wolfgang Sachs, on greening Europe; Paul Hawken on alternative movements for sustainability and justice; perhaps even E. Bruce Harrison, the PR man who has been an opponent from the days of debunking Rachel Carson.

Synopsis

• Act 1 focuses on the conservation movement of the ‘60s, the Sierra Club, David Brower and the battle to halt dams in the Grand Canyon. When Brower placed ads denouncing the dams, the IRS retaliated and the furor became front-page news. Congress bowed to pressure and cancelled the dams -- the biggest victory yet for conservationists. We go back to earlier battles over dams in Yosemite, Dinosaur and Glen Canyon. Then the film turns to the ‘60s and the flowering of the conservation movement – from the Wilderness Act to the battle to save the last redwoods. The climax came when four new parks and laws were signed into being one day in 1968. Six months later Brower was ousted from the Sierra Club. But he re-emerged as the “archdruid,” the most famous environmentalist of his time, just as Earth Day heralded a new movement.

• Act 2 looks at the environmental movement of the ‘70s with its emphasis on pollution, focusing on the battle led by Lois Gibbs over Love Canal, the dump that puttoxic waste on the map. Angry housewives with sick children, they fought relentlessly – protesting at hearings, conducting health studies, demanding relocation. Finally they took EPA officials hostage until President Carter agreed to buy out the residents. Then we sketch the bigger picture, beginning with Silent Spring. Included are: the golden era of environmental legislation; groups like NRDC that arose to enforce regulations; business pushback and the Reagan counter-attack; the rise of grassroots activists fighting poisons in their own backyards; and environmental racism, which gave birth to the environmental justice movement.

• Act 3 is about radical ecology, beginning with Greenpeace’s 1975 campaign to save the whales. Putting themselves in front of the harpoons, they launched an era of direct action. They also went on the wildest ride of any environmental group, fighting not only for whales and seals but against nukes and toxins of everykind. However, Paul Watson, thrown out of Greenpeace and reborn as Sea Shepherd, was the one who really pushed the war against whalers. Next this act sketches alternative ecology movements: going back to the land; ecological design from Buckminster Fuller to Living Machines; renewable energy and Amory Lovins on the soft path; and a campaign to ban whaling that united radicals and the mainstream.

• Act 4 tells of the struggle to save the Amazon, led by Chico Mendes and the rubbertappers. As the greatest rainforest on Earth was going up in flames, the rubbertappers started a movement to establish extractive reserves. The pivotal battle came in 1988 over a plantation called Cachoeira. Chico won – but was assasinated. However, his death proved to be the turning point, to an era of reserves that now total a third of the Amazon. The rainforest is critical for another reason: it is ground zero of the extinction crisis. In the next part of this act we tell the story of biodiversity – from early efforts at saving wildlife to species crashing all over the world. The fate of the forest, biodiversity and climate change all came together at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.

• Act 5 focuses on global climate change, both the political struggle to limit carbon emissions and the social transformation to sustainable ways of living. Al Gore’s odyssey from pioneer to oracle, winning and losing the Kyoto Protocol and then the presidency, is a central story. So are scientists who push the problem to the fore: writers like Bill McKibben; and green movement leaders like Wolfgang Sachs in Germany. Renewable energy, getting off the carbon kick, has become critical. So have green design and green tech, reinventing the way we make and do everything. Now, after years of U.S. resistance, the Copenhagen climate change treaty may be our last best hope. The film culminates with the greatest challenge mankind has ever faced: creating a sustainable world where humanity and nature are in balance.