How the Global Warming Fight Stopped

Most people probably can’t remember “global warming” or whatever you want to call it being a significant issue — let alone a political football — before the last decade or two. But as “The White House Effect” underlines, about 35 years ago it was both prominent in the public eye and not yet politically divisive. There was a moment when early decisive action could have been taken… and that moment passed. 

Engrossing as well as damning, this documentary, playing the Telluride Film Festival, is assembled entirely from archival footage by directors Bonnie Cohen, Pedro Kos and Jon Shenk, who wind the clock back primarily to the first Bush presidency: a single term that began with the trumpeting of high environmentalist ideals. It ended with key opportunities lost and the deliberately-sown beginnings of an anti-science denialism that continues to dog progress, despite all real-world evidence of escalating climate change. Though it probably won’t have the audience or make the impact of “An Inconvenient Truth,” this should be equally essential viewing for anyone interested in humanity’s future — particularly since heatwaves, fires, hurricanes and so forth have already swelled to a near-continual weather crisis.

Its major interpolation being a sort of slide-rule timeline graphic, “Effect” begins with an onslaught of news and pop-culture flashbacks to 1988, when “the dreaded Greenhouse Effect” was much discussed amidst record-setting droughts and high temperatures throughout the U.S. At a Senate hearing on the issue, a NASA climatologist says there’s no doubt regarding the cause-and-effect of CO2 emissions on the atmosphere. Another expert notes those warnings have been sounded in the scientific community for 15 years already. Incoming POTUS George H.W. Bush embraces the reality of global warming, saying “the White House Effect” is powerful enough to combat the Greenhouse one. He also says “It’s not a liberal or conservative thing…[it’s] the common agenda of the future.” Those sentiments will not last long.

We then rewind to 1977, when President Carter’s response to an urgent governmental report on the “Possibility of Catastrophic Climate Change” is to have “an unpleasant talk” on TV, urging the public to curb “wasteful use of resources” in the face of “an unprecedented problem in our history.” In response, folks on the street do seem willing to make changes and sacrifices for the greater good. 

That mood changes by the end of the Carter era, as fuel-pump frustration triggered by decreased oil production (and higher prices) after the Iranian Revolution reveals just how gas-dependent Americans were. Blaming the outgoing administration for “the fiasco we call the energy crisis,” Reagan sailed into office on promises of drill-happy plenitude. He slashed oil-industry regulation and solar-power programs. He also chose as his VP Bush, a Connecticut Yankee who’d “moved to Texas and made a fortune in the oil business.” 

Eight years later, however, Bush was campaigning for top office as “the environmental President,” with an apparently sincere will to address climate-change concerns that had only escalated in the interim. He appointed an unabashed “greenie,” William K. Reilly of the World Wildlife Fund, as EPA chief. But he also named conservative “ideological warrior” John Sununu as chief of staff; it soon became clear who held greater sway. 

Most of the ample drama in “White House Effect” comes from the sinking feeling generated by cunningly assembled archival materials (including leaked White House and corporate communiques), as pressure from the administration’s corporate allies caused it to gradually renege on its ballyhooed eco-consciousness. What’s particularly maddening is the subterfuge deployed to “soften” or contradict the consensus wisdom of legitimate scientific research. One scarifying high-profile report was modified against its respected author’s will. “Experts” begin infiltrating the media to minimize climate fears, prompting populist voices like Rush Limbaugh to rail against “eco-imperialism” — never mind that most of these authorities turned out to be paid shills for the gas, oil and coal industries.

As Bush and Sununu blandly deny any shift, Reilly begins to look like a “dead man walking,” forced to make unconvincing excuses for the administration at international summits where the U.S. becomes the biggest — and sometimes only — refusenik amongst nations willing to commit to CO2 reduction mandates. The white noise of obfuscation (who can really say when this alleged “crisis” will hit?), misdirection (claims that green policies are “anti-growth, anti-jobs, anti-America”) and outright disinformation (“humans are not causing global warming”) create sufficient cover for an about-face in which the whole issue gets “moved from the scientific to the political realm,” as Al Gore put it as early as 1984.

Meanwhile, disasters of all sorts unfold, from the Exxon Valdez spill to Hurricane Hugo and the Gulf War, each in their own way underlining the dangers of continued fossil fuel dependencies. Needless to say, the 30-plus years since that first Bush presidency have seen much, much more of the same. Yet denialist rhetoric has only intensified, even as seemingly each new year becomes the hottest in recorded history. 

“The White House Effect” registers the impact of that time gap with devastating brevity at its close. First we get sad latter-day interview clips with Reilly and late climatologist Stephen Schneider, in which they lament the paths not taken. Then there’s the simple visual eloquence of a chart showing atmospheric CO2 levels since human civilization began at about 10,000 BC: a near-flatline that enormously spikes with the birth of commercial oil drilling about 150 years ago. It’s an image that renders naysayer logic laughable.

The lack of any external commentary in what’s essentially a compilation feature only strengthens the filmmakers’ forceful argument. (Two of them, longtime collaborators Cohen and Shenk, also have a second Telluride nonfiction feature this year in combat-PTSD-themed “In Waves and War.”) The result leaves little doubt that discourse around climate change, once an issue of bipartisan agreement, has been deliberately manipulated to encourage ill-informed doubt, and to protect the interests of corporations still posting sky-high profits at the planet’s expense. 

This story compels in the way of a slow-motion trainwreck, albeit one that’s briskly paced and entertaining. A strong contributor in binding together its potentially daunting pile of events, personalities and conflicts is the increasingly mournful urgency of Ariel Marx’s string-driven original score.