“Before the Flood” – Leonardo Dicaprio’s documentary on climate change

IN-Cinema | By Harsh Dev on October 31, 2016 @ https://twitter.com/Reckoning_Harsh

Some people can live in their deluded world where climate change is unreal but the reality is that climate change has been occurring since the beginning of this century and the humans have either been living in absolute deniability or have been procrastinating about solving the problem. Both cases have led to this situation where disconnected efforts will not make any difference to the problem of the massive monster that we have been feeding out of our ignorance for years. The shocking thing here is not that the problem of climate change has become bigger than ever but it is that we have had the resources fight it but we did not. Scientists and Academics have laid out plans to solve this crisis for many years now, but we have failed to act on that plan, our execution has been pathetic. One of the reasons for that is the lack of political will in both developing and developed countries, another reason is awareness among the masses.

There is still a massive proportion of the population that does not understand, how or what causes the environmental degradation and in their own oblivious path they continue down the road being totally ignorant about their carbon footprint. The hope in this problem is that people will act once they understand the problem, at least few of them will and that will inspire more people to join in. Other part of the solution to this problem lies with the action political leaders take and everyone knows that politicians only act when the public wants them to act. So, the solution to the problem lies with the people themselves. We have to understand and act, not today, not tomorrow, we have to start NOW.

Actor Leonardo Dicaprio, who is also a messenger of peace of the United Nations, is making commendable efforts towards making the masses understand about climate change. He believes the political desire will change when the public’s desire to fix the problem changes. Leo travelled all across the world in the last two years to witness the disastrous effects that climate change has had over all over the world and this journey has been converted into a National Geographic documentary known as “Before the Flood “. The documentary encompasses the effects of climate change; the political lobbying that stops governments from making any changes and the ignorance of common people who keep such corrupt politicians in power. On the bright side, the documentary also touches how certain organization and governments are fighting against the fossil fueled problem by going green.

Every documentary is made to have certain ‘take aways’ for the viewer that is what essentially separates a documentary from cinema. A documentary is supposed to educate in a way movies cannot. So here are the key ‘take aways’ from “ Before the Flood”.