This year’s Environmental Film Festival in Washington, DC will feature two films looking at the links between climate change and security – Tidewater on March 20th and the Age of Consequences on March 21. The Center for Climate and Security advises the American Resilience Project, who produced Tidewater – a film that features members of the CCS Advisory Board. CCS’s Francesco Femia, along with a number of CCS’s Advisory Board members, are part of the Age of Consequences cast. Both are worth checking out if you are in the area. Details below.
Tidewater
Tidewater explores the challenge of sea level rise in the Tidewater region of Virginia and North Carolina, encompassing Hampton Roads, arguably the region whose vulnerability most affects our overall national security. An area rich in diversity and historical significance, it is the second most vulnerable community in the U.S. to sea level rise, after New Orleans. With over 1.6 million citizens, the region is comprised of 17 jurisdictions and hosts 18 federal government agencies along with Naval Station Norfolk, the largest naval station in the world and a major deployment point for U.S. forces globally. The region is also experiencing land subsidence, which exacerbates the effects of flooding. Hampton Roads requires $1 billion in urgent infrastructure repairs with 900 miles of its roads and electric grid threatened by permanent flooding. Faced with these unprecedented challenges that can only be tackled by a wide range of stakeholders, from ordinary citizens to the U.S. Navy to local businesses, Tidewater will highlight the innovative whole-of-government problem-solving model being pioneered by local leaders.
If Hampton Roads succeeds, it will mean success on several levels. They’ll save their homes, schools, businesses, the naval base, and that’s no mean feat. But they’ll also create a powerful template for success, a model other regions can use to prepare for and deal with disaster – and more: a model that can demonstrate how people, businesses and government can pull together to solve any complex problem.
Directed and produced by Roger Sorkin.
Monday March 20. 7:00 pm – Naval Heritage Center
* FREE. Discussion with Roger Sorkin (director), Col. Dave Belote (clean energy advocate & retired air force colonel), Judge Alice Hill (Hoover Inst.) and Ann Phillips (film subject, retired Rear Admiral) follows screening.
The Age of Consequences
The Hurt Locker meets An Inconvenient Truth, The Age of Consequences investigates the impacts of climate change on increased resource scarcity, migration, and conflict through the lens of US national security and global stability. Through unflinching case-study analysis, distinguished admirals, generals and military veterans take us beyond the headlines of the conflict in Syria, the social unrest of the Arab Spring, the rise of radicalized groups like ISIS, and the European refugee crisis – and lay bare how climate change stressors interact with societal tensions, sparking conflict. Whether a long-term vulnerability or sudden shock, the film unpacks how water and food shortages, drought, extreme weather, and sea-level rise function as ‘accelerants of instability’ and ‘catalysts for conflict’ in volatile regions of the world. These Pentagon insiders make the compelling case that if we go on with business as usual, the consequences of climate change – waves of refugees, failed states, terrorism – will continue to grow in scale and frequency, with grave implications for peace and security in the 21st century. The film’s unnerving assessment is by no means reason for fatalism – but instead a call to action to rethink how we use and produce energy. As in any military defense and security strategy, time is our most precious resource.
Written, directed and produced by Jared P. Scott. Executive produced by Sophie Robinson.
Tuesday, Mar. 21, 7:00 pm – Carnegie Institution for Science
* Tickets: $10.
* Discussion with film subject Hon. Sharon Burke (Senior Advisor, New America), panelist Sherri Goodman, and filmmakers Jared P. Scott and Sophie Robinson, follows screening. Introduction by Maryanne Culpepper, Executive Director of the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital.
