Can this film really save our planet?

HAILSTONES the size of grapefruits pelting cities, tornados ripping apart suburban communities and a tidal wave that drowns New York. Weather has long fascinated filmmakers and next week sees the release of The Day After Tomorrow, the much-anticipated "disaster" movie which explores what would happen to the world if we suffered a sudden environmental catastrophe.

What sets director Roland Emmerich's $125 million blockbuster apart from others such as The Perfect Storm or Twister is that while in those movies humanity was cast as victim, in this new film, we are also the culprits.

On a purely instinctive level, it is undoubtedly good fun and the special effects are pretty special.

Coming from the man responsible for the equally apocalyptic Independence Day, one would hope so. As meteorological eyecandy it takes some beating - the scene with 300ft waves destroying New York City is breathtaking - but how realistic is its scenario?

The Day After Tomorrow suggests that climate change will result not in the northern hemisphere warming up, but cooling down. It's a view given added weight by no less surprising a source than the US government.

According to a Pentagon report leaked earlier this year, global warming may trigger dramatic, rapid shifts in weather patterns in a matter of years, as the Gulf Stream (which warms the Eastern US and Northern Europe) is curbed by increased flow from melting Arctic glaciers.

Within a few years, the report continues, rainfall in northern Europe will have dropped by nearly 30 per cent, and its climate will take on the characteristics of Siberia. In North America, meanwhile, average temperatures will plunge by up to five degrees, with violent storms becoming the norm.

Fertile areas the world over will be transformed into deserts.

Because of the speed and breadth of the changes, technological progress will offer little in the way of solutions. Instead, the world will revert to a state of perpetual war over food, resources, water and energy.

In The Day After Tomorrow, the time span is condensed even further - a matter of years becomes a matter of days. This could easily be dismissed as unrealistic, but the truth is, no one really knows which way climate change is going to take us. We simply know that there is serious trouble ahead.

More significant is the idea implicit in the film's title - that climate change is a future threat.

Try telling that to the inhabitants of the South Pacific island of Kiribati, or the low-lying islands of Papua New Guinea, which are now preparing to evacuate their lands forever as rising sea levels threaten to submerge their homes. Climate change is not about the day after tomorrow.

For millions of people it is about today.

Will The Day After Tomorrow help avert further disaster? The film leaves little impression of what is causing the problem, or what we can do about it.

Similarly, if one goes to the movie's official website and presses the button marked "What can I do?", there is nothing other than a link to Future Forests, a company that plants trees in order to absorb the carbon dioxide emissions of whoever contracts it to do so. It's a fine company engaged in good work, but the implication on the film's website is that planting trees is all we can and need do.

So, in itself, the film will not bring about the changes environmentalists hoped a massentertainment vehicle like this could effect. While it may change the hearts and minds of a few viewers, I'd be surprised if George Bush signs the Kyoto Protocol after a private screening at the White House.

THAT said, the film is undoubtedly valuable and, one hopes, it could spawn a series of responsible, issueled pictures that awaken people to the crisis our planet is in. And if the director and cast, who include Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal, are as committed as they say they are, we may see them on chat shows talking not about their lives, but about climate change.

That has to be a good thing.

Last weekend, however, I saw what this film might have been.

On the King's Road I passed what I thought was a billboard for the movie.

When I looked closer I saw it read The Day is Today. Instead of Manhattan, it was a British town-centre street sign that was submerged. At the bottom of the poster it said: www.stopesso.com.

The point was clear. If we want to avoid the film's nightmare scenario, we have to take matters into our own hands. We need to campaign.

For instance, there is no good reason preventing us from replacing our energy infrastructure with clean, decentralised alternatives combined with a programme of energy conservation.

And we should do all we can to cut the distance between consumers and producers. That would translate to fresher food for the consumer, less transport emissions for the environment and more money for our longsuffering farmers.

The costs of change are negligible. The costs of not changing are almost incalculable. That way we can ensure The Day After Tomorrow remains just a piece of Hollywood fiction.

. For more information visit www.theecologist.org. The Day After Tomorrow is released on 28 May.

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