The Great Warming

Apparently Patrick Goldstein (of the LA Times) and I were on the same cosmic wavelength this past week. His "Big Picture" column on Tuesday, Believers preach gospel of green, took on the Bill Moyers PBS documentary Is God Green? that I've written about several times this week, as well as a new global warming film that will be opening in American theaters November 3, The Great Warming. If Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth was preaching to the choir, this film is aimed at those not yet in the pew of global warming activism.

The other documentary, "The Great Warming," which arrives in theaters Nov. 3, focuses on environmental activism among evangelicals as well as ecologists, physicists, emergency room doctors and organic farmers. It interviews former CIA Director James Woolsey, who offers the blunt assessment, "We have met the enemy, and he is us." Adapted from a series of Canadian TV specials, the film is being exhibited nationwide by Regal Cinema, the mega-movie theater chain owned by conservative family values activist Philip Anschutz.

Even more telling, according to Karen Coshof, the film's producer, is how Regal became interested in the film. "They called us after they'd been inundated by calls and lettersabout the movie, which people had seen after we sent DVDs out to about 200 churches around the U.S. If we've learned anything, its that social change in America begins at the grass-roots level, in churches and synagogues where people listen to their pastors and rabbis and are moved to action."

This is apparently not your Hollywood celebrity, your Leonardo DiCaprio (whom I do not mock, he has done a great deal for this cause) brand of environmental activism. And, as it opens in theaters across the country, states both red and blue, the weekend before Election Day, there is the possibility that it may change some number of hearts, minds and most importantly - votes. Alanis Morissette, who has previously played God, is, after all, one of the narrators.

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