New SG Interview: Ondi Timoner – Cool It!0

by Nicole Powers

“We’ve had 18 years of climate conferences…”
– Ondi Timoner

In her latest documentary, Cool It!, two-time Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning director Ondi Timoner (We Live In Public and Dig!) sets forth the case for lowering the temperature of the global warming debate, and offers pragmatic solutions to what former Vice President and preeminent environmentalist Al Gore considers a moral issue.

Based upon the book Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming by Danish statistician Bjørn Lomborg, the film takes a radically different approach to that of Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth with which it is often compared. Indeed, Lomborg considers Gore’s potentially paralyzing fear-based narrative and reliance on worst-case scenario statistics to be particularly unhelpful when it comes to promoting reasonable and rational change – a stance that has put him at odds with much of the environmental community.

Lomborg is not a global warming denier – though it’s something his enemies have often accused him of being. As the Director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, a think tank which advises governments, philanthropists and NGOs on the most effective use of aid and development funds, Lomborg hopes to encourage world leaders to act wisely when it comes to environmental policy. Rather than reacting on an emotional level and/or bowing to the prevailing politically expedient winds, Lomborg wants our politicians to heed real-world numbers. Using cost/benefit analysis as a litmus test for the viability of various options, the kinds of programs Lomborg suggests we prioritize are frequently in opposition to those proposed by even the most left-wing of minds.

He’s against the various Kyoto treaties for example, not because he considers their intentions to be wrong, but because he thinks their execution is fundamentally flawed. As he points out in Cool It!, the bill for the 1997 Kyoto accord, which aimed to reduce carbon emissions to levels 5.2% below those in 1990 would have been around $180 billion per year. According to Lomborg’s calculations however, the result of this massive spend would have been a negligible 0.008 degree Fahrenheit reduction by the end of the century.

Similarly, in June 2009 the EU committed to cutting carbon emissions to 20% below 1990 levels and increasing the share of renewabless used by 20% by the year 2020. All this made for a very catchy “2020” strategy title, but it came with a price tag of $250 billion per year. Yet the estimated net result of this massive outlay is that temperatures are projected to be reduced by a mere 1/10 of a degree Fahrenheit by the end of the century. Lomborg thinks that both the Kyoto and EU proposals offer a staggeringly poor return on invested resources, and has come up with alternative ways to best allocate the $250 billion annual budget the Europeans have already ear-marked. This is the manifesto Lomborg and Timoner lay out in Cool It!

Moving the focus away from energy efficient light bulbs, and the kind of draconian recycling legislation that nations such as Great Britain have employed – all of which are helpful but nowhere near helpful enough (and, as such, have the potential to be dangerously distracting) – Lomborg takes a holistic, big picture approach. In his budget, he not only provides funds for the research and development of energy alternatives and temporary geoengineering solutions (such as the deployment of sulfur to block the sun’s rays), he sets aside funds for adaptation techniques (painting rooftops and tarmac white to cool sun soaked cities like Los Angeles, and building better levies and dykes to protect places like New Orleans). In addition to spending money to stave off, and prepare for, the environmental challenges of tomorrow, Lomborg sets aside money to combat today’s major issues: health, hunger, water and education – this being something both Lomborg and Timoner see as a real moral imperative.

SuicideGirls called up Timoner to find out more about Cool It! We also spoke about her highly anticipated Robert Mapplethorpe biopic, which it’s rumored will star Hollywood’s man of the moment, James Franco.

Read our exclusive interview with Ondi Timoner on SuicideGirls.com.