“2040” Movie Review: a father’s hope to sustainable future
Imagine Velvet, a world in 2040 where you and your generation, “the regeneration,” can live free from the worry of increasing greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. In the documentary movie 2040, we follow Damon Gameau on his ambitious journey to explore existing solutions to the increasing greenhouse gas emissions in the hope of creating a “fact-based dream” sustainable future for his own daughter, Velvet. The movie voices optimistic sentiments on the possibility of doing transformative changes for the unsustainable status quo through various practices. Throughout the movie, various solutions in different fields were explained using Doughnut Economy and regenerative theory as the basis guidance.
In this movie, Damon Gameau, an Australian writer-director, imagined what the future holds for his four-year-old daughter in 2040 with the increasing hazard of climatic disasters. Rather than dwelling on the problems and challenges within climate change discourses, Gameau tried to offer more optimistic approaches to tackle the issue by exploring existing efforts and solutions to minimize greenhouse gas emissions. The movie’s narrative style, which combines stop-motion and sequences, perfectly illustrates the projection of the various possible futures to be compared with the illustration of the present situation. The movie highlighted the intergenerational nature of climate change by emphasizing the perspective of future generations, children from all over the world. Gameau tried to pull an emotional connection from the viewer and emphasized the intergenerational ethical and moral obligation to create a better space for the future generation to live in. Through a well-organized exploration of each solution, Gameau picked one solution for different fields, including energy, transportation, agriculture, marine, education, and gender equality.
The pathway toward a different and better future started from the most fundamental discussion of climate change, energy. Gameau discovered a community in Bangladesh that transformed their primary energy source from unhealthy and expensive kerosene to efficient and interconnected solar power, “micro-grids.” To approach the transportation sector, Gameau suggested the newly invented technology of shared on-demand shared driverless vehicles to prevent the increasing number of private-owned autonomous vehicles. Both the energy and transportation sectors will eventually lead to interconnectedness and strengthen community networks.
In the agricultural sector, Gameau introduced the regenerative design to agriculture, which seeks to rehabilitate and conserve the ecosystem while enhancing the farm’s productivity. The main goal is to restore the health of the soil in the current problem of continuous soil degradation by integrating livestock and mix crops. Interestingly, rather than proposing a confrontational approach to address the climatic and ethical issues caused by animal consumption with veganism, the movie suggested a progressive reduction of protein intake. The same regenerative design addresses the acidification of marine ecosystems by trying to restore the ocean’s overturning circulation with seaweed farms.
The movie discusses not only practical and technical solutions to climate change but also proposes transformative changes to society’s behavior by incorporating the awareness of resource usage in today’s society into children’s education. Gameau also proposed a non-mainstream approach to tackle climate change by achieving women’s empowerment. The idea is to address the issues behind education and work opportunities for girls and women to achieve better family planning and overall better technology and innovation outcomes in society.
The projects and solutions mentioned in the movie heavily revolve around individual, if not community, levels. They deemed bottom-up approaches more cost-efficient and time-effective compared to the expensive and ineffective top-down efforts. While doing so, the movie took upon an integrationist approach to addressing climate issues by discussing emissions and attempting to improve the quality and equality of other aspects such as poverty, health, economy, etc. For example, while discussing the innovative micro-grids, Gameau mentioned the equality and wealth redistribution aspects of the local community by keeping the profit within the local economy. The movie also lightly touched upon some procedural justice similar to Caney’s (2010) Polluter Pays Principle (PPP) where Gameau proposed using the carbon emissions penalty to pay farmers doing regenerative farming.
The movie highlighted the usage of the Doughnut concept by Kate Raworth, which serves as an alternative compass for the 21st human society in regards to the capitalist nature of GDP growth, which gives our society a new task: to bring all of humanity into safe and just space (Raworth, 2017). This space lies within two sets of boundaries; the inner ring sets the social foundation of society, while beyond the outer ring lies the pressure our current Earth faces, such as climate change and ocean acidification. Each solution provided in the movie tried to achieve an ecologically safe and socially just space in 2040, trying to ensure the inner ring and not overstep the outer border. This gave me a better understanding and clear illustration of why we need to reexamine the economic-growth-based and move onto alternative compasses. Furthermore, the most important point of the Doughnut, in my perspective, is that it emphasizes the equality and distributive justice of society with transformative efforts that could work from bottom-up networks.
Unfortunately, some of the prominent aspects of the concept are yet to be addressed in the movie. Gameau offered a rather simplistic and apolitical approach with an attractive narrative that caters to public eyes. There are larger systemic and structural issues behind many climate and social issues faced by today’s society. Political and economic issues are yet to be addressed as the projects and solutions offered tend to be oversimplified and end at the individual level. The complexity behind the fossil fuel industry, with its politics, lobbying, and agenda, is also not explored too deeply and just lightly mentioned. Furthermore, the governmental and international level has yet to be addressed. As the Doughnut serves as a guide for the 21st economy and humanity, the involvement of higher-level actors such as government and institutions would be necessary.
In addition, each project’s practicality and political feasibility are also not clearly explored in the movie. The questions of justice and inequality also remained unanswered, as not every solution is accessible and equitable for all communities. For example, in the “micro-grids” project, the person unable to buy solar panels will remain to spend money, which makes it harder for them to actually buy the panel later on.
Despite these shortcomings, the movie successfully captured a positive and hopeful image they tried to showcase for the future of climate change issues. They showcased insights into the possibility and potential of existing technology and innovation today. It’s an awe-inspiring movie that will encourage viewers to contribute further and engage in the discussion and efforts to create a better world for future generations. We have everything we need right now to make the 2040 we imagine happen. So, what is your 2040?
References
Gameau, D. (Producer, Director). (2019). 2040 [Film]. Good Thing Productions.
Caney, S. (2010). Climate change and the duties of the advantaged. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 13(1), 203–228. https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230903326331
Raworth, K. (2017). Doughnut Economics: 7 Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist. Random House Business Books.
