The voices in Australian director Damon Gameau’s head grew louder when his daughter was born. The world looked increasingly like a grim place to be in. Between the sweltering heatwaves in Australia, unprecedented wildfires in California, rapidly declining sea ice robbing the Arctic Ocean of 95 per cent of its oldest ice, and rising sea levels, the world was seemingly on the brink of an apocalypse. How would people’s lives change in the near future, with no concrete answers in sight?
The question troubled him so much that Gameau set about making a documentary film to get a realistic view on what the world would look like when his daughter grew up. Tired of the doomsday scenario presented by popular culture, he focused instead on the positive environmental solutions being developed around the world.
The documentary feature is titled
Gameau points out that he wanted to counter the pervasive image of a dystopian future painted by Hollywood. “I’m hoping to shift the spotlight with 2040 and take us outside that dystopian bubble about our future, because we need to know that change is possible. I’m a lot more hopeful about the future than what the predominant narrative suggests,” he says.
His stocktaking of the current environmental state paints a somewhat rosy picture of the future backed by realistic solutions, even as his heavy reliance on visual effects and a peppy score partially renders it a fairytale-like view of the future. The film presents solutions from across the world in the fields of climate, economics, technology, civil society, agriculture and sustainability.
Gameau meets a decentralised renewable energy specialist who is trying to bring solar power to individual homes in rural Bangladesh. He tests a driverless car on the streets in Singapore. He meets with farmers who practise regenerative agriculture in Australia. Tied together in the narrative are solutions presented by children to counter the pressing issues of the world. The solutions range from the realistic to the impractical, but also reveal that children are aware of the issues haunting the world. “I think we should get this invention that sucks up all of the rubbish in the world and puts it in an intergalactic dimension, which is a rubbish dimension,” says one boy. “I’d like to see deforestation being stopped because it’s ruining the planet,” adds a girl.
Gameau and his team talked to 100 children from all over the world, in countries such as Tanzania, Sweden, UK, and the US, to seek their view on what they wanted the future to look like. “I was surprised by how eloquent and intuitive they were about the world we live in. They didn’t need any prompting to talk about complex subjects like their future. Their predicament about the environmental challenges was evident from what they told me,” he says.
He admits that his world view about climate change began to evolve after the birth of his daughter a few years ago and when he started reading about global warming.
“Ten years ago, I found it very hard to engage with things like climate change and how it changes the world we live in. Now, after I made the film and saw that some solutions were already available, I believe there’s scope for us to be hopeful since there’s room for change,” he says.
But are narratives such as these counterproductive in a world where there is still inaction from policymakers on curbing climate change despite scientists presenting a grim view of the future? Take American President Donald Trump, for instance, who tweeted his scepticism about global warming after temperatures fell in the American Midwest in February. “Please come back fast, we need you,” his tweet read.
Gameau says he is aware of the issue of complacency among policymakers and was conscious not to present a utopian fantasy of the future in his film, which was screened at the Berlinale film festival in February. “That’s why everything I show is realistic in the film, backed by available solutions. Politicians make decisions based on what the people demand and I hope climate activism increases after films like 2040 ,” he says.
The director says many Australian companies have shown an interest in bringing in technologies highlighted in the film to Australia and expresses the hope his message will be heard around the world. “The film is only a small part of the larger ecosystem. We’re going to come up with a climate action plan and a lot more content and actionable solutions through our website,” he concludes.
In an earlier documentary — That Sugar Film — he focused on the ill-effects of refined sugar on human bodies. For that, he subjected himself to increased consumption of sugar. It helped put sugar on the global health agenda.
For the director, clearly, problems exist, but the solutions are often around the corner.
Prathap Nair is a freelance writer currently based in Berlin