Before The Flood is a new documentary starring Leonardo di Caprio that explores the extent of climate change in our world today and its ramifications. I found it to be an extremely compelling film, and I think that it is something every citizen of the earth should watch. There were so many points of the film that resonated with me that it would be difficult to fit it in just a few pages, but I will touch on several of the things I found the most interesting and thought-provoking.
One of the places that di Caprio visited during his two-year long journey was India. He had a particularly interesting interview with a representative for India’s environmental coalition. The conversation between the two of them became very heated when di Caprio brought up the importance of new solar and wind initiatives in the US. She responded to him with a chart that mapped the carbon footprint of a citizen of India compared to an American citizen. It showed that an American citizen on average consumes about ten times more than the average Indian citizen. Her point was that environmental issues do not simply require revolutions in the field of science and technology. It is a cultural issue as well as a practical issue. According to her, a change in lifestyle is essential to bring us toward a healing of the earth. This really made me realize how much I consume on a daily basis without even thinking about it. Not thinking about our consumerism in a global context is a serious oversight, and things need to change before it is too late.
Another fascinating and extremely distressing part of the film was when di Caprio and the film crew visited Indonesia. They took a helicopter out to forests in Indonesia that supply palm oil to a huge network of corporations, most of which are based in the US. The destruction that the palm oil demand wreaks on these forests is so large that it has caused a permanent haze to hover over the area. In addition, species of elephants, orangutans, rhinos, and tigers are being hit hard by the harsh living conditions imposed by the destructive process of harvesting palm oil trees. It was one of the last remaining areas where these four species could live in harmony. It quickly became clear that huge fossil fuel companies were profiting from these destructive processes and that those corporations feed into a huge network of companies that are all too familiar to us. For instance, Kraft and Doritos appeared on the list. It is evident that we need to consider what we consume and where it comes from in addition to how much of it we consume. It no longer suffices to buy simply the cheapest or most familiar brand on the shelf, because companies are cutting corners at the cost of natural species and habitats.
After watching this film, and reading other literature on environmental racism, it has become clear to me that the environmental and ecological crisis is not simply a question of new scientific energy solutions. It involves the human crisis of inequality and power hierarchy as well, on both a domestic and global scale. We must ask how our very way of life is endangering the lives of those around us, and the environment that we live in. Just because we ourselves are not directly affected by these crises does not mean that it does not exist. In fact, in many ways those who contribute the most to the crisis feel the least effect of its destructive power, which is an extremely sad reality that must be changed.
