In Dear President Obama, we covered the victims of fracking who are fighting back to protect lives and land in America. But we also all know that fossil fuel extraction is wreaking devastation on a global scale. So it’s no surprise that 2016 is turning out to be the year the world woke up to the need for a fracking ban.
Germany was the most recent European country to ban fracking (although many environmental groups think the 5-year agreement does not go far enough). All across the world, countries, provinces and municipalities are standing up for the only morally defensible way forward to our energy future: clean, renewable energy.
Emblematic of this global shift in consciousness was Dear President Obama filmmaker Jon Bowermaster’s recent meeting with Olafur Grimsson, President of Iceland at our AREDAY film screening in Aspen, CO:
It was exciting to meet another high-ranking leader who understood the need to get behind the clean energy revolution, and the film was well-received by all who attended!
Iceland was not the only place we were feeling the global impact of our film being received. Last week, Dear President Obama screened in China at the China Environmental Film Festival in Guangzhou. Festival chairman Vanke Wang Shi — China’s largest real estate developer — is seen here opening the venue Liangzhu Center for the Arts, with our poster projected on the wall:
It is truly inspiring to see our film reach across the oceans and into countries where environmental awareness is growing as rapidly as global temperatures and sea levels. Such a response will be utterly necessary to deal with the coming decades of climate change, and the major shifts in economic and political policy that we already see are underway, if not progressing fast enough. To see our film play its small but important part in pushing that progress forward is a dream come true, and as always, we thank you for your support.