“Deep Green” is an upbeat documentary about how to de-carbonize energy and restore the natural world in order to stop man-made global warming. It is all about solutions.

So how do you tell a story about how to save civilization from over-heating? One that is entertaining, yet compelling enough to move people to change their own behavior?

Not with gloom and doom. Not by scaring people. Not with cold shots of technology. Or talking head after talking head, without an emotional connection.  Even knowing this, for two years, I thought that the best information could carry the film. Then we interviewed Chelsea Sexton of Plug-in America and the star of “Who Killed the Electric Car.” She again pointed out that “people don’t care about technology, they care about people.” So we concentrated on fewer people. And we expanded story threads like the emerging green change in China.  For too long, China has been used as an excuse for inaction on climate change. The argument goes something like this – It doesn’t matter what we do in the United States, because all those people will burn all that dirty coal, waste all that energy, and kill the planet anyway.

But our research showed that this was changing, and we decided to go to China to see for ourselves. We caught the beginning of what is now an accelerating greening of China.

Europe has led the way on most efforts to stop global warming, so we searched for the best diverse global warming solutions in seven countries. Plus, we found many areas of strength and brilliant solutions in the United States.  From the start I knew we needed breaks from the stories so the film could breathe – or we would never appeal to a wide audience. So we worked with the talented animators at Bent Image Lab on what became eleven animated shorts – two of which are so powerful that we pulled them out of the movie and plan to screen them as short subjects prior to each showing, where possible.  And we concentrated on the theme of what one person could do. Green technology and laws that encourage restorative action are great, but ultimately changing the way we live is up to us. After two years of resisting a suggestion by my crew, I started to write myself into the movie as a real-life example of what one person can do.

Then composer Randy Porter did his magic with a frame by frame movie score, pushing an emotional tone into every nook of a technical story — using beautiful music to give the smart, inspiring heroes who are fixing this problem the spotlight they deserve.

Making films, as we all know, is both a joy and a sacrifice. I am frequently asked, why did I do it? Why did I spend most of my savings on something as risky as a movie?

Because the bigger risk is doing nothing. The consequences of man-made global warming will render everything else we do in the future moot, unless we address it immediately at a scale big enough to solve the problems. The best new science says we have to peak carbon emissions by 2015, and we one billion high carbon emitters of the world need to lower our carbon emissions by 80% in 10-20 years. —or we won’t be able to stop global warming. Our efforts will never be enough until we stabilize the Life Support System of the Earth at pre-industrial cool temperatures and carbon emissions below 350 parts per million.

We can fix this…if we go Deep Green now.

Matt Briggs
Director, Writer and Producer
Portland, Oregon