This is the title of a new documentary film (described as “a real-life version of Don’t Look Up”) by the makers of the award-winning Finite: The Climate of Change (2023), which, if you saw it (and you should have if you’re at all concerned about stopping and then reversing the Climate and Ecological Crises!) is a powerful and very inspiring film, directed by climate activist-turned-filmmaker Rich Felgate: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/everything-is-fine#/
Clearly, with the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service announcing this January that their earlier predictions—that 2023 would be the warmest year since records began—had been confirmed, everything is very far from fine! For the first time, global warming in 2023—or “global boiling,” as UN General Secretary António Guterres called it in July 2023—exceeded 1.5°C EVERY DAY across the entire year, compared to pre-industrial levels. Not surprisingly, this had a worrying impact on ocean temperatures.
Then, the following month, Copernicus reported that January 2024 had been the warmest January ever, even beating January 2023, and that February was heading towards being the warmest February ever!
https://climate.copernicus.eu/warmest-december-concludes-warmest-year-record
If that’s not enough to convince people that we really are in some really bad climate and ecological s**t, the Global Tipping Points Report for 2023 warned about the increasing risks of “irreversible change” as regards both climate change and nature loss. This report pointed out that of the Earth’s nine major tipping systems, five were already nearing irreversible tipping points, and that, in words echoing David Attenborough’s warning in 2018, this posed “threats of a magnitude never faced by humanity.” Their report stressed that these threats were likely to occur “within decades” and, particularly concerning, would happen “at lower levels of global warming than previously thought.” One particularly serious threat was a “global-scale loss of capacity to grow major staple crops.” More generally, triggering just one Earth System tipping point “could trigger another, causing a domino effect of accelerating and unmanageable damage.”
https://global-tipping-points.org/summary-report/key-messages/
https://global-tipping-points.org/summary-report/narrative-summary/
With many climate scientists now thinking that, if ‘business as usual’ continues, global boiling is likely to reach at least 2.7 °C of heating above pre-industrial levels by the end of this century, younger people in particular are increasingly looking for ways to stop this climate madness before it is, quite literally, too late for planet Earth and all the species living on it.
Of those thousands doing so, Just Stop Oil has been one of the most active, and it is their campaign and the state’s increasing crackdown on legitimate peaceful protests that is the main subject of Everything Is Fine. During the making of this film, Rich was one of several journalists unlawfully arrested for filming JSO’s protests on the M25 in November 2022. He was also arrested for filming JSO protest banners during the totally unnecessary and hugely expensive coronation of the current CEO of Windsor PLC.
The film follows an unlikely but very encouraging alliance of concerned citizens, including a student and an ex-oil and gas worker, who are just two of many putting their bodies on the line to protect people from the deadly impacts of the UK’s government’s reckless decision to approve over 130 new oil and gas projects in the middle of an ever-worsening climate and ecological emergency. One of those who features in the film is Mark Coleman, a vicar from Rochdale who has been imprisoned twice for his part in NVDA protests to stop ecocidal policies and who, like many others, was prevented from giving his reasons in court for acting to stop the climate crisis. Mark Coleman is just one of over 100 climate activists who have been imprisoned over the past few years.
The film shows:
“how the state, media, and oil industry are more concerned about protecting business as usual than protecting life and have thus run a concerted campaign to demonise and criminalise climate protesters in order to delegitimise their demand of stopping new oil and gas production, as recommended by the IPCC, UN, and IEA, who are institutions not known for their radicalism.”
In addition, the film also considers how far protesters are now likely to go to prevent such ecocidal actions—and just how far this Tory government will go in destroying what democratic rights to engage in peaceful protest still remain. Thus, it is crucial, right now, to have a film like Everything Is Fine do the rounds in our cinemas as soon as possible—to help build the united opposition we need to see to stop climate madness. As the Extinction Rebellion has argued, we need to ‘Unite to Survive!’
As of now, some £70,000 is needed to complete the editing process so that it can go on release as soon as possible. Which is why there is a Crowdfunder appeal: if you can afford to help out, you can do so via this link: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/everything-is-fine/payments/new?nonperk_amt=10#/checkout
As the director, Rich Felgate, says:
“The corporate media has failed to effectively communicate the climate crisis. Instead of the powerful elites who are ravaging our planet being demonised, it’s the ordinary people making a stand against our collective catastrophe who are slated in the media and
criminalised by the government. This film is an intervention to tell the truth about who the eco-mob really are. The eco-zealots you have been told to be afraid of are grandmothers, vicars, doctors, students, and care workers, acting out of moral conviction to resist the expansion of oil and gas when we are crystal clear on the knowledge that new fossils will kill and push us to the brink of civilisational collapse.”
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