Franny Armstrong, in The Age of Stupid takes us on a journey to the future. There is not much to see though; ash is all that’s left of the Amazon, the only thing roaming the streets of London is the flood water, Sydney is still scenic a bit with its ball of inferno, the Alps finally may be passable as there’s no snow anymore and India may be just the place for nuclear war tourism, just don’t expect the revered hospitality. This is the year 2055 and the Earth as we knew it is no more, all that is left is a planet ravaged by catastrophic climate changes.
We are then taken to a massive structure in the Arctic which is revealed to the repository of all of Earth’s former arts and culture, a big archive. The person (Pete Postlethwaite) whose name we don’t get throughout the documentary, the archivist in charge of the place. One by one he shows us the archived videos to find out what went wrong and where we could have saved our planet. The archivist relies on videos primarily of six subjects to show us the complete picture.
We are first taken to Mumbai, India where in 2004, Jeh Wadia is forming a low cost airline with a vision that the common man should get to fly at least once in his life time. He is symbolic of all the airlines and the airline industry which spews massive amount of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
Then the archivist pulls out the video of an English family on a vacation to the Alps where they meet Fernand Pareau, the oldest working man (82) in France. He tells the tale of how he has seen the landscape change and the glacier and the ice melting. Fernand, at such old age also protests against the authorities who want to widen the road and tunnel in his area.
We move on to New Orleans to meet Al Duvernay, a hero who stayed back when Hurricane Katrina hit the town to help out those in need. Al lost everything he owned to the floods and is a prime example of how it feels to lose everything that one has. Al hass also worked on an Oil Rig and is witness to how we are destroying our planet.
A similar is the case with Layefa Malemi a poor woman from Nigeria who like many other Nigerians struggle with poverty despite her country having a rich wealth of oil. But the oil brings with it governmental terrorism which has destroyed many families. She witnesses how oil companies and government, together to save money lit the natural gas which can be used in households. The burning gas puts tons of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. Ironically, there is fuel scarcity in Nigeria.
Next we meet Adnan and Jamila, two Iraqi children whose family like many others has been affected by the war. They had to escape to Jordan to survive what they think is a war to quench a never ending thirst for oil. Their primary desire is to re-unite with their brother Malik.
Piers Guy’s story is a bit different. He is a man with a cause, a wind farm developer. Albeit, his cause is lost in front of people who believe that aesthetics are more important than saving the planet.
We are told the story of how we destroyed our planet through the stories of these people. Their stories serve as an eye opener to what and how much damage we are doing to our planet and should we still decide to keep mum or take no action, the documentary might as well be true in the year 2055 and we truly will be ‘The Age of Stupid’.