This new documentary film about the political moment when the Republican candidate for president in 1988, George Bush Sr., promises to do something about global warming begins with the blistering heatwave of 1988.  The directors, Bonni Cohen, Pedro Kos and Jon Shenk rely mainly on news footage and TV reportage to relay their message.  In New York City the sidewalk hydrants are gushing, and the subways resemble steaming malodorous saunas.  These are scenes I happened to have experienced as I lived and worked in Manhattan that summer.  In the film, Bush is seen making made pains to show his sympathy for Americans suffering from the heat and drought and visits farmers in the Midwest, proclaiming about global warming, “It is not a liberal or a conservative thing…I intend to do something about it.”

Once elected, Bush chooses the experienced environmental advocate, William Reilly to be head of the US Environmental Protection Agency but he also appoints the anti-environmental John Sununu as chief of staff.  George Bush Sr.’s rival Michael Dukakis had promised to promote the EPA head to a cabinet-level position, but in the Bush administration, Reilly is several notches below Sununu in the pecking order. In 1991 John Sununu initiates a meeting of climate sceptics with the aim of sowing doubt and division.  His meeting features MIT scientist Richard Lindzen and Frederick Singer, a scientist at the University of Virginia.  “The climate is always fluctuating,” says Lindzen. Singer is even more of a denier, “There is no real scientific support for the so-called greenhouse warming.” Frederick Singer had been born in Vienna and as a Jewish child had traveled alone to England on the ”Kindertransport,” and eventually to the USA where he pursued a scientific career.  Richard Lindzen, younger by a generation had grown up in the United States but his parents were also European Jews who had survived the Holocaust.  Oddly, in addition to denying human-induced global warming, both Lindzen and Singer........

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