“I Don’t Think People Understand How Important This Moment Is” Interview With 2040 Director Damon Gameau

In Paul Schrader’s masterpiece First Reformed, the revelation of the current state of climate change frightens a reverend to such a degree that he contemplates strapping on a suicide vest and detonating himself within his small, historical church. This sense of hopelessness and despair, perfectly captured by Schrader last year, permeates every facet of today’s media, delivering a new generation a wealth of pop culture that tells them the end is coming, and we’re doing nothing to stop it.

But as we’ve come to learn, in this new world of click-bait journalism and political warfare, it’s not all bad news if you know where to look. There are people, governments and companies all over the globe doing their best to rectify an apocalyptic problem, and Australian actor-turned-documentarian Damon Gameau’s 2040 shows us just some of these amazing environmental advancements, and how we, no matter who or where we are, can help pitch in.

In 2014, Gameau broke Australian box office records with That Sugar Film, a humorous depiction on the crippling effects of a sugar-filled diet, and now he’s returned to ignite another movement, one which affects all of us – regardless of what our daily intake is. Structured as a letter to his daughter, preconceiving what her future might look like in the titular year if we embraced all of today’s environmentally-beneficial options, Gameau effortlessly weaves expert interviews, informal animations, comedic dramatisations and slick visual effects into an optimistic package that entertains and educates viewers of all ages – we’re all in this together and keeping on top of the recycling ain’t enough anymore.

Meeting upon RAC’s Intellibus, Australia’s first fully automated electronic shuttle bus (a fitting location, due to the film’s estimations on the future of public transport), I had the chance to sit down and speak with Damon Gameau about his new film, the misconceptions people have about climate change, the importance of storytelling and how missing a screening of Avengers: Endgame could change your life.

Alex Lines for Film Inquiry: How did the Q+A’s go on the weekend?

Damon Gameau: Really great. They’ve all been really excellent and packed full of kids, it’s kind of great. One great story was this lady, she came up afterwards and bought a book and said that she came in late to see the Avengers and had walked into the wrong cinema and she kept going to stand up and leave, but couldn’t because she was just learning so much. She loved that I’d completely introduced her to all these new concepts that she’d never even thought about that. I thought f*ck, if we can do that more, that’d be great!

We’re showing in a hundred cinemas around the country on May 23^rd, all the big cinemas have agreed to screen it, so at least people have got an opportunity to see it. Now, if we can just get them out there to go see it, we’ve got a chance.

How was it premiering at Berlinale earlier this year?

Damon Gameau: It’s such a good festival. You know, they just run it so well and so smooth, it’s not like some of the others that feel a bit pretentious, they really do it well. In one of the best screenings, we had about 600 kids between 12 and 18, just on their own. It was like a rock concert, they just started cheering and clapping. It was magic, their reaction.

So it seems to be getting the reaction you’re after?

Damon Gameau: Yeah, I mean look at the moment, we’re preaching to the choir I guess, a lot of the crowds are people who already understand this, but there’s still that real sense of hope, excitement and optimism. People are going onto the website and activating their 2040 plan – so far so good, and we’re only five Q and A’s into the tour.

Where’s the film playing next?

Damon Gameau: We go to Darwin tomorrow and then all down the East Coast. We haven’t really done any publicity yet for the film, it’s only just beginning and people don’t really know about it yet, so fingers crossed. I mean that’s what happened with That Sugar Film, it was more people seeing the film and then telling their friends and saying that you’ve got to go and see this and I’ll feel like that’s already happening. I get that sense already with the people that are saying that they can’t wait to bring their families back or like we’re going to get Dad back to see it!

Speaking to that optimism, there’s a lot of emerging climate change documentaries and movies coming out now – like last year’s First Reformed – but yours is very refreshing in its positivity and optimism, was this a type of mindset you went into making the film with, or did you pick it up once you started to learn about all these new developments?

Damon Gameau: A bit of both, I think I’m probably more of a glass half full kind of person and even with That Sugar Film you know, I think I could’ve made sure that film was really didactic, preachy and scary, in order to show that sugars are bad for us, but I just don’t think that people connect with that, they’re not motivated to action through that method.

There’s so much of that in the world now that I often think the climate, like I care about this, but imagine after a big day at work – you don’t want to go to a cinema and watch how dead the reefs are, like it’s a tough sell, even though you care, it’s hard to engage. Whereas if I can go and think, okay, well I might go watch what can be done to save those reefs, I’m kind of interested in that.

That sounds like I’m ready for that new narrative. So that was always the thinking. It’s not to say those other films aren’t needed. We need the diagnosis. It’s really important, but as a motivator, I think that could be quite paralysing to some people. Some people are more driven and inspired by actions and hope and I just think that it’s important to throw in the mix.

Through the research and discoveries you made during the production of the film, what are some of the biggest changes you’ve made to your own life?

Damon Gameau: I guess just making the film was a big challenge. I think we’ve reached a point where people need to find their own agency or where they can really step up and get involved. It’s not enough to just sort of be passively observing anymore and get a Keep Cup. Like that’s important, but it’s not enough anymore. So for me, the biggest actions, how can I dedicate more, and I guess it’s about doing this platform in the film, but look, there are simple things.

I’ve switched my search engine away from Google to something called Ecosia, which is a search engine and instead of collecting all their revenue and making squillions off it like Google do, they use 80% of their revenue to plant trees around the world to every search you do, you can see how many trees you’re planting around the world. They’ve just planted their 50 millionth tree!

And again, pulling carbon out of the atmosphere and planting trees, simple things anyone can do. Checking on our food is important, seeing how damaging that is when it goes to methane to the landfill, making sure I eat every meal. We don’t buy too much at the supermarket anymore, that’s one of the most important things people can do.

In the documentary, you talk about how these big oil companies spend nearly a billion dollars per year on anti-climate change propaganda. Did you meet any sort of red tape or resistance during filming when you’re trying to investigate anything?

Damon Gameau: A little bit, not overtly. I guess it was just alarming to see how good these people are at telling their story. That was what really shocked me, that it’s such a well oiled and operated machine that involves a lot of different players with very clever minds – they’ve done a great job and they’ve actually convinced a lot of the public that their argument is real, and that’s gotten into the government at all sorts of levels.

This is where storytelling is so important, because we need to start making stories that counter that and say, hang on, we don’t want this future necessarily. We want to actually have a very different looking future where there is nature and we’re connected to it instead of these dystopian versions of the future that we’re often presented with, especially in Hollywood films. In terms of that vested interest, there’s no doubt. One of our biggest challenges is how do we unhook that vested interest, especially from our political sphere, but seeing how much involvement these companies do have in regulations and setting regulations within the government is pretty scary. We have to sort of address that if we’re going to let any of these solutions come through.

What do you feel is like the biggest misconception people have about climate change?

Damon Gameau: The term climate change is almost too narrow a term for what’s going on and said climate change is a symptom. It’s feedback of how we’re operating as a system. If you look at the soil, for example, the UN says we’ve got about 60 years of topsoil left. The oceans are rising and the cities are heating up – those two things are the foundation of our civilisation.

If we don’t get this right, it’s all over. I don’t think people understand how important this moment is because we’re not told that in the press, they say we’re being alarmist. We’re not listening to the scientists who are literally going through this condition now called pre-traumatic stress disorder, because they’re so wound up in the fact that no one’s listening to them and science is saying we’re finding these things.

This is a crisis point that we need to act, which is why the kids are all striking around the world now they get it. So anyone that really understands this, is taking extreme actions or really trying to cope. But unfortunately the mainstream narrative just doesn’t talk about it enough or we’re not mentioning it enough at all. I mean it’s starting to emerge now, but day to day people know it exists but they don’t understand the full severity of it. Or if they do understand it, it’s very hard to engage with. I suffer that myself as a parent, it’s almost easier to just to kind of cut it out and put it out of your mind because it’s bloody confronting and it’s very overwhelming and we’re not being honest about that.

How about the fact that, on one day in November last year, Australia lost one third of its flying fox population just because of the heating change. They’re just gone, wiped out. The Monarch butterfly, beautiful butterflies, 97% down since the 1980’s. There are animals going through their apocalypse now, but we’re protected from this because we surround ourselves with air conditioners and are sort of detached from nature, but this is going on all around us, and what happens is, we’re next. We are connected in this whole game that’s going on, and to think that we’re immune from that, is just ridiculous.

In both the documentary and the book, one of the guiding forces is the environmentalist Paul Hawken. What drew you to his work in particular and how did he help in shaping 2040?

Damon Gameau: I didn’t know much about Paul until I was in Colorado actually. I went to this film festival to do some research and he was speaking there and when I saw him on stage, I just couldn’t believe it because we were about a year and a half into research and he was a guy saying, hey, we’ve just spent the past seven years looking at the best solutions to reversing global warning, and so many of them were aligned with the research that we’ve found.

I met up with him afterwards and he’s such a lovely fellow. He became quite a strong mentor for me and I still speak to him regularly and he’s just very good with the science, they’ve just done so much terrific work, it’s just a wonderful resource to have available. That marrying of their information and facts and our storytelling, makes for a lovely combination together.

There’s a section in your book about it, so I wanted to get your thoughts about blockchain technology and its possible environmental benefits?

Damon Gameau: The dilemma with blockchains is that they do use a lot of energy. So if we don’t get that right, it’s going to be quite damaging because it does require a lot of energy, but what it allows us to do is actually decentralize, particularly around energy. We’ve just got a system at the moment where all our energy comes from a centralized provider, like a utility company, a power company, so it doesn’t really give us any control. They get to set what the costs are, they get all the power.

Whereas the blockchain is I guess more operated on nature which is a lot more decentralized. It spreads the power in a lot more decentralized way. There’s less potential for corruption because you can really have a ledger to see where it’s come from. And I think in the energy space, we’re seeing now like in Bangladesh, these micro-grids, which probably in Australia in the next five or 10 years, we’ll see that.

The fact that you can buy solar panels in a factory like IKEA now, in like a little package, all the houses will have that set up and then they’ll be given a box where they’ll be able to share their energy with their neighbour or if they’re going to go away for a while, they got to send that energy or donate it.
It will become a currency. So energy through the blockchain will become a way to actually exchange. Like we use money, we’ll be able to use energy in a similar way.

Because it was something I didn’t even know existed. I knew what bitcoin was but there’s a documentary doing the festival rounds at the moment called Trust Machine, directed by Alex Winter (from Bill and Ted), where he starts off explaining blockchain technology and what it is, but then in the second half he tackles similar territory to 2040 where he proposes the environmental benefits of block-chaining.

Damon Gameau: Oh, wow. I should watch that.

Yeah, and very similar to the Bangladesh system that you show in your film, there’s all these sort of different international little pockets, little places that are getting these great benefits from this technology.

Damon Gameau: It’s self governing within their local area.

But when you get to things like America or Australia, everything is so relied on these centralized systems.

Damon Gameau: Well, it’s illegal in Australia to have micro-grids. That’s how bad it is, you know? You’re not allowed to exchange energy peer to peer at the moment. And that’s why, again, we got to undo those regulations to allow it because everyone wants it. It benefits everyone except those big companies. But come on, they’ve had their fun. They’ve made their money. It’s time to move on.

Is there any sort of major candidates fighting for that?

Damon Gameau: In Australia?

Yeah.

Damon Gameau: Yeah, there’s a couple of companies. There’s actually one in Perth called Power Ledger, they’ve done it. They’ve got a decentralized system. They’re one of the first in Australia and there’s another group called Red Grid who are just about to start an equity crowdfunding model so you can invest in that as well and we’re going to get behind them in a big way as well.

So obviously, That Sugar Film was a really big success here, and I wanted to ask, in terms of just filmmaking, what were some of the lessons you learned from that experience that you were able to apply when making this one?

Damon Gameau: So many things but probably how powerful film can be as a device to motivate change. I think once you really empower people with information and give them a sense of hope and optimism that they are capable of making great changes in their own life or at a societal level. I love documentaries but sometimes they can fit a certain mould. They can be quite reverential, they can be quite earnest and I think there’s room to be a lot more playful with the form and animations.

Damon Gameau: It’s about taking a risk and saying, “What can I do a little bit differently with this one?” And using that model of actually recreating those futures and trying to do something a bit different, and make it engaging, to make people go, “Oh, this is something new.” It’s a bit fresh. Even if they don’t like it, it doesn’t matter. It’s about actually just throwing out different ways of telling stories and trying to engage people rather than just a more traditional dry approach, which has its place but I think people are more engaged if they’re going, “Oh, where’s this speaker going to be next?” Or there’s always something a little bit different. It just keeps you on your toes a bit more.

Speaking to that, I think another thing that had kind of a good impact lately was the Marie Kondo Netflix series, someone that you brought up in your book.

Damon Gameau: Yeah, that’s because my wife had read it a while ago. But yeah, it’s true, look at that series creating enormous change. Or the war on waste. We’re seeing that there’s a social impact element to a lot of the storytelling at the moment, you know? And we really need that. That’s the way to do it. And again, it comes back to storytelling and how certain people that are doing damage to the world potentially have been telling a story and they’ve done it really well, and now we got to counter that with our own stories.

Yeah, and I think this new generation is understanding that kind of shift in the dynamics. I wouldn’t even call it a trend but this new fashion of fitness bands, for both kids and adults, which do encourage people to not drive when you’re kind of getting out of the house, is a good sign of this new change.

Damon Gameau: That’s right, make metrics more visible. I think that’s what we need to do with the planet. The resources, we need to make them visible again instead of just going, “Here’s the GDP. Here’s our growth.” That’s the only metric we have. It’s like, hang on, that’s not who we are. Why don’t we bring all these other things into the visibility and then we know what to strive for?

And especially with something like that. You say, “Oh, the GDP goes up.” And most people don’t even know what that means, unfortunately.

Damon Gameau: That’s right. Exactly.

In the book and the film, you talk about coal, newspapers and landline phones being these things that were just a regular part of society. What are some concepts from today that are normalized that you think will be completely outdated or out fashioned by 2040?

Damon Gameau: Good question. I do think car ownership will be one of them. I think people will still own cars, but they’ll make a choice purely on economic reasons that why would you spend the money to register your car, insure it, for something that’s going to sit in your garage or be parked 96 percent of the time. Whereas if you had the option to not have a car and save, I don’t know, 10, 20 grand a year because of petrol and all sorts of things. That’s going to be a big thing. And even this younger generation coming through now, you see a lot of them not getting their licenses because it’s cheaper to almost get an Uber or walk.

But once that comes down even more, I think we’ll probably look back at that and think that’s pretty interesting. And also, I think, again what we talked about before, this centralized approach is about to get a huge overhaul and we’re going to see things just dispersed so much differently online. I think using the internet as a better tool than we have been. We’re in that early phase where it’s a bit narcissistic and we’re using it to look back at ourselves and go, “Hey, look at me guys.” Whereas we’re starting to evolve and go past that teenage phase and mature, and say, “Actually, this is an incredibly empowering tool that we can use to revolutionize the way we interact with each other, energy, resources.” I’m quite excited by that. I think we’re going to reach the next level of maturity with the internet.

With so many different facts coming out at the moment regarding climate change that you could’ve included in this film, what was your approach about picking which ones you wanted to present? 

Damon Gameau: Yeah, it was sort of being in a mindset that’s been quite mechanistic, and it’s like reductionist. There’s no holistic approach to it. It’s quite linear and I felt like if I didn’t want to necessarily find solutions that were… Like, yes, there’s people inventing big carbon sucking machines that can pull the carbon out of the atmosphere. That’s okay. They’re going to play a role. There’s no cascading benefit to that in the sense of you do the same with soil and the trees, you get better quality food, you get water retention, you get life and biodiversity back into the farmlands.

That’s a better solution. So it was always about what’s the holistic benefit? Like the seaweed does all these amazing things, can be used for plastics. It’s just got so many great elements to it that help community and whatnot. So that was a big approach to the solutions is what else would actually benefit our society as opposed to just being a quick fix?

That, and also I feel like something tangible, something understandable that I feel like I can do it myself-

Yeah, how you can get involved. Like, who can build a giant carbon machine? Oh but I can actually choose the foods I get or support farmers in a way that makes sense. So yeah, you’re right. It’s making it feel accessible to people because it’s already out of our reach, we just have to make sure that people believe, “I can do that. I can get involved with that.”

What are the international plans with the film?

Yeah, we are just discussing those at the moment. We had a couple of interested parties in terms of some larger platform things. I guess it’ll probably play along those platforms eventually get on the track. But I think the film is one that evokes more of community involvement. I don’t necessarily want people just to watch it on their laptop on their own. I do like the idea of full cinema, people being able it show it in their community hall, at their school and their workplace.

We’re just making sure that that part of the deal is still allowed so that there will be a platform release eventually. But I think we’ve just got to make sure we do a bit of tour first through Europe and America like we did with That Sugar Film. We took it to a ton of different territories and then at the end, put it on the platforms. But first and foremost, it was about engaging people to really connect with each other, come and watch it together and then have some great chats after.

Yeah, get the thoughts in their head and then actually make them act on them.

Exactly, exactly. And that’s a lot harder to do if you’re watching it on your phone or playing it on Netflix and just going-

“Oh, it’s good”, and then moving on.

That’s right!

Film Inquiry thanks Damon Gameau for taking the time to talk with us.

2040 will be released in Australian cinemas on May 23rd, information about session times and locations can be found here. News about international releases will be updated on their Twitter page.

2040: A Handbook for the Regeneration, the accompanying book to the documentary, is now available in all Australian booksellers and online outlets. If you are interested in implementing the search engine Ecosia, as mentioned by Damon Gameau, you can access it here: https://ecosia.co/2040.