"Excellent...provides sobering testimony from people who, thus far, are the most impacted by the rise of greenhouse gases." Dr. Paul Mayewski, Director, Climate Change Institute, University of Maine

Weather Report is a sneak peek into the future. This year-long road trip takes us around the world, to places where global warming is having an immediate effect. We meet people for whom climate change already has life-and-death implications.

In India, city planners brace for more flooding disasters. In northern Kenya, tree-planting activists try to fend off the extreme drought that is sparking armed conflict over water and land. In the Canadian Arctic, elders are baffled by unpredictable weather patterns and animal behavior.

Many of the characters we meet are tireless fighters. People like Nobel Peace prize winner Wangari Maathai, whose Green Belt Movement marries conservation with community economic growth. A few years ago, Maathai was beaten by private security guards while protecting a forest. Now she's an assistant minister in the Kenyan government. Half a world away, in northern Canada, firebrand activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier fights to protect Inuit human rights against the impacts of climate change. Cloutier grew up riding dog sleds and hunting seals, a way of life disappearing for social but also climatic reasons. As head of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, she mounts a case that emissions from the US are a violation of the rights of the Inuit and other northern peoples whose cultures are being destroyed.

Weather Report brings us the powerful human stories of people whose lives have already been dramatically altered by the global crisis that will soon affect us all. It suggests that the weather is telling us that the current model of economic growth is not sustainable.



Grade Level: 7-12, College, Adult
US Release Date: 2008     Copyright Date: 2007
DVD ISBN: 0-7722-1222-8     VHS ISBN: 0-7722-1221-X

Reviews "Weather Report is a beautifully filmed documentary that travels the globe and is one of the first films to put a human face on the myriad impacts of climate change. Highly recommended." Dr. Anthony Leiserowitz, Director, Yale Project on Climate Change, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University "Excellent...Weather Report provides sobering testimony from people who, thus far, are the most impacted by the rise of greenhouse gases and other humanly emitted pollutants. Many of these people come from cultures that have observed their surroundings very carefully over the last few centuries and longer and they see the change. They provide eloquent commentary for those of us who are still at least partially buffered from environmental change and this commentary ought to awaken us." Dr. Paul Mayewski, Director, Climate Change Institute, University of Maine, Author, The Ice Chronicles: The Quest to Understand Global Climate Change "The Weather Report masterfully accomplishes something scientists have not been very good at--putting a real, human face on the consequences of global warming and the resulting climate change. The filmmakers brilliantly allow the viewer to see through the eyes of people already experiencing climate change just how it important it is to stop global warming and stabilize the climate." Cindy L. Parker MD, MPH, Co-Director, Program on Global Sustainability and Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health "Compelling footage and heart-wrenching...The Weather Report is a visually appealing, up-to-date, and gripping documentary of the impact of climate variations on susceptible people around the world, something often forgotten in rich countries where we are largely insulated from the worst of them." Kirk R. Smith and Audrey B. Barrett, Global Health and Environment Program, University of California-Berkeley "Weather Report tackles an issue far greater than the local weather--it addresses the dismal consequences of climate change on communities throughout the world for decades to come...Perhaps our new president understands an essential outcome of the film: that the earliest victims of climate change are disadvantaged and remote communities--but that eventually all communities will suffer an irreversible fate unless immediate action is taken to reverse the patterns of greenhouse gas emissions that are changing the world's climate system." Rosamond Naylor, Director, Program on Food Security and the Environment, Stanford University "Unfolds like a well-written novel, with each chapter contributing to the full narrative, yet it is concise, educational and visually stunning...Crystal-clear images overlaid with minimal commentary from the filmmakers allow the viewer to feel as if he has gained first-hand experience with problems that might, so far, exist only on the other side of the globe...Highly recommended for junior high-general adult viewers." Carrie Macfarlane, Middlebury College, Educational Media Reviews Online "Viewers will be rubbing grit out of their eyes from the dust storms...Weather Report is recommended for public library patrons." Library Journal "The strengths of the documentary are its multicultural focus, both on the threat of climate change, as well as possible responses to it, and its connection of industrialization and globalization to the cause of the problem...Could be put to good use in courses on social problems, social change, environment and society, inequality, and globalization." Mike Keen, Teaching Sociology "An insightful question is raised about how we can change our current path toward destruction. Some believe the economic market will fix its own mistakes, while others call for a clean-tech revolution...By presenting information on global climate change, [Weather Report] encourage[s] the audience to go out and individually educate other people about it, because the more people know about this situation, the more can be done to help." Renee Patten, DePaul University, Environmental Practice