Crossroads Festival Graz

Manmade climate change is the biggest threat humanity is facing today. Nevertheless no major country in the world is taking appropriate measures to tackle it and international climate politics at the un-level are moving forward way too slowly. If we remain on the current business-as-usual track, global temperature rise will be so severe that billions of people will have to struggle for their very survival within this century.

In various places in the global south climate impacts are very severe already. More and more people lose their homelands due to desertification and sea level rise. Changing weather patterns, crop failures, water shortages and the resulting violent conflicts kill millions annually.

So can we call the dominant politics of the global elites murderous? Elites who are doing nothing about climate change while just focusing on fixing a broken economic system which caused all the trouble in the first place.

How can we the people bring about the change we need? Do we all have to get involved in civil disobedience? Or what else can we do?

We'll watch three short films which impressively tell stories about current climate impacts. After the screenings festival curator Josef Obermoser will talk to leading climatologist James Hansen who has made key insights into our planet's climate, who already warned about global warming in the 1980s and who turned activist in recent years and got arrested several times because of his civil disobedience.

Films:
When The Water Ends: Africa’s Climate Conflicts / Austrian premiere!
USA, 2010, 16 min, OV with English subtitles

Some Place with a Mountain / Austrian premiere!
USA, 2010, 22 min, OV with English subtitles

Death of a Forest / Austrian premiere!
USA, 2011, 15 min, English OV

James Hansen's recent TED Talk

"Imagine a giant asteroid on a direct collision course with Earth. That is the equivalent of what we face now [with climate change], yet we dither.” - James Hansen