Before today, "Syriana," the politics-of-oil thriller starring George Clooney, had already firmly established itself as movie of the year at How the World Works. A complex, intricate, gorgeously shot film tracing the interconnections between oil money, Mideast politics, and U.S. corporate corruption? What's not to like?!
But then Grist alerted me to the news that "Syriana" was fighting global warming by purchasing carbon dioxide credits to offset its own greenhouse gas emissions. Working with Native Energy, a company that bills itself as a "national marketer of renewable energy credits," Warner Bros. and Participant Productions invested cash up front in two renewable energy projects, earning "Syriana" emissions credits worth, say the producers, about 2,040 tons of CO2.
Sure, there's an aspect of political correctness about this that beggars the imagination -- one of the projects is a Native American-owned wind farm on Native American-owned land. And "Syriana" isn't pioneering completely uncharted territory; Grist notes that the climate change disaster movie "The Day After Tomorrow" attempted to negate its own global warming "footprint" by planting trees. But that's just quibbling. "Syriana" is a great movie that is righteous through and through. Might be time to see it again.
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