Could climate crisis actually be an opportunity?

What if global warming isn’t only a crisis? What if it’s the best chance we are ever going to get to build a better world?

“There’s no question about it,” the Rev. Jeffrey Spencer, Senior Pastor at Niles Discovery Church says. “The climate crisis is the biggest and most important moral issue facing us today. If we don’t mitigate the impacts of climate change, all our attempts to feed the hungry, to end wars and terrorism, to provide all people with access to clean water will be for naught.”

Spencer says he’s not clear what the best way to address climate change is, “in addition to leaving fossil fuels in the ground.” He thinks this film will challenge our thinking about what some other strategies might be.

Filmed over 211 shoot-days in nine countries and five continents over four years, This Changes Everything is an epic attempt to re-imagine the vast challenge of climate change. The film presents seven portraits of communities on the front lines, from Montana’s Powder River Basin to the Alberta Tar Sands, from the coast of South India to Beijing and beyond. Interwoven with these stories of struggle is Naomi Klein’s narration, connecting the carbon in the air with the economic system that put it there. Throughout the film, Klein builds to her most controversial and exciting idea: that we can seize the existential crisis of climate change to transform a failed economic system into something radically better.

Released only four months ago, This Changes Everything will be screened on Saturday, March 12, at 1:30 p.m. at Niles Discovery Church, 36600 Niles Blvd., Fremont. The screening is free (though donations are encouraged) and will be followed by a discussion led by Jan Kirsch of 350.org Bay Area.

This screening is part of the Second Saturday Documentary Series, a film series co-sponsored by Niles Discovery Church and the San Jose Peace and Justice Center.