A two-hour “Frontline” climate change special called “Heat,” part of public broadcasting’s “PBS Vote 2008″ election coverage, is set to air two weeks before Americans go to the polls.
The October 21 airing and online availability, scheduled for 9 to 11 p.m. Eastern time, takes a no-holds-barred editorial approach to what programmers refer to as “probably the most important problem facing the next President” and “Earth’s looming environmental disaster.”
Producer and correspondent Martin Smith reports the piece with a series of interviews from 12 countries on four continents around the world. “I have reported on the Cold War, the breakup of the Soviet Union, the rise of Al Qaeda, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Smith said in a release promoting the program. “But nothing matches climate change in scope and severity.”
In one interview available online in the trailer promoting the program, an interviewee commenting on corporate lobbying influences complains that “It’s as if Tony Soprano [of the HBO Soprano's series] had a seat in the Senate.” A utility official at one point counters, “The thought of ‘green’ is nice, but when people flick the switch they want the lights to go on.”
Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, told Smith that “If we don’t take action immediately, we face a crisis …. Climate change is caused by human actions, and we need to do something about it. The sooner we realize that, the better.”
Another interviewee cautioned Smith about concerns that the world may be “incapable of addressing what is at stake here, perhaps because so much is at stake.”