I saw a showing of this film at a Transition Town Brixton (TTB) event yesterday with newmac.
About 40 people were there. The film is 50 minutes long and is very tightly edited with a short but clear explanation/justification of the peak oil case. About half the film is taken up with the idea that Sept 11 was an inside job; neo-cons creating an enemy in order to justify the 'War on Terror'.
The audience were mostly previously aware of peak oil, albeit with varying levels of knowledge about the details that us aficionados like to mull over.
Some were there to promote the "911 Truth Out" campaign. The woman leading it said to me before the film that peak oil was an invention to justify Iraq etc. After the film she said that there were solutions to PO but that the oil companies were suppressing them. I think everything was just one big conspiracy for her.
Newmac and I took some Q and As after the film on behalf of PowerSwitch and tried (successfully we think) to steer the conversation towards local, practical responses to PO and support of the TTB initiative, without pouring cold water on the 911 crowd. We did this by making the point that, although it's important to be politically aware, we are not going to be able to change global power politics in the available timescale and we need therefore to focus our energies on the pressing problems we will face and can mitigate at a local level. We had some interesting questions on PO and CC (Doesn't PO mean that CC is less of a problem?); coal & nuclear (How long will they last/effect on CC/are they a panecea; issues for Brixton and the personal To Do list.
You can stream/download the film (207MB, mp4 format) here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 9548020370
Oil, Smoke & Mirrors
Moderator: Peak Moderation
