The White House Effect review: Must-watch documentary shows how Bush Senior failed the climate

The White House effect
Directed by Bonni Cohen, Pedro Kos and Jon Shenk, streaming on Netflix from October 31

The opening sequence of The White House effecta harrowing new climate documentary, transports you to the Great Drought of 1988. Picture the scene: a sweltering summer across North America brings the worst drought to the United States since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. There is no let-up. The heat is unavoidable.

These extreme conditions determined the agenda of that year’s presidential race between Democrat Michael Dukakis and Republican George HW Bush. The latter would win a landslide victory with a platform promising greater environmental protection.

“Some say these problems are too big,” Bush said while campaigning in Michigan, referring to climate change. “My answer is simple: it can be done and we must do it. These problems know no ideology or political boundaries.” Such a statement from a leading Republican politician seems more than unthinkable today.

The United States of 1988 is not only a country where green interventions win votes, but it is also a country where the relationship between fossil fuels and rising temperatures is reported relatively stoically, albeit with considerable skepticism.

Told largely through archival footage, The White House effect is an ersatz glimpse of a better future that never materialized. This is the story of how millions of people were willing to accept that fighting climate change was a bipartisan concern — and how they were encouraged to abandon that vision.

The key battle at the heart of the film takes place between two Bush advisers. In the blue corner we have Bill Reilly, former president of the World Wildlife Fund, who became head of the US Environmental Protection Agency in 1989. In the red corner we have John H. Sununu, Bush’s chief of staff and inveterate climate skeptic. The two forces driving the Bush administration’s environmental policy will clash for years, with catastrophic consequences for our planet.

Looking at the world around us, it should of course not be surprising to know which side won. But what is convincing about The White House effect Isn’t that inevitable? this is the specificity of this slow march towards catastrophe. The documentary’s archival footage is consistently captivating, especially in combination with its frequent jaunts back in time, which help to underline the film’s argument. This keeps the viewer on their guard, lest the simple sadness of what they see dull their acuity.

We think, for example, of the energy crisis of 1979, during which millions of people waited hours to fill up their cars amid falling oil production, while oil giant Exxon’s third-quarter profits soared 119 percent. A motorist waiting at a gas station remarks that everyone should really go home and wait out the shortage. When asked why he doesn’t turn around, he replies: “I don’t do it because no one else does.” »

Many climate scientists feature in the documentary, but none are as visible as Stephen Schneider, who was among the first to stick his head above the parapet and attempt to force action on climate change. He serves as the film’s emotional thread, from his first appearance, in which he testified before a US Senate committee in 1988, to his last, filmed shortly before his death in 2010.

“If I go back to when I really started pushing this issue, most of my immediate goals failed. But here we are. We’ve made halting progress,” he says. “People understood the problem [of global warming] very good now that we are on the verge of implementing a cultural change, but this is progressing at [a] generational delay. »

It’s heartbreaking to imagine how Schneider would view the last 15 years of wasted effort, let alone the direction the United States is heading under its current president.

Look The White House effect is a stifling experience. It will leave you bitter, especially if, like me, you were born too late to have witnessed its events. And if the film is a polemic, it is a necessary polemic, designed to shake us out of apathy and stagnation by any means possible – or necessary.