Global warming run amok

Call it a case of a movie being too hot. When global warming activists starting glomming onto “The Day After Tomorrow,” the coming disaster movie about the effects of environment abuse, executives at 20th Century Fox got a cold chill.

After all, having a big action film with blockbuster potential suddenly labeled a “serious issue” movie could dampen its box-office prospects. Now the studio is trying to distance “The Day After Tomorrow” from partisan politics just as high-profile environmentalists latch on to the film to try to raise public awareness about the threat of global warming.

NASA, which in early April reportedly cautioned its scientists about discussing the film, has modified its position. Meanwhile, activists appear to be using the film to once again put the Bush administration on the defensive about its ecological policies. Calls to the White House were not returned by press time Thursday.

“The Day After Tomorrow,” the studio’s first big summer action movie, will be released May 28 in more than 3,000 theaters nationwide. Sources at Fox say they did not want the film to be misconstrued as a serious PBS-style docudrama rather than the high-octane, disaster-laden popcorn picture that it is. But, of course, any controversy helps fuel the publicity machine, they acknowledged.

“It’s entertainment. It’s not a political message any more than it is a treatise on paleoclimatology,” said Jim Gianopulos, chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment. But, he added, “when you are in the public consciousness and [have] a relevance in people’s lives ... it’s always good for the box office.”

The $125-million science-fiction adventure stars Dennis Quaid as a paleoclimatologist trying to alert the planet to the onset of a new Ice Age set off by global warming.

“It’s less about politics than about the environment, and that affects everyone,” said Mark Gordon, a producer on the film. “Nobody can dispute the fact that we are polluting the environment or that carbon emissions are not good for the planet.”

The film got its start nearly three years ago when director Roland Emmerich (“Independence Day”) brought the script to Gordon. Emmerich got the idea for the story from the book “The Coming of the Global Superstorm,” which postulates on how global warming could impact the Earth’s climates, said Gordon.

Activist groups such as MoveOn.org, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Energy Future Coalition are wasting no time jumping on the movie’s coattails.

Only a few blocks from the movie’s May 24 premiere at New York’s Natural History Museum, MoveOn.org will be hosting a “Town Hall” meeting with Al Gore, Robert Kennedy Jr. and a panel of scientists scheduled to appear. The organization’s website will encourage readers to see the film and send e-mails to the Bush administration regarding its environmental policies.

The organization also intends to recruit volunteers to hand out fliers at movie theaters when the film is released May 28. The fliers will read: “Could this really happen? Why we can’t wait until the day after tomorrow.”

Peter Schurman, executive director of MoveOn.org, says he is not surprised by the studio wanting to keep the film at a distance from the organization’s activities.

“It doesn’t surprise me -- it’s a business venture for them,” Schurman said. “They are about getting people to fill seats; we are about raising a public debate.”

NASA apparently did not want its scientists participating in a debate. According to the New York Times, the space agency ordered its scientists last month not to talk to reporters about the film for fear it could damage President Bush. The agency this week attempted to clarify its stance.

“Our goal was not to tell people not to speak their mind. We are not trying to censor or muzzle anyone here,” said Gretchen Cook-Anderson, NASA spokeswoman. She said the e-mail that had gone out April 1 alerted the agency’s scientists that the film’s producers had not signed a Space Act Agreement, where NASA could approve the script and help the movie’s producers with factual information.

“We wanted people to know that we would not be proactively involved in promoting the film,” she said.

Dan Schrag, a paleoclimatologist at Harvard University, said the issue of climate control was never considered partisan until this administration came to office.

“The most progressive environmental administration was the Nixon administration,” he said, noting that they were behind the Clean Air Act and established the Environmental Protection Agency. In addition, George H.W. Bush’s administration created the framework for the convention on climate change -- the predecessor to 2001’s Kyoto accords. Ironically, Quaid’s character works for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s paleoclimatology program, which began under the first Bush administration and is facing proposed cuts under the current President Bush.

“This has not always been such a partisan issue,” Shrag contended. “To the extent that our government is now dominated by industrial interests is, I think, unprecedented.”

But this being a Hollywood movie, there is always a fear that it will be factually inaccurate. So a cadre of climate specialists is being assembled by the nonprofit Future Energy Coalition -- business, labor and environmental groups working on solutions to oil dependence, global warming and global poverty will field press inquiries once the film is released. Some scientists are concerned the film, which shows such cataclysmic events such as tornadoes in Los Angeles and Manhattan covered in ice, may confuse audiences.

In reality, any major changes in the environment caused by global warming would likely occur over decades, not in a period of days as portrayed in the movie, said Reid Detchon, executive director of the Energy Future Coalition.

“We hope it is a teachable moment and that people will have their curiosity awakened,” Detchon said. “Obviously it’s a dramatized, exaggerated version of events, but to what extent is it grounded in reality? In point of fact, there is an important kernel of truth behind the movie.”