A conversation with the director of a powerful new film about notifying families of our war dead.

The Messenger tells the tale of a young soldier, played by Ben Foster (Six Feet Under, 3:10 to Yuma), who has just returned from a brutal tour of duty in Iraq. After he is charged with the task of notifying families when their sons and daughters die overseas, Foster’s character finds himself strangely connected to one of the widows he notifies, played by Samantha Morton, and he struggles with the ethical and emotional fallout of those feelings. The film (which GOOD helped develop and produce) was directed by Oren Moverman, (who wrote Jesus’ Son for the screen and co-wrote I’m Not There). He was kind enough to speak to us about the unique challenge of making a military film during war time.

GOOD: The film focuses on soldiers played by Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster, whose job it is to notify the next of kin when a soldier dies at war. You’ve described the film as not being about the horrors of war, but about something else. What do you mean by that?

OREN MOVERMAN: I was referring to the bigger picture of what the movie’s about, thinking that while it is a movie set against the backdrop of the military during war time. What goes on in the movie is actually really universal because the truth of the matter is that we all get notified. We all get news that someone we love has died or we tell other people and people find out about us. I was just making the point that the movie addresses something that people can relate to regardless of the military context.

G: Sure, the experience universal, but the context is specific. How did the actors prepare themselves to give those notifications?

OM: We did a trip to Washington D.C., where we went to Walter Reed Medical Center, to Arlington Cemetery, to a notification center in Arlington. We spoke with soldiers who have done notifications and been to war. We got their perspective. We got to interact with them. But the actual notification scenes were actually scenes we didn’t rehearse, and we didn’t prepare in the traditional sense.

G: Why?

OM: We wanted to capture something very raw in those scenes. We separated Ben and Woody from the people they were going to notify, so they never got a chance to talk about what each side would do. We threw everyone off set so we could shoot in every direction, so nobody new what we were going to shoot. We encouraged the actors to go off script. And we shot long takes: When the scene started, we started rolling, and when the scene ended, we stopped. So there was no interruption. Basically, it’s the kind of thing you can’t prepare for in life, so can’t prepare for it in acting. It’s just trying to create a raw, immediate moment, where people receive the worst news they can possibly get: how would you react? How would move in that space? All those things were left open.

G: Ben Foster’s character, also, is pretty unprepared to deliver that news.

OM: The challenges were the same with all these roles, really. On the one hand, it was to make them as realistic as possible for the world that they were moving in. On the other hand, you wanted to make it work in the way a movie should work. The challenge was actually to find that balance and tone, to were military people can watch this and find it a good representation of what they’re going through, and civilians would watch and say, This is something I didn’t know about. When you’re working off things that are happening right now, you have to be very careful and gentle about how far you’re going to push them.

G: What has the response been from the military community?

OM: The response has been very strong. We’ve had all kinds of soldiers watch the movie. Generally we’ve received a lot of gratitude. It’s very humbling to hear them talk about our portrayal of what they’re going through. They seem to appreciate the fact that we put the spot light on them to make their story heard.

G: Was that a cause of fear or stress for you—how the soldiers might view the film?

OM: Yeah, you always worry about that, but you have to just put it out of your mind and make the movie. The thing is you know you’re going to have a mix of audiences, so you have to just concentrate on making the movie as truthful as possible, and making it as honest as possible, and making it work as a movie. Then, the audience part—getting people to see and react to it—that’s a whole other mystery.

G: There are some very complicated relationships in the film. One of those relationships is between Ben Foster’s character and Samantha Morton’s, whom Foster notifies of her husband’s death. Can you talk about what the characters are up against there?

OM: Well, what we tried to do is hard to explain, not only for us, but also for the characters. If you asked them about finding each other, they could try to explain it, but they wouldn’t be able to articulate it. The truth of the matter is, it’s impossible to explain the thing that draws any two people together. In this particular case, they don’t know what the relationship is. And that level of mystery has them very interested in one another; there’s a strong pull happening, an odd dance between them. Ultimately, her character gets to tell her story just like he does. That was one of the most important things, to almost stop the movie, to listen to the widow, because there are thousands and thousands of stories like this.

The messenger is currently showing in New York City. For a list of openings around the country head here.

Photos courtesy of Oscilloscope. Header: Woody Harrelson (left) and Ben Foster; middle: director Oren Moverman; lower: Ben Foster (left), Jahmir Duran-Abreau, and Samantha Morton.

In the Spring of 2009, the photographer Richard Mosse traveled to Iraq, where he captured arresting images of U.S. soldiers working and living in what used to be palaces of Saddam Hussein. These visions of western soldiers at rest in imperial palaces are both intensely jarring and oddly playful, and they underscore the seemingly ineffable experience of downtime during a military occupation. The transformation of an imperial palace into a site of temporary housing also speaks to the notion that our histories are constantly being rewritten—architecturally, sociologically, globally, and locally.

What follows is a selection from Richard Mosse’s “Breach.”

To learn more about this fantastic series, we recommend reading Mosse’s interview with BLDGBLOG from earlier this year.

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Are you a photographer with a project you would like to share with the GOOD community? Send a brief description and a few sample images (or a link) to photo [at] goodinc [dot] com, and we’ll take a look. If we like it, it might end up as one of our Picture Shows. We look forward to your submissions.

The average American is both overweight and spends more than 100 hours per year commuting, that vast majority of those hours being spent in a car. Are those numbers correlated? Could we help reduce our societal weight gain by encouraging more commutes by bike or foot? Our latest Transparency is a look at the number of active commutes in several countries, as compared to those countries obesity rates.

A collaboration between GOOD and Lamosca.

Even if you flew to Copenhagen, they probably wouldn’t let you in to the conference. But don’t despair: You don’t have to be a delegate to help stave off catastrophe.

Keep track of the treaty: Negotiators are working on a draft treaty—raising objections, making changes, and shaping the fate of the world. Keep track of it at 350.org/treaty-tracker.

Get to know the negotiators: Find out who will represent your country in Copenhagen and what they think. Adoptanegotiator.org has  “trackers” from 11 countries following the meetings leading up to Copenhagen “so you can stay up to date and either support or put pressure on your country’s climate negotiator to aim for a safe and fair deal.”

Petition important people: Send a letter to your local representative, or schedule some face time with a staff member (yes, you can actually do that). Urge them to support a climate treaty that will manage and reduce carbon emissions over the next 30 years. Learn how at wecansolveit.org/content/advocate.

Get involved with Hopenhagen: The United Nations has teamed up with an all-star roster of ad agencies on a campaign to spread awareness about the opportunities COP15 presents. Join the campaign at hopenhagen.org.

Participate in the International Day of Climate Action: An International Day of Climate Action on October 24 was organized by 350.org to make sure decision-makers knew where the public stands. Find activities in your area, or set up your own at 350.org/actions.

Make sure the treaty gets ratified: After the conference, the treaty won’t be binding unless the U.S. Senate ratifies it. That’ll take 66 votes, and they could be hard to come by. Find out how to contact your senator at senate.gov.

Do something on your own: The outcome of the conference will make a big difference, but it’s not the only thing that matters. Ride a bike, eat less red meat, or support sustainable local policies wherever you live.

Read the raw documents: The Kyoto Protocol is the current international agreement on climate change. It’s hardly a page-turner but it’s actually not that long. Read that, and the draft version of the Copenhagen treaty, at unfccc.int.

That which is unsustainable cannot go on. Unsustainable things that are propped up too long snap and collapse suddenly. Our way of life is unsustainable. The sooner we transform our economy into one that can generate sustainable prosperity, the better off we’ll be, and with every passing day, the risks of catastrophe grow larger and more certain. We need change now.

These shouldn’t be radical statements; they’re all demonstrably true. Yet they cleave right down the middle of what is fast becoming the largest generation gap in at least 40 years, a growing split between people under 30 and people over 60.

When confronted with generational conflict, we naturally tend to see the elders as seasoned and realistic, and the youth as passionate and ethical, and to seek a middle ground of tempered realism. Middle ground is going to become increasingly hard to find in this debate, though. That’s because realism now means very different, incompatible things to the two generations.

And this is what most older observers seem to refuse to understand: The world looks dramatically different if the year 2050 is one you’re likely to be alive to see. To younger people, Copenhagen isn’t some do-gooder meeting; it’s the first major battle in a war for the future. Their future. I’m in my middle years, in between the two groups, yet even I can see that this war is about to get a lot more heated—far more heated than anything we’ve seen in half a century. To younger people, this isn’t just policy, it’s personal.

To be young and aware today is to see your elders burning our civilization down around our ears. To hear scientists tell us we’re in the final countdown, with the risk of runaway climate change (along with the ecosystem collapses and horrific human suffering it will bring) mounting with every day we run business as usual. To hear nearly a chorus of credible voices—from doctors and scientists to retired generals and former bankers— warning that to lose this fight is to lose everything that makes our world livable and gives the future hope.

You wouldn’t think a war could start over such simple ideas.

To be young and aware is to see old people—from the U.S. Senate to Wall Street, from newspaper editorial desks to corporate boardrooms—stalling action on every front, spouting platitudes about “balance,” committing themselves wholeheartedly to actions to be undertaken long after they’ve retired and died. To be told that the world’s scientists are participating in a giant hoax; to be chided for not understanding how the real world works; to be warned that doing the right thing will bankrupt us; to be told that not wanting to melt the ice caps and circle the equator in deserts makes you too radical to take seriously.

To be young and aware is to know you’re being lied to; to know that a bright green future is possible; to know that we can reimagine the world, rebuild our cities, redesign our lives, retool our factories, distribute innovation and creativity and all live in a world that is not only better than the alternative, but much better than the world we have now.

To be young and aware is to suspect that, in the end, the debate about climate action isn’t about substance, but about rich old men trying to squeeze every last dollar, euro, and yen from their investments in outdated industries. It is to agree with the environmentalist Paul Hawken that we have an economy that steals the future, sells it in the present, and calls it GDP. It is to begin to see your elders as cannibals with golf clubs.

Myself, I worry: not that the young grow radical—hell, if I were 10 years younger, I’d be on the barricades myself—but that they grow despondent. Because what the world needs now, more than ever, is what the young have always given most: their optimism.

So if nothing else happens in Copenhagen, I pray that all of us who have years and a voice and a conscience will say at least this to the world’s youth: Your fight is ours, too. Don’t give up.

The conference is still a few months away, but we asked several activists to predict what they will be talking about after the conference wraps up. Here is what they think they’re going to be saying next January:

Richard Graves, founder of Fired Up Media, blogger for the TckTckTck campaign, and editor of ItsGettingHotinHere.org:

What surprised me was the startling diversity of groups, beyond environmentalists, that got involved—from youth groups to union leaders to the Dalai Lama to the Pope. People realized that this is bigger than polar bears and icebergs.

I am disappointed, though, by how little actual work got done. Negotiators dragged their heels all year, and when the wave of civil society crashed onto them, we got some great goals and targets, but a lot of the procedural work still has to be done. The financial mechanisms and the binding provisions need to be worked out and negotiated later.

I am damn glad that a people-powered movement was ignited this fall, because so many organizations spent their war chests and best people on this agreement. Now we still need to make this treaty binding and get it ratified at home.

Matt Dernoga, campaign director for University  of Maryland for Clean Energy:

I have mixed emotions. COP15 was better than analysts were anticipating six months ago—President Obama arrived toward the end, committing America to targets for which the Senate had just voted. Western Europe did well (aside from Italy). Canada was an embarrassment. China committed to certain reductions in energy intensity, and to emissions peaking no later than 2020. This was earlier than the 2035 they were rumored to be pushing, and helped hold talks together. Interestingly, the real unsung hero was Japan. Fresh off elections in late August, it set a target of 25 percent below 1990 levels. This brought China along, as it wasn’t about to lose the clean energy race to a regional rival. It reminds me of the debate over the bill the United States passed. Most politicians and some environmental organizations are calling it a win. Greenpeace, 350.org founder Bill McKibben, and NASA scientist James Hansen say the framework in place doesn’t reduce emissions fast enough to avoid runaway climate change. My take is that we didn’t get enough to declare victory, but we won enough to keep on fighting.

William Becker, executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project:

It was nearly a disaster. The governments failed, but the people didn’t. Delegates bickered and bartered, only to deadlock on the final day.

It was the business community, along with millions of young people, that came to the rescue. Youngsters from all over the world marched through the streets in protest, inundating the delegates with emails and tweets. Two dozen of the world’s largest corporations pledged to fund the U.N.’s Global Green New Deal. More pledges followed. By day’s end, corporations and investment firms had committed hundreds of billions of dollars for energy-efficiency and renewable-energy projects.

That final day broke the stranglehold of fossil fuels on the global economy. It was a narrow escape, a historic test of our intelligence as nations and as a species. We barely passed. But we did.

What’s on the table at Copenhagen?

End Goal

The long-term goals of preserving a habitable planet will effectively be boiled down to a single number: the target concentration of CO² in the atmosphere, measured in parts per million. For the past few years, conventional wisdom has called for a target of 450 ppm. But the most recent science points to something more conservative: A 350 ppm ceiling is required if, as the NASA climatologist Jim Hansen puts it, “humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted.” More than 80 developing nations and small island nations support the 350 target, as do many international environmental, human rights, and justice organizations.

What should happen: 350 ppm.

What will happen: It depends on grassroots pressure.

Grade for Predicted Final Compromise: B

Emissions Reductions

How much will nations agree to reduce their emissions by? Will developed countries agree to deeper cuts than developing countries? The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has suggested that industrialized nations should commit themselves to 25-to-40-percent reductions from 1990 levels by 2020 (with longer-term goals of 80 to 85 percent by 2050). This is ambitious. In the United States, the American Clean Energy and Security Act currently in Congress aims for a mere 4-percent reduction. If developed countries do agree to cut their emissions more than the developing world—a vicious debate, to be sure—targets would be set to limit the future growth of emissions, and not to cut back from already minuscule 1990 levels.

What should happen: Industrialized nations should cut CO² 30 percent by 2020, and 90 percent by 2050.

What will happen: Non-E.U. rich nations will balk at deep cuts, and agree to a meager 10 percent by 2020.

Grade for Predicted Final Compromise: C-

Financing

How to finance a global climate deal is the fundamental debate that runs through every other issue. Developed nations will be pressured to live up to their historical responsibility—having grown rich by burning fossil fuels—and help fund mitigation and adaptation initiatives. The big question is, Where will the money come from?  It’s no small purse we’re talking about: Developing countries are calling for hundreds of billions of dollars every year. Exactly how much will have to be determined, as will who is chipping in what, and what body or agency is doling it out.

What should happen: Appoint an independent bursar who will distribute contributions from rich countries.

What will happen: Vague market mechanisms, details to be hashed out later.

Grade for Predicted Final Compromise: C-

Technology Transfer

Technological advances and the spread of existing clean-energy technologies are the core of a global climate solution. With the exceptions of China and India, most clean-tech innovation comes from the developed world. Negotiators will wrestle with the question of how to best transfer these technologies to developing countries. Financing, of course, will be a big issue. But a more nuanced discussion of intellectual property rights is needed. Proposals from developing countries suggest a relaxation of IPR and better incentives for patent-holders on clean-energy technology to grant free transfers of their patents internationally. Countries in which businesses hold such patents have thus far balked at these proposals.

What should happen: Rich countries should make concessions and allow IPR transfers.

What will happen: Poor countries will get a decent deal.

Grade for Predicted Final Compromise: B+

REDD

Nearly 20 percent of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions are the result of deforestation and forest decay. Mechanisms for what’s known as REDD—reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation—essentially involve rich countries paying poor ones to prevent the loss of forests. The problem is, nobody knows how exactly these mechanisms would work. How they’d be designed will be long debated, even after COP15 adjourns.

What should happen: Start a comprehensive REDD program, administered by an independent body.

What will happen: A pencil sketch of a system followed by years of further negotiation.

Grade for Predicted Final Compromise: C+

Adaptation

Even if COP15 results in the immediate stabilization of greenhouse-gas emissions (it won’t), we will still be locked into significant warming. The need for adaptation measures is now broadly accepted, and most countries are working on plans or programs to combat the actual effects of climate change. But distinguishing “adaptation” programs from “development” initiatives gets cloudy, and will likely hold up discussions.

What should happen: A comprehensive framework should be developed to address adaptation globally, including a financing structure.

What will happen: Vague agreement to fund some “adaptation” measures.

Grade for Predicted Final Compromise: N/A

Enforcement

The current Kyoto agreement has no formal enforcement. That hasn’t worked. This treaty will need some teeth with clearly defined and binding penalties for countries that fail to honor their commitments. Negotiators will somehow have to agree on who will monitor and enforce the treaty. Emissions audits, progress reports, and penalties can’t reliably be left in the hands of the countries themselves.

What should happen: The creation of an international agency to monitor and enforce the treaty.

What will happen: Unresolved or lax enforcement measures.

Grade for Predicted Final Compromise: D

If the same crisis was happening in the United States, it would be on every news broadcast, blog-reel, and Twitter feed in the country. Yet for the last 17 years, the only hope the Ecuadorian people have had lies in a protracted legal battle—chronicled masterfully by the director Joe Berlinger in the documentary Crude. It’s a case that the plaintiffs could potentially prolong indefinitely, and the indigenous people need help now.

Fortunately, Ethos Alliance is stepping up to the plate. A new group of citizen, civic, and business leaders that “acts as a platform of participation to ensure that corporations abide by their social and ethical responsibilities,” Ethos Alliance was founded by Richie Goldman with the goal of publicizing big problems and mobilizing people around them. In this case, they’ve embarked on a massive publicity campaign called 30 Days, which you can follow here, that sees members traveling via the above RV to college campuses all across the country—attempting to inform, through each student’s own social network—as many people as possible. The journey commenced at Chevron’s headquarters in San Ramon, California, on November 1; the final seven days will be spent in Ecuador.

They’ve developed a three pronged attack to deliver assistance to the Ecuadorian people, $5 at a time. By creating funds to provide clean drinking water, deliver medical care, and recover land near Lago Agrigo, the organization can change people’s lives for the better—and offer “humanitarian relief that is not” as they write on their site, “contingent upon a resolution to the ongoing, 17-year old lawsuit.

“We all, in this country, have benefited from cheap oil. But that lower price has its cost, and we all have some responsibility here,” says Goldman, whose goal goes beyond simply indicting oil companies. “Ultimately, we want to deliver in a way that actually gets clean water for these people and helps them reclaim their land, while also engaging Chevron and bringing them back to the table. That would be the real win win.”

Photo: program coordinators Erin Connery (left) and Oscar Quintero embark on the journey.

A new book looks at the surprising and inspiring ways people of all stripes can affect social change.

With his new book Actions Speak Loudest, Bob McKinnon has brought together some disparate names to explain how change is fueled by action—not just talk. From Newt Gingrich to Donovan McNabb, Jeffrey Sachs to Jimmy Carter, the book illustrates the many ways in which changemakers leave their mark. McKinnon also heads up Yellowbrickroad, a communications and marketing company that promotes social change through programming, communications, advocacy, and action. We sat down with him to talk about his new book.

GOOD: What inspired the book?

Bob McKinnon: We all have this implicit promise to leave the world a better place for our children. Generally, over the course of previous generations, we’ve been able to keep good on that promise—but what the data now points to is that we may not make good on that promise. We may actually be creating the first generation of children to lead shorter, unhappier, unhealthier lives than their parents, which, in a country with the resources, ingenuity, and the brainpower that we have, is sort of an unacceptable outcome. So the thought was “What do we need to do to draw a little more attention to this promise and the issues that affect it?”

G: And what did you come up with?

BM: We have a short attention span in terms of being able to deal with multiple issues at one time; we’ve got an “issue of the month” mentality. We talk about childhood obesity for a while or maybe climate change gets a lot of attention. We don’t treat them holistically. Our point was to talk about these issues in one project and for us to show how connected they really are. We then wanted to give people some very specific things to act on in the hopes that small actions can accumulate into something much bigger and more powerful.

G: The book has a lot of contributors. How did you pick what to include?

BM: We wanted to select contributors who had demonstrated an action-oriented approach. There’s a wonderful Helen Keller quote we use in the book: “All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.” That’s what these people represent. So, our contributors range from Jeffrey Sachs to Jimmy Carter, Rachel Ray to Dave Eggers. Some of them are household names, but there are also people who have experienced the issues that we’re talking about and have a very firsthand knowledge. For example, there’s one written by Richard Castaldo, who was paralyzed at Columbine. I think those are some of the best essays in the book.

When you look at the contributors and what they share in common, these are people who reached into the muck and mire of life and made something more beautiful—a better outcome.

G: The book also has a companion website where you’re encouraging user-generated content.

BM: We wanted it to be a resource, so if people are interested in the work of our contributors or the organizations that are listed in the book, they get more information about what these organizations are doing and how you can get involved directly. We also created a widget, which scrolls through the different actions that are encompassed within the book so every time you visit the site, you can be inspired to do something very immediate. People can tell us about their own actions, about what they’ve done to make the world a better place. It’s been a great way to allow people to demonstrate how their actions are speaking loudest.

G: Who are you hoping to reach with the book?

BM: People who love social change and have an interest in a broad variety of issues. Juan Williams, who contributed both a chapter and the foreword, said two really cool things about the book: One is that a person who has this book in their hands is a dangerous American because they’re empowered to make change. The other thing that he said is that when you look at the contributors and what they share in common, these are people who reached into the muck and mire of life and made something more beautiful—a better outcome.

Buy Actions Speak Loudest here.

The Copenhagen Climate Treaty is a proposal for what an ideal vision of a COP15 agreement might look like. The treaty was drafted by Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund, IndyACT (the league of independent activists), Germanwatch, the David Suzuki Foundation, the National Ecological Centre of Ukraine, and experts from around the world. The prospective document was distributed to negotiators from the 192 attending nations with the hope that it would influence what happens at the conference. Here is a summary of the key points:

The Copenhagen Climate Treaty

The window of opportunity for limiting climate change is closing, and unprecedented international cooperation and commitment is required. This treaty puts protection of the climate—and therefore the planet and its people—at its heart. We should expect and demand no less of our governments.

Carbon budget:

We need to keep the global temperature rise to no more than 2 degrees Celsius (and as much less than that as possible), which means staying within a maximum “carbon budget.” Global emissions must peak between 2013 and 2017 and then decline to 1990 levels by 2020.

Industrialized countries:

The largest share of responsibility to stay within the global carbon budget rests with industrialized countries.They should take on binding commitments to reduce their own emissions and to support action in developing countries with finance, technology, and capacity building.

As a group, they should commit to emissions reductions of at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and at least 95 percent by 2050. They should also commit to gathering the minimum $160 billion per year needed in terms of public funding.

So-called zero carbon action plans should be prepared by industrialized countries, outlining the actions needed to achieve emissions-reductions targets and show how support obligations will be met. These plans would be subject to international review and a strict compliance regime.

Newly industrialized countries like Singapore, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia should also take on these binding commitments.

Developing countries

While developing countries would not be required to take on legally binding targets for the moment, they should start to reduce emissions. As a group they should aim to limit their emissions to 84 percent above 1990 levels by 2020, and reduce emissions by 51 percent by 2050. The crucial transition to a sustainable development pathway that this will require should be supported by the industrialized world.

Advanced developing countries such as China or Brazil should prepare low-carbon action plans, detailing how they will move to a low-carbon sustainable path, including adaptation strategies as well as a strategy to reduce deforestation where appropriate and outlining the support needed from the industrialized world. Adaptation funding needs to be massively scaled up, to at least $63 billion.