Last night l attended a showing of The Age of Stupid at the Tricycle Theatre, Kilburn. The film comes out at an important time – before the G20 Summit in London next month and the Copenhagen meeting of the post-Kyoto negotiations of the UN on climate change in December. It’s certainly worth seeing.

The Age of Stupid is very much in keeping with the times, with its lack of faith in markets and capitalism in its present form. It links its climate change analysis with political events in the Middle East. And it has some useful graphics of how London would look if it was flooded by the Thames (see below).

Because of its subject matter and its documentary format, there is an obvious comparison with An Inconvenient Truth. But The Age of Stupid is a much better film, as it gives far more emphasis to the role of people power rather than key individuals like Al Gore in changing the world.

We shouldn’t forget that for all his green talk, Gore failed to get the US to ratify the Kyoto agreement while getting the rest of the world to accept some tough medicine like tradable permits. So much for ecotoffs! This illustrates well that the campaign over climate change is not that dissimilar to the fight for universal suffrage or against apartheid. To be successful it requires a struggle organised at grassroots level.