In a nutshell, that’s the message served up in the first half of Cool It, a new documentary about Danish environmental writer Bjørn Lomborg that slams Al Gore for resorting to scare tactics in An Inconvenient Truth.

Based on Lomborg’s book The Skeptical Environmentalist, the PG-rated Cool It argues that changes in consumer lifestyle choices — though embraced by celeb-activists like Ed Begley, David Duchovny, Cheryl Crow and Laurie David — don’t actually do much to soften the blows of a steadily changing climate. According to the documentary, if everybody on the planet bought a Prius, the switchover would only reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 0.5 percent.

Directed by Ondi Timoner, who last turned her camera on pioneer/provocateur Josh Harris in We Live in Public, Cool It eventually gets around to presenting Lomborg’s own environmental prescriptions.

Scientists — or at least the ones he favors in this movie — can improve the world’s overheating problem.

To mollify fossil-fuel-driven environmental damage, scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and elsewhere advocate geoengineering measures that include “artificial volcanoes” and ocean-wave-based energy systems. Others outline an “urban cooling” plan that would reduce global warming by painting rooftops and streets in reflective white.

Ondi Timoner directs Cool It.

An ex-Greenpeace member, Lomborg has irked many of his former colleagues for debunking what he considers “alarmist” rhetoric extrapolated from flawed logic.

Cool It has a grand old time mocking environmentalists’ sky-is-falling hyperbole, and Lomborg proves to be a charismatic tour guide when he gets out of the classroom and engages scientists in their laboratories to learn about fresh takes on global warming.

But when Lomborg — presented much of the time in full lecture mode — takes to the blackboard and scratches out figures numbering in the billions of dollars as estimates for what it would cost to make recommended fixes, one wonders if his largely untested propositions truly carry more weight than the doomsday extrapolations proffered by Gore and company.

As for those in a hurry to fix the planet, Lomborg can’t resist a parting shot: “Many well-meaning people and world leaders seem to want to be remembered for spending lots and lots of money for doing virtually no good.”

Cool It opens Friday.

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Authors: Hugh Hart

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