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In His Final Days, Roger Ebert Despaired Over Global Warming and a Do-Nothing Congress

In his dying days, the legendary film critic had more on his mind than movies.
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Roger Ebert, who is synonymous with 'American film critic', died yesterday. There are already droves of nice obituaries and pieces celebrating his life and work; even the Onion ran a surprisingly touching farewell. But few mention that during his final days, Ebert's mind turned to the future. He was thinking deeply about global warming, and about the volatile world his generation's ancestors seemed increasingly likely to inherit.

The third-to-last blog post Ebert ever published, on March 18th, was "New seasons with new names." It begins like this:

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"I have watched with a kind of petrified fascination in recent years as the world creeps closer to what looks to me like disastrous climate change. The poles are melting. Ocean levels are rising. The face of the planet is torn by unprecedented natural disasters. States of emergency have become so routine that governors always seem to be proclaiming one. Do they have drafts of proclamations on file?"

And he lamented the failure of Congress to do anything to address the issue. "Democrats think legislation is needed. Republicans don't want the feds interfering with private enterprise," he wrote. "Vested interests weigh in. Pork barrel projects are protected by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Washington fiddles. Earth burns."

That's some seriously loaded language, and it only gets stronger from there on out. He goes on to lament the "millions living that may yet die" because of the lobbyists for polluting industries that fight to stymie measures that would reduce pollution. He wrote that he probably got "stirred up more than many people, because I see so many documentaries." While Ebert was heartened that Obama had recently advised federal agencies to take climate change into consideration, he remained deeply and sincerely disturbed about the future.

And this diatribe wasn't just a whim. Ebert often used his widely-followed Twitter account to share news about the climate he found increasingly dire:

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Global warming is now epic and unprecedented, long-term study finds. dld.bz/cnXhr

— Roger Ebert (@ebertchicago) March 8, 2013

On the same day, he retweeted the Atlantic: "There Is Little Hope Left of Keeping Global Temperature in the 'Safe' Zone http://theatln.tc/ZxV3w8 ."

Clearly, Ebert was deeply worried. In that final post, he likens the degree of incipient climate catastrophe to the Cuban missile crisis. Though this time, he writes, "the line has not been drawn on a map." Then his language gets downright apocalyptic:

This time the enemy, if we can use the word in this context, is an American lobbyist group. They seem focused on maximizing profits and shareholder benefits, at the cost of any environmental conscience. It seems possible that their policies will lead to a different kind of seasonal calendar. Instead of Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall, this new generation will know Blizzard, Flood, Heat and Fire. Month follows month as the seasons tear themselves apart.

You can't blame him. A lobbyist group fighting efforts to reduce the industrial pollution that is frying the planet must seem particularly amoral to a man staring death in the face, a man who understands the import of what science tells us about our warming climate. The fiery language is perfectly befitting, too. It must have seemed so absurdly infuriating, from where he was sitting, having so thoroughly absorbed the imagery and viscera of climate change from so many documentaries, to watch industry chiefs and Republican leaders time and again thwart efforts to address a crisis that endangers millions, if not billions of lives and livelihoods around the globe.

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"Month follows month as the seasons tear themselves apart." That line is chilling, especially knowing Ebert wrote it just weeks before his death.

And the renowned critic closed out this rueful twilit article with a YouTube clip of E. E. Cummings reading "Anyone Lived a Pretty How Town."

Sure enough, the poem's final stanza has an apocalyptic—and also odd and beautiful—undercurrent that quietly bodes ill for humans:

Women and men (both dong and ding)

summer autumn winter spring

reaped their sowing and went their came

sun moon stars rain

All told, it's impressive to consider the depth of Ebert's thought here; his eloquent and impassioned last words on the topic were angry, wry, witty, and reproachful—yet still humane. He wrote about climate change like he wrote about the movies.