Free screening of documentary Carbon Nation at Trinity Church on Monday, Feb. 28

Dubbed “a climate change solutions movie,” the feature length documentary Carbon Nation will have its Bay Area premiere at Trinity Church on Monday, Feb. 28, at 7:00 pm. The screening is free and open to the public. The film’s director, Peter Byck, will answer live questions via Skype after the screening.

Byck interviewed over 200 people in his pursuit to find out what people are already doing, what we could be doing, and what the world needs to do to prevent – or slow down – the impending climate crisis. From the director’s point of view, we already have the technology to combat most of the worst-case scenarios of climate change. He wanted to make a film that was optimistic and pragmatic – and appealing across the political spectrum.

One of the films featured characters is Cliff Etherege (pictured) a wind and cotton farmer from West Texas who was tired of watching the large ranches to the south lease their land to wind companies while his smaller ranching neighbors got none of the business. Defying the odds, he organized scores of 500-acre farms and has now created Peak Wind, one of the world’s largest wind farms. His town of Roscoe, TX was dying – even their Dairy Queen had closed. Now, his son and many other kids from Roscoe are coming home to work on the wind farms. This is the story of green energy bringing families back together and resurrecting small towns.

“A lot of films are designed to scare people,” Byck told Bloomberg.com. “An Inconvenient Truth was marketed as a horror movie. We’re trying the opposite – we focus on solutions since I believe we can do a heck of a lot better.”

After its local premiere at Trinity, Carbon Nation will be shown commercially at the Landmark Opera Plaza in San Francisco for a week beginning March 11.

The screening at Trinity, which is located at 330 Ravenswood Ave. in Menlo Park, is sponsored by the church’s EDEN (Every Day Eco-Network) commission.

Photo by Peter Byck