The UN’s 40-year-old hot topic

“Forty years ago it was urgent, now it’s an emergency,” cautions this gently alarming film directed by Dulcidio Caldeira, through Boiler Films. 

Underlining how prophesies about the climate crisis have been woefully unheeded, the film is part of an innovative campaign created by AlmapBBDO that uses recordings of Sagan's speeches to drive an installation featuring automatons of wild animals that will be lost as the environment breaks down. 

The installation was hand-crafted by Argentine artist Pablo Lavezzari and is driven by the tape spooling out of an old tape player, set to the mournful soundtrack, When The Land Meets The Sea, by Amulets.

In the mid-1980s, when environmental issues weren't considered as pressing as they are today, Carl Sagan, a Harvard professor and science/science fiction author, was warning of the risks of climate change and the role humanity was playing in destroying the planet. 

Sagan said back then that even a one-degree change to the planet's temperature would be enough to provoke terrible suffering worldwide. He was proved right and forty years on, his words drive this campaign for the UN Global Compact, an initiative that encourages businesses to implement sustainable and humanitarian practices.

The installation was set up at Bolsa de Arte gallery in São Paulo, and will be exhibited at galleries abroad in the second half of 2023. See the remarkable 'Making of' film here.