Paul Watson photographed by Pat Moore/First Run Features

When they came into effect, people became educated really fast. Industry cleaned up its act significantly because of public awareness, so I do think we’re in a much better place than we were.”

That progress has been accompanied globally by successful campaigns to prevent deforestation and whaling led by the likes of the Brazilian rubber tapper Chico Mendes and marine conservationist Paul Watson. These hopeful stories are included in the film, but even encased as they are in careful language that underscores the tenuousness of past victories, they don’t paint the full picture.

The concluding portion of A Fierce Green Fire takes a sobering look at our present-day climate crisis. Looking back at the failure of governments meeting to address the issue in Kyoto and Copenhagen, it adopts a decidedly less optimistic tone than other environmental docs from recent years. As talking heads, the Sierra Club’s former director Carl Pope describes underestimating the depth of resistance to action and 350.org’s Bill McKibben suggests that it might be too big of an issue for the environmental movement to handle. Then there’s the fatalistic attitude of climate scientist Steven Schneider, who wonders toward the end of the film whether it might require a monster storm wiping out Miami or Shanghai before the world takes this threat seriously.

Pessimism about climate change also comes strongly from the filmmaker himself. In his interview with PLANET, Kitchell called it “quite literally the impossible issue.” Citing the slowness with which it takes place, its invisibility, and the cost of reversing it, he sees the task as being much more complicated than previous campaigns that brought about sea changes in our society.