Critical

“Critical” is a climate change film with a timely twist – instead of criticising everybody else, here’s some greens examining their own credentials.

It challenges a foundational principle for the green movement – being anti-nuclear – from within the movement itself.

Offering a unique perspective on nuclear energy, Critical sets out the case for nuclear energy with green activists from around England and, further afield, Finland, speaking up for it. We follow green party member Mark Yelland visiting various nuclear facilities and launching a unique campaign: Greens For Nuclear Energy.

The film’s scientific credentials are well borne by 2 highly respected experts:

• Prof. Kevin Anderson, on energy’s relationship with the climate science; and
• Prof. Gerry Thomas, former lead Director of the Chernobyl Tissue Project.

Thomas describes a “lightbulb moment” which ended her hostility to nuclear energy, whilst researching the health effects of that disaster.

Activist interviews with Green Party members in ranged across England and Finland are intertwined with Mark’s nuclear tour: a high-level storage unit, a French nuclear waste recycling facility and an underground research laboratory for a deep geological waste repository.

This film says that the greens were absolutely right to try to ban the nuclear bomb and raise all their other early concerns about the environment. At that time – when green politics was finding still its feet – climate change was not part of any those conversations. So the early activists can be forgiven for only painting nuclear negatively back then. ‘That was then, this is now’: so the film argues, nuclear’s ultra low carbon contribution is now essential. That, if we are to stand a chance, there can be no compromise against climate change, despite previously long-held principles.

To drive the point home, the film includes 2022 IPSOS poll data showing those “involved to some extent in environmental campaigning organisations” now support nuclear energy.