On Wednesday 19 August, 144 film-goers entered the darkened Palmerston CMAX to watch the UK climate change movie The Age of Stupid.

As dawn broke over Palmerston High the following morning, The Age of Smart began.

On Wednesday evening at 6pm, as guests ate canapés from eco-bamboo-plates, the screen burst to life with a live satellite hook-up to Sydney and New Zealand. While the NZ screening took place in a solar-powered cine-tent, Sydney's celeb guests were interviewed on the green carpet, having arrived in electric and solar cars, pedicabs and rickshaws. The premiere used just 1% of the usual energy expected of an event of this scale. 

Set in 2050, with real media footage from the present day, the film follows the lives of five very different people and poses the ultimate question: ‘Why didn't we stop climate change when we had the chance?'

Among the CMAX crowd were Lord Mayor Graeme Sawyer, two council Aldermen, the Sustainability Manager of PowerWater, a wide cross section of the Darwin/Palmerston community, and most impressively, seven senior students from Palmerston High.

As the credits rolled, the talk began. The foyer filled with energy and many stayed to connect and sign-up for more information from a range of community groups - among those who stayed were the Palmerston seven.

As reported by teacher Fran Davies, this group ‘were profoundly impacted by the film' and ‘of their own volition' made an urgent ‘early morning address to their entire senior school assembly' - garnering the strength of their ‘SRC and Business Studies students to take action'. Here are their draft proposals:

• invite Principal to next SRC meeting to outline available funds and energy reduction commitments to date
• invite Business Manager to SRC meeting to identify how to turn excess lighting off (including altered settings for automatic lighting)
• locate the air-conditioning testing devices and complete an audit
• ask IT staff to choose a toner saving font as the default on all computers
• ask IT staff if all computers can be switched off at a particular time each day (including investigation of people working late)
• make signs above every light switch reminding people to switch off as they leave
• investigate making shields for the white boards so that we can use more natural lighting (window glare makes it hard to read the board if the blinds are up)
• try to get recycling happening on a bigger way at PHS, perhaps starting with a competition to make items out of used materials to raise awareness
• have regular announcements by students to the assembly about actions all students can take to reduce their impact on the planet
• invite staff from Planet Savers to an SRC meeting in the near future to talk about more actions including getting more media interest in what actions schools can take
• invite local politicians to a meeting re: allowing consumers to get credit for power generated from private solar panels and fed into the grid (such as those at school if we can reduce our usage enough to ever have some to give!)

Palmerston High also plans to take part in the International day of Climate Action - 350 - on October 24.

The Age of Stupid was sponsored and supported by:

COOLmob coolmob@ecnt.org
Environment Centre NT (ECNT) coordinator@ecnt.org
Top End Transition Towns (TETT) topendtransition@gmail.com
Planet Savers Australia (PSA) peter@planetsavers.com.au
Climate Action Darwin (CAD) climate@climateactiondarwin.org

Schools should contact these organisations for more information on the film, 350, or other upcoming events.

For more news and events see the monthly Transition News Blog