The White House Effect

Pedro Kos, Jon Shenk & Bonni Cohen / United States / 2024 / 97 min

‘Those who think we are powerless against the greenhouse effect have forgotten the effect of the White House,’ President Bush said in a 1988 campaign speech. The climate had become a hot topic and Bush promised his voters that the administration would push for a new, green environmental policy.

But the promises never materialized. The powerful fossil fuel industry was not keen on the idea of a new green wave and launched a cunning PR campaign that cast doubt on climate science. Global warming was dismissed as an unproven theory and fears of economic consequences caused public opinion to shift. The Bush administration abandoned its climate ambitions and the issue was transformed into an ideological battlefield. It’s been that way ever since.

But how it happened is a question that we can still learn from – and one that ‘The White House Effect’ answers with shocking and eye-opening timeliness with a virtuoso use of archive footage. Clips from TV news, presidential speeches, and documents reveal how the US was on the brink of historic climate change, but instead laid the groundwork for decades of polarization.