On demand: "Ice on Fire"

Ice on Fire is nothing to do with Elton John's 1985 album, but Leonardo DiCaprio tearing himself away from his yacht to produce and narrate his second green-tinged doc after 2007's The 11th Hour. (He'll be affected, as we all will, by rising sea levels.) Honing in this time round on the melting of the polar ice caps, it's to some degree limited to telling us what we should all know by now: that things are bad, and if we don't act soon, things will get markedly worse. But it ducks outright doomerism by allowing itself three varied lines of inquiry. First, what we might call the Attenborough spectacle of this world (elegant drone shots of what could still be saved), set against the apocalpytic spectacle of a world set ablaze: towns laid waste by flooding or fire, migrants on the move in search of shelter, much like the emaciated polar bear we see struggling to climb ice floes reduced to the size of a Fox's Glacier Mint. Secondly, graphs and graphics, spectacle in themselves, in that they make overwhelmingly clear the current, deathly direction of travel. Here, Ice on Fire assumes an air of the Open University or Tomorrow's World, yet there's something valuable about the way the film channels the cool intelligence with which DiCaprio the performer has become associated: it ensures both that the raw data persuades, and that the film in which it's being presented never overheats. Third, yet arguably most important to the film's cause: returning to prominence those scientists, thinkers, conservationists and other experts who'd been sidelined in the US since 2016, and were about to be pushed aside entirely by a President who would prescribe drinking bleach as a cure for Covid.

DiCaprio and director Leila Conners usher front and centre a succession of regular Joes and Jills, concerned citizens rather than eggheaded elites, observed rolling up their sleeves to find viable course corrections. These interviewees demonstrate an abundant passion for what they do, but it's chiefly channelled into simplifying the complex processes by which life on Earth is sustained, and then into talking us through the (comparatively simple) steps that might be taken to allow us to dodge the incoming meteor. One way the film blocks any descent into complete despair is to flag how many solutions and fixes there now are: biochar, bionic leaves, CO2 capture plants, marine snow, seaweed diets for cows. These folks have clearly spent the recent period of inaction putting the hours in - and it's fascinating work at that, work that merits marvelling at. Yet to reap the benefits requires will and open minds, and ten years on from the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement, we're still electing leaders who shape up either like big kids, sticking fingers in their ears and pretending they can't hear, or grown men who know full well the consequences of ignoring this data, but remain in hock to a business sector prepared to pay big bucks to maintain the status quo. (One of the scientists Conners interviews suggests such leaders should be prosecuted in The Hague for crimes against humanity.) What would have made for sobering viewing on first release in 2019 has become chilling in 2025, when there are no signs our chances will be improving any time soon. Perhaps the gains made from late 2020 through to late 2024 will offset the losses to come. But we can't say we weren't warned, or that the tools to fight and beat this thing weren't there.

Ice on Fire is now streaming via NOW and YouTube.