Simon Schneider’s short film “Degree of Certainty” (17 min.) is my kind of film: it presents an important societal issue within a human story and leaves viewers not with certain answers but with intriguing questions and the motivation to learn more to try to answer them. The questions it raises should lead to interesting discussions, and one of the great pleasures of filmgoing comes after the fact, when you talk over what you just saw with friends.
The story in “Degree of Certainty” involves a young risk analyst, Jackson Miller (Trace Guzmán), working at a large American oil company called “Nexor Energy Corporation.” When the story begins in August 1982, global oil prices have dropped precipitously due to a world oil glut, and that means bad news for Nexor and its shareholders. The economist in me is tempted to say that it’s part of the deal that prices go in two directions—up and down—and that oil is notoriously volatile in this regard. My words would fall on deaf ears, however: Nexor executives aren’t willing to accept any loss as part of the cost of doing business.
Miller’s boss (Peter Mackenzie) orders his underlings to find ways to cut costs and develop new revenue streams, with the implication that their continued employment depends on coming up with some good ideas. Working late into the night, Miller comes across a report from Nexor’s internal Climate Research department that interests him enough that he goes to speak with a scientist (John Billingsley) in that department. It seems the Nexon scientists were trying to find new oil deposits by studying climate patterns but instead discovered global warming, and their pretty sure of their results. What should Miller, an earnest young man who wants to make good at his job but also wants to do the right thing, do next?
“Degree of Certainty” claims in a title card that it is based on true events but doesn’t specify further details. Given the name of the oil company Miller works for, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess the story is based on Exxon Mobil, whose in-house scientists discovered global warming and its likely origins in human activity, including burning fossil fuels, more than a decade before such information became public knowledge.
Realizing how releasing this information could hurt their business, Exxon executives kept it firmly to themselves and copied the tactics of the tobacco industry when they learned about the relationship smoking and lung cancer: launch a disinformation campaign that claims there is no scientific consensus, nitpick your way through scientific reports to place clear findings in doubt, and fund organizations and research whose sole purpose is to muddy the waters and convince the general public that the relationship between burning fossil fuels and climate change remains unproven. Putting on my statistician’s hat for a moment, such tactics also rely on the fact that the general public doesn’t understand that “scientific consensus” (which exists for both the relationship between smoking and lung cancer, and the relationship between fossil fuel consumption and global warming) does not equate to 100% certainty and that the latter rarely exists in real scientific research.
“Degree of Certainty” is a polished short film that should spark many productive discussions. All the technical elements are first class but production designer Jessica Burnam deserves special congratulations for recreating the feel of an early 1980s office environment (trust me—I was there!). | Sarah Boslaugh
“Degree of Certainty” was shown as part of the program “Narrative Shorts 3 – Geometry” as part of the 35th annual St. Louis International Film Festival. Information about tickets and the full festival schedule is available from the Festival web site.
