The Antarctica Challenge: A Global Warning takes the stage in Copenhagen

Read more about: Alaska, climate, climate change, Copenhagen, documentary, film, UNEP, United Nations, United Nations Environment Program

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has partnered with Canada’s Polar Cap Production’s, Inc. to present Mark Terry’s new climate change documentary The Antarctica Challenge: A Global Warning in Copenhagen during this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference, December 7 to 18, 2009.

The partnership is part of the United Nations “Seal the Deal” campaign, a call to action to clinch an ambitious and effective agreement on climate change.

Screenings will take place at the Bella Centre in Copenhagen, Denmark, at UNEP’s exhibition and plans are underway to screen the film’s trailer on a giant video screen in the centre of Copenhagen, and on the “Climate Express” train commuting delegates between Brussels and Copenhagen.

The conference is expected to be attended by nearly 190 ministers and leaders and more than 11,000 participants worldwide.

“Of all the canaries in the climate coal mine, the polar regions and the mountain glaciers are singing the hardest and the loudest,” said Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme. “Mark Terry’s new climate change documentary The Antarctica Challenge: A Global Warning underlines these realities with some of the latest and increasingly sobering scientific findings, providing further stark evidence as to why governments need to Seal the Deal in Copenhagen.”

Bringing real-life experience to film

Documentary filmmaker Mark Terry has been producing award-winning films in Canada for more than 20 years. A Member International of The Explorers Club, Mark has travelled the world for his films, achieving the rare feat of setting foot on all seven continents.

Mark’s projects include the documentary features Earth’s Natural Wonders and Mysteries of Sacred Sites that profiled such exotic destinations as the Galapagos Islands, Easter Island, Stonehenge, the Amazon, Angel Falls, Machu Picchu and the Kenai Fjords in Alaska.

Mark has traveled to the Painted Desert in Australia, the Sahara Desert in Egypt, Ecuador and Venezuela in South America, Hong Kong, Kowloon, Lantau Island and Macau in Asia and throughout Europe, North America and the Caribbean.

But of all the destinations Mark has visited in the world, he is most fascinated by the polar regions.

This latest documentary focuses on new discoveries made related to the ozone hole, the diminishing populations of penguins and other marine life, the greening of the world’s largest desert, warming temperatures, glacial melting and increased world sea level.

“We were all stunned at the findings being made there this past year,” said writer/director Mark Terry. “From penguin suicide to grass growing in the world’s largest desert, the environmental face of Antarctica is changing faster than anyone had previously thought – and the impact on us is imminent.”

Framework for change

In 1992, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted as the basis for a global response to the problem.

The ultimate objective of the Convention is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system. To date, 37 industrialized countries and the European Community have committed to reducing their emissions by an average of five per cent by 2012 against 1990 levels.

The UNFCCC is designed to assist countries in adapting to the inevitable effects of climate change. They facilitate the development of techniques that can help increase resilience to climate change impacts.

For more information, visit www.polarcapproductions.com.

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