A Disaster Movie About Global Warming Prompts Flurry of Nonprofit Promotions

In the span of five days, an abrupt freeze causes New York City to be covered in a sheet of ice while Los Angeles is razed by tornadoes.

As those disasters unfold in The Day After Tomorrow, a 20th Century Fox movie that opens in theaters on Memorial Day weekend, environmental groups will be trying to get moviegoers to pay attention to the real-world consequences of global warming.

Several groups will distribute literature at theaters and others will try an array of creative techniques to capitalize on what is widely expected to be one of the summer’s most popular movies. The Sierra Club, for example, is planning to make hybrid cars available for test drives at theaters showing the film.

Like other officials at environmental groups, Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club’s global warming and energy program, is concerned that the film hasn’t accurately portrayed what would happen as the earth’s temperature rises. But he and others say the movie opening offers an unusual opportunity to present accurate information on a topic that few people know a lot about.

“We’re not going to argue with the film,” says Mr. Becker. “Making cars go further on a gallon of gas is the single biggest step we can take to curb global warming, and rather than getting into a discussion about Hollywood’s version of global warming, we just want to show people the way to avoid putting heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere.”

Lobbying Lawmakers

At least one group is hoping to do more than get the facts out. The liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org is trying to use the film to get people to lobby lawmakers about climate change.

“We think The Day After Tomorrow is a great opportunity to get people talking about the very real danger of global warming and taking action to do something about it,” says Peter Schurman, executive director of MoveOn.org.

MoveOn is planning a town-hall meeting on climate change in New York this week, with Al Gore, Al Franken, Robert Kennedy Jr., and experts in the science of global warming as guest speakers.

Beginning May 28, when the movie opens nationally, thousands of MoveOn members plan to descend on theaters to hand out fliers that ask people to visit a MoveOn-affiliated Web site, http://www.climatecrisis.org, to sign a petition urging members of Congress to pass the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act, a bill that puts tougher restrictions on gas emissions. The measure was proposed by Sen. John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut.

David Fenton, chairman of Fenton Communications, a public-relations company that is helping environmental groups with their Day After Tomorrow campaigns, said the Rainforest Action Network, in San Francisco, and Environmental Defense, in New York, are also planning to distribute fliers at theaters. Those groups plan to include facts about global warming in their handouts.

Providing Facts

Like MoveOn, other groups are building Web sites to serve as resources for people seeking scientific facts about climate change.

The Energy Future Coalition, in Washington, started http://www.dayaftertomorrowfacts.org, a site that Reid Detchon, the organization’s executive director, says will provide carefully sourced scientific information about global warming.

“We felt that there might be a vacuum in terms of a place that the public could go and feel completely confident that they’re being given the straight facts,” Mr. Detchon says.

The coalition also sent out press releases to publicize its Web site. Mr. Detchon says he is not terribly concerned that the movie’s audience will take to heart the over-the-top global-warming scenarios portrayed in the film. “Frankly, the public’s understanding of the mechanisms of climate change is so weak anyway, it’s hard to imagine that we could make it worse.”

Coalition of Groups

The movie has also brought together several environmental groups to work with Ben & Jerry’s to reward those hungry for global-warming policy change.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, in New York, sent an advisory to several hundred members of the news media announcing that it was joining Ben & Jerry’s for its “Get the scoop” campaign, says Jon Coifman, a spokesman for the council.

Those who go to http://www.gettherealscoop.org and sign a petition to show their support for the Climate Stewardship Act will receive a coupon for a free scoop of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.

More than 1.5 million people will receive an e-mail message publicizing the Web site; the e-mail addresses were culled from membership lists of American Rivers, Physicians for Social Responsibility, World Wildlife Fund, all based in Washington, and the National Wildlife Fund, in Reston, Va., along with other local environmental nonprofit groups.

Participating charities will include a link to the “Get the scoop” site on their own Web sites, says Mr. Coifman.