‘Paris to Pittsburgh’ film: Climate change doesn’t have to divide us

Dec. 08--Filmmaker Sidney Beaumont got his first lesson in technological upheaval at a warehouse in Highland Park. As he worked summers for his parents' wholesale business at 95 Victor Street, he'd look over his shoulder at the Ford plant that had formerly churned out assembly-line Model T's.

Once the face of innovation, the plant was nearly defunct by the time he graduated from Michigan State in the 1970s.

"These stories go deep for people from the industrial north -- we've seen these kinds of transformations," the 62-year-old said.

The idea of rebuilding is central to Beaumont's new documentary, "Paris to Pittsburgh," a project of RadicalMedia, National Geographic and Bloomberg Philanthropies. But the upheaval in subjects' backyards is slightly different than that of Beaumont's family business: Rather than a crumbling industry, it's the fires, hurricanes and floods from climate change.

Beaumont's question, though, remains the same: In the face of massive loss, how can places use technology not only to reconstruct, but also future-proof themselves?

Answering that meant a grueling six months of travel between places like Iowa Lakes, Iowa; Adjuntas, Puerto Rico; Miami; and Ventura, California, chasing people who have decided not to balk at climate change.

At Iowa Lakes Community College, the team met a student studying wind technology in a program that her father directs. As the duo ascended a wind turbine to survey the rolling Iowa landscape, Beaumont said he couldn't help but feel inspired.

Meanwhile in the highlands of Adjuntas, Puerto Rico, the crew visited an "energy oasis" where locals otherwise devastated by Hurricane Maria could see a movie, listen to the radio and even drink coffee from the solar-powered roaster.

"Those counterpoints are amazing -- the contrast in terms of the daunting challenges they're facing but really the way communities respond to that, and find ways to look forward and grapple," Beaumont said.

The film strives for a transcendent-of-politics attitude that may cause eyebrow-raising among skeptics. But Beaumont's attitude is that climate change does not have to divide people, he said. The team took pains to interview Republican leaders, and the documentary points out for-profit companies like Apple, Microsoft and Facebook that have committed to renewable energy.

Overly optimistic? Beaumont prefers the word "aspirational," but asserts that the diversity of thinkers on climate innovation is reflected around the country, with many Republican-leaning cities and apolitical companies looking to green tech.

"We're seeing things moving in the right direction. ... Does it mean we're there? Certainly not," Beaumont said.

Of course, that progress is a stark departure from the national attitude on climate change, and the movie doesn't ignore that, either. The title is a nod to President Trump's speech last June announcing the U.S.'s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement in which he said he was elected to represent the people of Pittsburgh, not Paris.

As shown in the film, Pittsburgh's mayor Bill Peduto disagreed. The city is committed to 100 percent renewable energy, zero waste and a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse emissions by 2030. It's that spirit -- a former coal and steel town re-imagining its economy and technology -- that Beaumont hoped to capture.

And it's permeated the rest of his career, too, said Michigan State buddy Richard Green, who knew Beaumont as a freshman from Beverly Hills and later watched him spearhead a community recycling program in Washington in the '80s.

"He was always into the idea -- and I think the same is true for Detroit -- that we can retool and reinvent our future with green tech, and I'm not sure that's changed for him in the last 30 years," Green said.

After MSU, Beaumont earned a master's degree in sociology from University of Washington, where he wrote a thesis on the role of technology in transforming the workplace. After a stint teaching sociology at a community college and a whirlwind year in southern France, he began pursuing filmmaking in earnest, landing an associate producer role on a PBS series called "Treasures of the World" that, in part, explored the political meaning of Picasso's "Guernica."

Filmmaking felt like the most natural way to align the social and cultural issues that he'd studied, Beaumont said.

He went on to produce television and movies on a range of political topics, notably 2015's "What Happened, Miss Simone?" a film that nabbed an Emmy Award and Oscar nomination, and "Iconoclasts," a cable series which brought celebrities and cultural thinkers together to talk about life and art. Stories that felt part of the national conversation, or tapped into American soul-searching, drove Beaumont's work.

But Beaumont consciously decided to focus on climate change after about 2011, when Hurricane Irene hit New York City. His son, Walker, was a year old at the time. The next year brought Hurricane Sandy.

"That was a moment when I started putting together -- on a personal level -- looking at the prospects of my son, my child, with accumulating evidence that we really needed to address this problem," Beaumont said.

After marinating on that impulse for a few years, he produced Michael Bonifiglio's 2017 "From the Ashes," which traced the fallout from the coal industry. Bonifiglio co-directed "Paris to Pittsburgh," which Beaumont often references as a counterpoint of sorts to the earlier film.

No matter how staunchly they feel about the issue, Beaumont wants viewers to experience a twofold message in the film. One, climate disasters don't belong to some distant future. And two, it's not too late to act, even for cities like Pittsburgh and Detroit: The innovation that once spawned their industries can pivot to green technology, Beaumont said.

He'll return to metro Detroit on Dec. 11 for a showing of the movie and post-film Q&A in Grosse Pointe Farms as part of Freep Film Festival's monthly screening series. The documentary debuted in Los Angeles, New York and a few other cities earlier this month, and gets it broadcast debut on the National Geographic channel on Wednesday.

"The industrial workers and coal miners made this country, and not to be too grandiose, but made the civilization we had," Beaumont said. "But it's also an example of what we can do and have to do in this moment."

Contact Fiona Kelliher at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter: @fiona_kelliher.

'Paris to Pittsburgh'

Freep Film Festival monthly screening

With live Q&A with co-director Sidney Beaumont

7 p.m. Tue.

Patriot Theater

32 Lake Shore Drive, Grosse Pointe Farms.

Tickets ($10) can be purchased through freepfilmfestival.com. If available, they will also be sold at the door the night of the show.

Broadcast premiere

9 p.m. Wednesday

National Geographic

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