Reviewed by RaeAnne Marsh
(November 2008)

Writer/director: Jeff Barrie
Documentary

There's no denying that filmmaker Jeff Barrie is passionate about the subject he has chosen to explore in his documentary Kilowatt Ours. Energy - sources of it, conservation of it - is a top-of-the-agenda topic for our government. But instead of leaving us to leave it to our government, Barrie has set out to put it top-of-mind for us as individuals.

He does this with the tried and true technique of shocking us to get our attention. Barrie filmed a mountain being blown up and reduced to a rock pile. He shows not barren mountains in a desolate wilderness, but forested mountains whose existence impacts air quality and water resources - not to mention the visual surroundings of the average Americans living there.

So, every time I start to leave the light on in a room I'm vacating, I think, "Is my being too lazy to flip the switch worth blowing up another mountain?"

THAT, Barrie brings home, is what has come of our mushrooming use of electricity - of which 50 percent comes from coal. And coal comes from... well, these mountains. "They have to move 24 million tons of earth to get 4 million tons of coal," explains Appalachia resident Larry Gibson, pointing past the nearby devastation to distant mountains he says are also slated for demolition.

Can we cut down our usage? Barrie makes a strong case that we can. California saved 5500 megawatts in the Millennium year, staving off threatened blackouts and obviating the need to build ten power plants - all by getting 99 percent buy-in by residents to make some simple adjustments such as turning up their thermostats a couple of degrees during the summer, to a still-comfortable 78 degrees.

Barrie has done some research on alternatives to coal as an energy source, and shows us windmill farms and building developed with geothermal energy sources, among other options that save money as well. Not to mention the impact on health - an issue Barrie addresses with facts about coal use and the dramatic increase in number of children afflicted with asthma and then drives home with scenes of children detailing a countertop-ful of medicines they must take.

Topics range from the impact of an individual (recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to power a television for three hours) to municipal success stories that inspire hope (the Sullivan County School System in Tennessee finances their $24 million energy upgrade with the $1 million they save on energy every year).

But the film blithely and unconditionally promotes adopting an energy-saving product that has serious issues of its own to address: compact fluorescent light bulbs, or CFLs. Granted they last far longer than standard incandescent bulbs, but they contain mercury, a known deadly substance, and must be properly disposed of. Barrie misses the opportunity his film could have provided to educate the public on that. This blind spot unfortunately calls into question Barrie's research on the other topics.

While Kilowatt Ours dwells on the problems of storing radioactive waste from society's earlier infatuation with nuclear energy as the solution to our energy needs, Barrie ignores the problem of CFL/mercury disposal. Yet the parallel is unmistakable: It's a solution for the "now" and we'll let future generations figure out how to deal with the downside.

But I'm still left with those images of natural beauty being reduced to an eyesore for future generations, and I make sure to shut down my computer and flip the light off behind me as I leave the room. -MPM

Chosen an Official Selection at numerous film festivals, from the Green Film Festival in Seoul, South Korea, to the Mountain Film Festival in Telluride, Colorado, USA, Kilowatt Ours was also broadcast on KLCS.

For more information, including screening times, visit www.kilowattours.org.

Photos courtesy of the filmmaker.