What is Decarbonisation Messaging Review System?

Climate Change is probably the greatest existential threat humanity has ever faced, and we believe it is therefore the responsibility of filmmakers and other artists to address this monumental challenge in their creative work.

The Screen Carbon Test seeks to quantify how well a film or TV show acknowledges and addresses the issue of climate change during the Global Climate Emergency. It seeks to expand BAFTA Albert’s editorial criteria to:

• acknowledge that the natural world exists,
• to show negative environmental behaviour as negative character traits,
• to have at least one character do something to make the world a better place.

To explore this on a deeper level the Screen Carbon Test employs a 3-part Likert-scale questionnaire to rate and compare the environmental credentials of different films and TV shows.

The first set of 5 questions explores how well the film or show acknowledges the natural world and the problem of climate change.

The second set of five questions explores whether the film or show tries to understand and explore the scale of the environmental challenge, and the way in which the impacts of climate change and environmental depredation are not always felt equally.

The third set of questions asks whether the filmmakers or any of the characters in the film or TV show assume responsibility for trying to find solutions to the many problems surrounding climate change and environmental degradation.

The higher a film scores on the Screen Carbon Test questionnaire, the stronger its climate credentials.

NB. To reduce 'tick bias', some of the questions are scored on a scale of 4 to 0 and others from 0 to 4.