The Year in Interviews

Acclaimed director Werner Herzog spoke with us about his transporting documentary about Antarctica and global warming, Encounters at the End of the World.

The film simultaneously marvels at what science has been able to understand and also voices a scientific assessment that our “demise is assured.” How do you feel about that? The notion that our presence on our planet is not really sustainable doesn’t really make me nervous. When you are down there and there are places where there is a complete absence of biological life because of the cold, you get a sense of what a planet without human beings or much biological life would look like. For one thing, I believe it is just our highly technological civilization making us more vulnerable than before. And secondly, looking at the biological life on our planet, it has been a permanent series of catastrophes. We had the dinosaurs for a fairly short amount of time, and human beings came a very, very short time ago and their disappearance is fairly assured. It doesn’t make me nervous. However, I think we shouldn’t ponder all these heavy questions. You should not forget that the film also has a lot of humor; people laugh a lot and justifiably so.