By Nelly Ortiz, News correspondent

It took Jake Gyllenhaal’s pretty face in ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ to sell a broader audience the story of global warming. Now, the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Oprah Winfrey preach on behalf of the ailing environment. While ‘Everything’s Cool’ lacks the celebrity x-factor, the message is just as poignant, say the members of the Husky Energy Action Team (HEAT), which screened the film Thursday in Shillman as part of their Do It In the Dark Campaign.
The 2007 Sundance Film Festival Selection Documentary introduced viewers to some of the already noticeable effects of global warming, as well as some of the people who are fighting the lobbying efforts of multi-billion dollar oil industry, trying to get the word out about these harmful repercussions.
‘It’s not too late, but it will be soon. It’s such a doomsday kind of opinion,’ said Dan Abrams, environmental science middler and director of marketing and public relations for HEAT. ‘There’s a tipping point and we’re almost there.’
Dominique McCadden, a sociology middler and executive director of HEAT, said the group viewed a lot of documentaries dealing with global warming before deciding on ‘Everything’s Cool.’ The documentary is not about the science of global warming, but the story of global warming.
‘It was talking about the disconnect of the science and the political action,’ McCadden said.
The free event drew more than a dozen students, most of whom, like freshman theatre major Juliana Beecher, said they’d heard about the event through the group’s outreach initiative:’ dorm storming.
Abrams said HEAT members went to every residence hall room on campus knocking to let residents know about Do It In the Dark. Students who weren’t home got notes that said, ‘Sorry we missed you,’ detailing the campaign’s events, including last night’s speech by Bill Nye the Science Guy and a campus-wide competition to see which residence halls can use the least amount of energy over the course of several weeks.
After the film ended, the students clapped and rose to discuss the film. At first, the film left most feeling gloom-and-doom, like Melissa Parker, a sophomore business administration.
‘The [filmmakers] … interviewed a lot of people who are older and had been working in the field of global warming for a long time,’ she said. ‘They had a defeated attitude.’
The film states that global warming first came up in political discussion in 1988. It’s been 20 years, and it’s still considered by some to be what Beecher, a freshman theatre major, calls ‘a scare tactic.’ Beecher said she is shocked that people refuse to believe it’s happening and also refuse to do anything about it.
‘This is the thing that makes me the most angry, and it’s so easy to incorporate [energy-saving decisions] into your daily routine,’ she said.
This film came out in 2007, under the George W. Bush presidential administration. With a new president, some students who consider themselves global warming activists said they are a bit more hopeful.
‘Anything we do now will be better than before,’ said Kim Johnstone, a sophomore environmental science major.