This is one of many documentaries on climate change; many aren’t very entertaining, but with DiCaprio at the center, this one offers crucial, topical information as well as a measure of hope. Actor/producer Fisher Stevens, who won an Academy Award for his powerful dolphin documentary The Covedirects Before the Floodstarting with a reference to Bosch’s painting The Garden of Earthly Delights and then travels around the world. DiCaprio begins with a pessimistic outlook, but remains open-minded as he meets and talks with politicians, experts and scientists. He believes that, although the problems persist, there are also many solutions that have begun to be implemented.

For example, viewers learn that simply by eating less beef we can save huge amounts of resources used to feed livestock (not to mention reducing the incredible amounts of methane they emit). Viewers were also told it would help if companies were required to pay a carbon tax. (Stevens Manufacturing has paid a voluntary carbon tax.) If you’ve seen — or haven’t seen — An inconvenient truth, Chasing Ice, Merchants of Doubtor others, then you should see this. Overall, it is one of the most universal and perhaps the most useful and rewarding of recent climate change documentaries.