The stereotype of the climate activist is of an Extinction Rebellion-style protester, dressed like an old hippy, holding up the traffic in a busy city centre or blockading the petrol pumps. Roger Cox, the protagonist of Nic Balthazar’s new film Duty Of Care, screening in Movies That Matter, is in a very different mould.
The calm, carefully spoken Dutch lawyer is a family man from a middle class background. He is no firebrand. Nonetheless, he has been spectacularly effective in forcing both politicians and huge multinational corporations to stop polluting and reduce emissions.
His secret has been to use the law. Cox makes compelling arguments that whether you’re the Dutch government or a top Shell oil exec, you have a ‘duty of care’ toward your fellow humans. If you’re helping to destroy the planet, you’re clearly not fulfilling that duty.
Director Nic Balthazar (a Belgian TV/radio presenter as well as a filmmaker) dates his climate activism conversion to when he saw Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth (2006). The film also had a strong impact on Cox.
“We were both about the same age. We both had two children. He started with his law and I started with cameras, trying to do whatever we could,” Balthazar remembers how he and Cox became engaged in the climate change fight in the same period.
Balthazar had grown discouraged by how little was being achieved politically. Then, he heard the story of how this Dutch lawyer “had twisted the arm of the Dutch government with incredible success against all odds. We started thinking about doing the same thing in Belgium, which eventually we did.”
The filmmaker was looking to make a climate-based documentary. He asked Cox if he had heard about any potentially strong storylines. Cox replied, ‘Well, I am suing Shell.” The lawyer warned Balthazar that this was likely to be a very technical case, based around complex and detailed arguments.
“But, of course, that turned out to be an even more incredible story because, for the second time, everyone in the legal profession…said ‘that’s really cool but no way is a powerful multi-national like Shell ever going to bow to a small lawyer from the outskirts of Holland.’’
Cox again managed to perform his David v Goliath act, bringing (as Balthazar puts it) one of the biggest polluters in the world “to its knees.” Cox used the same arguments as before, pointing out that it is common sense to think that “wrecking a planet should be illegal.”
“What Roger did was go back to fundamental legal principles like’ duty of care’…you are not allowed to endanger anyone else’s life or the future of their children,” Balthazar sums up the bedrock of Cox’s case. The lawyer may have been pitted against armies of highly paid advocates but Dutch judges have a reputation for being thorough and independent, They accepted his “undeniable logic.”
Balthazar hopes that his documentary can now be used as an activist “tool” and screened to legal communities around the world. If law students and lawyers see it, they may also be inspired to follow Cox’s example and use law to combat climate change.
During Movies That Matter, Balthazar’s doc will be screened to politicians in the Hague as well as to the general public.
The director and the lawyer are now close friends. “We are so close in what we strive for,” Balthazar suggests. Cox may be his subject but he has no embarrassment about acknowledging that he is not objective or detached in the way he tells the lawyer’s story. He is firmly on Cox’s side.
“That’s the beauty of making a documentary and not what I’ve done in the past as a journalist…this is and always will be a documentary that really tries to spread his ideas. In no way was it a problem that we actually did become friends,” Balthazar notes. “He is so incredibly well spoken…he is such an intelligent guy who, even though he is rigorously dedicated and serious about his task, still has a lot of humour and warmth and a deep sense of humanity.”
Cox was at the Movies that Matter premiere in the Hague. The film has also screened at Docville in Belgium where it won an audience award.
Balthazar produced and wrote, as well as directed, Duty Of Care. The project received support from VRT/Canvas and the Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF). He is now looking for a sales agent for a documentary that became a labour of love. “I will always be proud of the film and proud of what we did,” the director states. “It does seem to resonate!”
