The White House Effect Bonni Cohen, Pedro Kos and Jon Shenk’s The White House Effect is an intriguing all-archival trip back in time to the precise moment in US politics when we arguably could have turned the page on climate change. From 1988-1992, Yale grad and oil company founder George H.W. Bush was commander-in-chief; not only did Bush. Sr. improbably make vocal his belief that global warming (“The Greenhouse Effect”) was real, but promised to employ “the White House effect” to counter it. Which included appointing as EPA chief Bill Reilly, an avid conservationist and veteran of Nixon’s Presidential Council on Environmental Quality and the World Wildlife Fund. Unfortunately, the 41st president would also employ as chief of staff former NH governor John Sununu, who Time magazine once called “Bush’s Bad Cop” and whose laser-like focus on the American economy likewise meant championing Big Oil at all costs. (It’s no spoiler alert to say the bad guy won. And we all lost.)
The week before the doc’s October 31st Netflix release, Filmmaker reached out to the co-directing trio to learn all about digging into the late 20th century past to promote action today.
Filmmaker: So what inspired the three of you to team up on this project? How did you divide the directing duties?
Cohen, Kos and Shenk: We’ve collectively known each other for 15 years — Pedro edited 2011’s The Island President, which Jon directed and Bonni produced, and we all worked together on 2021’s Lead Me Home — so there’s a long creative shorthand between us. We’ve all been drawn to stories that live at the crossroads of climate, power, conscience, and consequence. This issue has become a longstanding passion for all of us, and The White House Effect is the result of us asking, “How else can we tell the troubled story of humanity’s relationship with the earth?”
We were deeply inspired by Nathaniel Rich’s (2019 book) Losing Earth: A Recent History, which revealed that the history of the climate crisis isn’t just about science or policy — it’s about people, drama, and choice. We were also inspired by films such as How to Survive a Plague, Apollo 11 and LA 92, each of which successfully used archival materials to weave an irrefutable historical story. We gained insights from these works, and they became a compass for us.
This film was an extraordinarily ambitious archival project, years in the making, that required the work of a remarkable team: dedicated archival researchers, topnotch archival producers, three editors, three directors, and three producers all working in sync to sculpt a story entirely from existing material. Because we did not shoot any original footage, our directing roles were about detective work and discovery — how to shape the structure, rhythm, and emotional texture of history itself. We all do everything, but we also have our strengths. Pedro brings a deep editorial instinct; Bonni leads with character and intuition; Jon focuses on narrative architecture. The process was a constant conversation, the three of us trading perspectives until the film began to speak for itself.
Filmmaker: How did you find all the archival material? How much footage did you have to go through before locating the narrative?
Cohen, Kos and Shenk: From day one, we were committed to making the film entirely from archival material — no interviews, no narration — which was both liberating and daunting. We wanted to let history tell its own story in real time.
We pulled from presidential libraries, C-SPAN, news outtakes, personal archives, forgotten corporate film reels, photo archives and private collections — some of it never before seen publicly. When we began our ambition was to trace roughly 150 years of climate history, from the drilling of the first oil well to the modern political battles. However, a human narrative ultimately emerged out of the politics of the late 1980s — the moment scientists testified before Congress that global warming had begun and political leaders were forced to confront it. But we also wanted to situate that turning point within a much longer continuum: the centuries of human behavior, industrial appetite, and collective denial that led to this moment, and the consequences that have followed since.
Over the course of production our team catalogued and analyzed more than 14,000 distinct pieces of archival material. The narrative didn’t surface chronologically — it emerged emotionally, through themes of fear, conviction, compromise, and missed opportunities.
Filmmaker: Since Bonni and Jon spent three years working with Al Gore on An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, I wondered if you spoke with him — or any of your lead political protagonists for that matter — about this film.
Cohen, Kos and Shenk: We did consult with Al Gore, and he was incredibly supportive and helpful. He was not only an eyewitness but a key player in the political climate of the 1980s when many of these pivotal moments unfolded. He pointed us towards some critical moments in the history, and was also pleasantly surprised to see some footage he did not know existed!
The White House Effect exists entirely within the archival record. There are no contemporary voices explaining what it all means. You’re watching history unfold through the images and words of the time, with all the complexity — and complicity — intact. The story we found isn’t just about human drama; it’s also about hubris and greed, especially from an industry that understood the science early and worked to obscure it. And it’s not only “their” story — it’s ours. We Americans have been part of it, choosing leaders who, time and again, have been allowed to look away from what scientists warned us was coming.
Filmmaker: Could you talk a bit about your impact campaign? How do you hope to spark action, especially among the college-age demographic?
Cohen, Kos and Shenk: Our impact work is about connecting the history in the film to the moment we’re all living now. We’re partnering with universities, educators, youth-led climate groups and voter engagement organizations to host screenings and discussions that link the political past to today’s movement for change.
We’re also creating a discussion guide and short companion pieces that trace how the decisions shown in the film still echo through today’s policies. For college-age audiences especially, we hope the film provides both a sense of context and a sense of agency — that the history of failure is also a map for what not to repeat. The goal isn’t to lecture; it’s to hand people the historical tools to see how we got here, and to remind them that the next chapter is being written right now.
Filmmaker: Finally, as activist filmmakers who’ve worked on a range of other projects (often together) before, I’m also curious to hear how you avoid preaching to the choir. Is it always even possible?
Cohen, Kos and Shenk: We hope our work does not preach! To us, great documentaries serve as mirrors of ourselves to ourselves, perhaps a chance to feel the weight of a story. We think of this film as revealing. The archival approach helps because it removes the filter of commentary. There’s no narrator telling you who’s right or wrong. You’re left alone with the evidence — and with yourself. Our goal is first and foremost to make a movie as in “you’ll laugh, you’ll cry!” It also asks you to recognize yourself in the story — as a citizen, a voter, a participant.
Another takeaway here is that history matters. If we don’t learn from it we’re doomed to repeat it — and the climate crisis is proof that we already are. The hope is that by seeing how close we’ve come before, and how we’ve fallen short, audiences might recognize both the danger and the opportunity of this moment.
Those who care deeply about the environment are an important audience, and we don’t accept the idea that climate is only about politics. There’s ample evidence that Americans are capable of understanding and acting on real scientific facts when they’re presented clearly and honestly. As Republican President George H. W. Bush says in the film, global warming “knows no ideology, no political boundaries. It’s not a liberal or a conservative thing we’re talking about here today. They are the common agenda of the future.”