Official Trailer for ‘The White House Effect’ Doc About Climate Change

by Alex Billington
October 29, 2025
Source: YouTube

“We need a new attitude about the environment.” Cinetic debuted the trailer for a compelling documentary film called The White House Effect, made by a trio of some of the best doc filmmakers around – Bonni Cohen, Pedro Kos, Jon Shenk. It will be streaming on Netflix to watch starting this week – after premiering at film festivals in 2024. The title comes from an actual quote used by President George H.W. Bush who said he would use “the White House effect” to tackle climate change problems in the 80s. However, things didn’t really go well. Three decades ago, the world was poised to stop global warming. Using exclusively archival materials, The White House Effect tells the dramatic origin story of the climate crisis and how a political battle in the George H. W. Bush administration interrupted that moment, changing the course of history. So sad and infuriating. “How it happened is a question that we can still learn from – and one that [this film] answers with shocking & eye-opening timeliness with a virtuoso use of archive footage. Clips from TV news, presidential speeches, documents reveal how the US was on the brink of historic climate change [action], but instead laid the groundwork for decades of polarization.” Still as important than ever to show the truth.

Here’s the official trailer for Cohen, Kos, Shenk’s doc film The White House Effect, direct from YouTube:

A riveting look at a key moment in the history of the climate crisis, The White House Effect travels back in time to show how a crucial opportunity to take real action on global warming was not just squandered but deliberately undermined. Woven entirely of archival material, the film focuses on the pivotal years of the George H.W. Bush administration — 1988 to 1992 — when the entire country was waking up to the reality of global warming and Bush had pledged to use “the White House effect” to tackle it. Infuriating and irrefutable, the film tracks cause & effect with devastating precision to reveal just how hollow that promise became as Bush finds himself increasingly caught between his chief of staff John Sununu and industry power brokers on one side and his EPA chief Bill Reilly and climatologists on the other. As the world prepares for the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, Bush faces mounting pressure to make a decision that will change the course of history—culminating with the U.S. undermining a global agreement to set hard limits on emissions, setting the stage for the increasingly hot, dangerous, polarized future we all now face.

The White House Effect is co-directed by three award-winning doc filmmakers: Bonni Cohen (director of The Rape of Europa, Audrie & Daisy, Athlete A, Make a Splash) & Pedro Kos (director of Bending the Arc, Rebel Hearts, In Our Blood) & Jon Shenk (director of Lost Boys of Sudan, The Island President, Audrie & Daisy, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, Athlete A). Produced by Noah Stahl, Josh Penn, Justine Nagan. This initially premiered at the 2024 Telluride Film Festival a few years ago. Cinetic / Netflix debuts The White House Effect doc streaming on Netflix starting on October 31st, 2025 this fall. Look any good?

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