Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis’ latest movie, This Changes Everything, starts with Klein saying she’s never liked climate change documentaries. She takes a shot at polar bears’ struggling on melting ice. “Is it really possible to be bored by the end of the world?” Klein asks.

Apparently, it is. Klein makes a good point that we humans have become desensitized to information about rising temperatures and shrinking polar ice caps. We’ve heard it so much and so often that it seems too big to tackle and somewhat insurmountable.

Klein argues that climate change is occurring as a result of a 400-year-old ideology that “the earth is a machine and we are its masters.” This ideology became a reality with the discovery and exploitation of fossil fuels, allowing humans to ignore the earth’s natural cycles. Now, after years of burning petroleum, the earth is ready to kick us off for bad behavior, unless we change our ways. Fast.

But there are also plenty of moving moments in the story, the final message of which is that humans have a chance—through direct action—to reverse climate change through direct action against the corporations that put economic gain above all else. Klein follows several stories—an indigenous group in Canada fighting oil spills on their ancestral lands, a group in Greece fighting against a proposed diamond mine, a young couple in Montana whose ranch is polluted by a ruptured Exxon pipeline—as they fight against power and money in attempts to save their homelands.

The movie seems to want to empower viewers rather than scare them, but if the annihilation of the human species is a real possibility, maybe we should be scared.