Years of Living Dangerously Trailer #2

Years of Living Dangerously is a 9-part Showtime documentary television series focusing on climate change that premiered on April 13, 2014. James Cameron, Jerry Weintraub, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and clean energy investor and environmental activist Daniel Abbasi are executive producers of the series. Joel Bach and David Gelber, former 60 Minutes producers, are co-creators of the series as well as executive producers. Joseph Romm and Heidi Cullen are the chief science advisors. The show won an Emmy Award as Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series.

The weekly episodes feature celebrity investigators, who each have a history of environmental activism, and well-known journalists, each of whom have a background in environmental reportage. These "correspondents" travel to areas around the world and throughout the U.S. affected by global warming to interview experts and ordinary people affected by, and seeking solutions to, the impacts of climate change. They act as proxies for the audience, asking questions to find out people's opinions and to discover the scientific evidence. The celebrities include Harrison Ford, Matt Damon, Ian Somerhalder, Jessica Alba, Don Cheadle, America Ferrera, Michael C. Hall, Olivia Munn and Schwarzenegger. The journalists include Lesley Stahl, Thomas Friedman, Chris Hayes and Mark Bittman. The final episode includes Friedman's interview of President Barack Obama.

Schwarzenegger reflected on how the series tried to make the issue of climate change one that would resonate with the public: "I think the environmental movement only can be successful if we are simple and clear and make it a human story. We will tell human stories in this project. The scientists would never get the kind of attention that someone in show business gets." Cameron elaborated: "We didn’t use our celebrities as talking head experts, because they’re not climate experts. They were concerned, intelligent, curious citizens who were out to find answers. They were functioning as journalists".As Newsweek put it, the celebrity reporters "lend sparks to an issue that sends most viewers for the exits".