James Cameron's new movie Avatar arrives coincidently at the end of the Copenhagen climate talks. It's being shown here in Denmark with Danish subtitles. Let's demand that our delegates only be allowed into MusikTeatret Albertslund to see the film if they reach a fair and ambitious agreement before the screening time of 7:45 p.m. Friday!

When I worked with Cameron in 2003 on his 3D IMAX documentary Aliens of the Deep, there were some afternoons on board the Russian research vessel Akademik Mstislav Keldysh when Cameron would hole up in his cabin and work on the script for what everyone on the team called "The Feature Film." Cameron originally conceived the idea for Avatar 15 years ago, according to the official movie website, "when the means to realize his vision did not yet exist."

There might be a lesson in that for the delegates gathered in Copenhagen. As the president of the Maldives (one of the Pacific island nations most threatened by rising sea levels) said here today: "If you have the political will, the technology will follow."

Cameron has, as movie fans know, always been one to push the boundaries on movie technology, and his efforts earn him more than double the returns. In his 1989 movie The Abyss, Cameron designed lighting technology for shallow water shots. He used mercury-halide discharge lamps called Hydragyrum Medium arc-length Iodide, or HMI, which are four times more powerful than standard fluorescent or incandescent lights.

Canadian producer Stephen Low modified the watertight casings in order to film at 4,000-meter depths for his 1992 IMAX documentary on the R.M.S. Titanic. When Cameron shot his Titanic feature film, Low lent him the modified lights.

For his deepwater documentaries Aliens of the Deep and Ghosts of the Abyss, Cameron used custom-built HD cameras that he designed with cameraman Vince Pace. They housed pairs of specially modified Sony HDW-F950 CineAlta cameras the same width apart as the human eye. The cameras brought tube worms and shrimps from smoking hydrothermal vents up close and personal on screen.

In Avatar, Cameron is again playing with technology to capture a new way of seeing the world -- or in this case, a whole new world. We'll see if we can find the means and vision to save this one in the next two days at Copenhagen.

See more reports from Copenhagen as part of OnEarth's ongoing coverage.