Need Movie/Documentary for Environmental Studies Class

Dennis:

Teachers in Montgomery County MD have successfully used "Power Shift" in high school classes. Cameron Diaz is the film host and the video features high school students providing their view of energy and climate change. There are good interviews with Bill McDonough and others. I'd say the piece is pretty balanced. You can buy it on Amazon.

Karen Anderson
Green Schools Program Manager
Montgomery County Public Schools
Rockville, MD

All very good: End of Suburbia http://www.endofsuburbia.com/ Escape from Suburbia http://escapefromsuburbia.com/ Garbage http://www.garbagerevolution.com/

Jessica Happl, A. Sc. T.
DWQMS Coordinator
County of Oxford
519-539-9800 x3113
[email protected]
Fax: 519-421-4711

Hi Dennis,

I think "The End of Suburbia" is right around the length you are looking for and would be perfect for a study of attitudes and concepts because suburbia itself is an abstraction, and the movie does a good job discussing how it was sold to people. "Radiant City" is another good one along those lines, an intriguing film, less didactic. "Manufactured Landscapes" would be very good if broken up into two pieces. It's an excellent movie for showing the size and incredible scale of the human footprint on nature. 

You may want to look at "Kilowatt Ours", http://www.kilowattours.org/ . From the Web site, Kilowatt Ours Reveals the Consequences of Our Coal Powered Economy. The film opens with Vice President Dick Cheney's energy policy speech in which Cheney makes the claim that America needs nearly 1900 new power plants in the next 20 years to meet projected electricity demands. From here, filmmaker Jeff Barrie takes viewers on a journey from the coal mines of West Virginia to the solar panel fields of Florida, as he discovers solutions to America's energy related problems.

Hi, I've recently seen the movie: What a Way to Go: Life at the end of Empire, http://www.whatawaytogomovie.com/ I think it offers a holistic approach to global and environmental issues and does a great job of looking at our collective attitudes and values that fuel these issues. The film is longer than you are looking for, but might be worth looking at or incorporating in some way. It basically expands on the ideas of Daniel Quin who wrote the book Ishmael.

hope that helps,

Jason

Jason Craig
Assistant Director,
Green Quad Learning Center for Sustainable Futures
Green Quad Learning Center (#146D)
1216 Wheat St. Bldg. D
Columbia SC, 29208
phone: 777-1994 fax: 777-1911 

Hi Dennis

'The Burning Seasons' documentary might be useful to you as it looks at the problem of deforestation with a real solution. http://www.theburningseasonmovie.com/. I saw the movie length version at the Brisbane International Film Festival recently, however there is a 50 min documentary version that aired in the US on PBS in July and will air on the BBC in UK and ABC in Australia. Synopsis below..

Every year deliberately lit fires rage across Indonesia. They destroy pristine rainforest, endanger orangutans and contribute to climate change. A young carbon trading entrepreneur goes in search of a solution. The documentary follows a 29-year-old Australian environmental entrepreneur, Dorjee Sun, who sets out to find a solution. His idea involves selling the carbon credits represented by large forest areas in three Indonesian provinces to big polluters in the West. Despite the scepticism surrounding carbon trading, Dorjee's quest for a 'big deal' takes him from Sydney to New York, Washington DC, San Francisco and London. In the United States, PBS broadcast the documentary to widespread acclaim last month (see www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/burning-season/introduction/1627/) and it airs on BBC Four at 10pm tonight in the United Kingdom.

Read the review in The Times below. The skill of this film is how it manages to weave a strong narrative from what is essentially a series of business meetings and conferences, tweaking the collective consciousness with harrowing scenes of orang-utans fleeing the burning forests.

Kim Barnett
Program Manager GreenPower
Sustainability Victoria
T: 03 8626 8706
F: 03 9633 1007
Level 28, Urban Workshop
50 Lonsdale Street
Melbourne 3000
www.sustainability.vic.gov.au 

Another incredible environmental movie is Sharkwater: http://www.sharkwater.com/ It is an amazing documentary about earth's top predators and impacts from the shark-finning industry.

Nance Napp
Ecologist, Mt. Hood
Parkdale, Oregon

Another excellent documentary is called "Kilowatt Ours" about energy consumption, pollution, the use of natural resources, and what can be done to mitigate all those things. It's a great tool for showing what a big impact one person can make. We've used it in several adult classes on energy and greening your lifestyle, and it's always very popular - http://www.kilowattours.org/

Holly Carson
Education Coordinator
Keep Norfolk Beautiful
www.norfolkbeautiful.org
757-441-1347 

Hi all,

Tipping Point

While Australians argue about when or whether to confront global warming, the top of the globe is melting away.

The Arctic sea ice – sprawled across an area roughly the size of Australia - is in retreat.

Scientists now fear that in less than 25 years from now, for the first time in human existence, there will be no sea ice in the North Pole in parts of the summer.

These scientists are scrambling to model and measure the pace of the melt and to comprehend the enormity of the consequences – not just for the immediate ecosystem of polar bears and plankton, but for the world’s weather and its ability to feed itself.

At the same time governments and corporations scramble to be first at the table for a new resources feast of oil, gas and minerals. It’s being dubbed a "Cold Rush" as retreating sea ice opens new opportunities and faster, cheaper shipping routes.

Four Corners journeys to the Arctic Circle to explore how the melt is challenging human understanding of global warming. The Four Corners team*joins scientists on board a Canadian icebreaker, Louis S St Laurent, as they scout for icebergs, bears and evidence of a changing seascape. Across the scientific community there is a quest for answers: How fast is the melt happening? Is it stoppable? What may be lost? What riches will be unlocked? How much global warming is caused by people and how much by nature?

The Louis S St Laurent is bound for the legendary Northwest Passage where early explorers, among them a Tasmanian governor, strove vainly and often tragically to find a short cut shipping route across the top of the world.

Last September climate scientists were stunned when the waters of the Northwest Passage became virtually ice-free for the first time on record. No one knows if that will happen again this northern summer, but the broad trend is less and less sea ice…

Increasingly urgent predictions of an ice-free Arctic Ocean alarm veteran scientists on the icebreaker like Robie Macdonald. After more than 30 years working in the Arctic he almost takes it personally. "Not only do I see the change happening but it’s like they’re moving the goalposts towards me," he says. "The Arctic Ocean has not been seasonally clear of ice for a couple of million years at least, maybe longer, so this is very extraordinary."

But vanishing sea ice is only part of what worries Macdonald’s colleagues. Their gravest fears are landbound – that the melting of glaciers, the ice sheet covering Greenland and the permafrost that, so far, has safely locked millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases under frozen ground, may be accelerating and unstoppable. That is when the planet may approach "Tipping Point" – an Arctic journey on Four Corners at 8.30 pm Monday August 4, on ABC1.