planted city

Thinking Sustainability: ‘Surviving Progress’ (Trailer)

From The National Film Board of Canada:

Surviving Progress is a stunning new feature documentary that connects the financial collapse, growing inequity, and the Wall Street oligarchy, with future technology, sustainability, and the fate of civilization. Inspired by Ronald Wright’s bestseller A Short History of Progress, filmmakers Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks dig deep into human nature and patterns of history to challenge and redefine the very idea of progress.

(Poster source: First Run Features)

Speaking for the world’s 3 billion children: “Are you here to save face? Or are you here to save us?”

From TckTckTck via YouTube:

On Wednesday 20 June, 2012 17-year-old Brittany Trilford of Wellington, New Zealand addressed 130 heads of state at the opening plenary of the Rio+20 UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This is her speech.

Thinking Sustainability: ‘Last Call: The Documentary’ (Trailer)

From Last Call:

Present system crisis, both environmental and economical, matches with the reference scenario outlined in the 1972 book “The Limits to Growth”, by a group of researchers of the MIT. Climate change, natural disasters, wars, natural resources reduction, economic and financial crisis, democracy and political, systems crisis, poverty, hunger and famines, over population… While these crisis are acknowledged by almost everybody there is a tendency to consider them separately. The Limits to Growth team’s approach, in 1972 and in 2012, shows that all these crisis are different parts of a single big problem… The documentary “Last Call” shows the urgency to listen to this message of warning, in order to pursue a new model of equity and sustainability, before it’s too late.

(Graphic source: PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency via Scientific American)

Thinking Globally: ‘How Much Water is on Earth’

From The US Geological Survey:

The largest sphere represents all of Earth’s water, and its diameter is about 860 miles (the distance from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Topeka, Kansas). It would have a volume of about 332,500,000 cubic miles (mi³) (1,386,000,000 cubic kilometers (km³)). The sphere includes all the water in the oceans, ice caps, lakes, and rivers, as well as groundwater, atmospheric water, and even the water in you, your dog, and your tomato plant.

…

The blue sphere over Kentucky represents the world’s liquid fresh water (groundwater, lakes, swamp water, and rivers). The volume comes to about 2,551,100 mi³ (10,633,450 km³), of which 99 percent is groundwater, much of which is not accessible to humans. The diameter of this sphere is about 169.5 miles (272.8 kilometers).

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Do you notice that “tiny” bubble over Atlanta, Georgia? That one represents fresh water in all the lakes and rivers on the planet, and most of the water people and life of earth need every day comes from these surface-water sources. The volume of this sphere is about 22,339 mi³ (93,113 km³). The diameter of this sphere is about 34.9 miles (56.2 kilometers). Yes, Lake Michigan looks way bigger than this sphere, but you have to try to imagine a bubble almost 35 miles high—whereas the average depth of Lake Michigan is less than 300 feet (91 meters).

You can read more info and the methodology used to calculate the size of our global water supply here. 

(Photo source: US Geological Survey)

Thinking Globally: ‘Welcome to the Anthropocene’

From Planet Under Pressure via Vimeo:

A 3-minute journey through the last 250 years of our history, from the start of the Industrial Revolution to the Rio+20 Summit. The film charts the growth of humanity into a global force on an equivalent scale to major geological processes.

More here.

(Image credit: IGBP)

Growth, Sustainability and ‘The Impossible Hamster’

From the New Economics Foundation via Vimeo:

There are reasons in nature, why things don’t grow indefinitely. As things are in nature, sooner or later, so they must be in the economy. As economic growth rises, we are pushing the planet ever closer to, and beyond some very real environmental limits. With every doubling in the global economy we use the equivalent in resources of all of the previous doublings combined.

For more, check out the report released along with the video, ‘Growth isn’t Possible: Why we need a new economic direction’. 

TED Talks | Johan Rockstrom: ‘Let the environment guide our development’

From TED Talks:

Human growth has strained the Earth’s resources, but as Johan Rockstrom reminds us, our advances also give us the science to recognize this and change behavior. His research has found nine “planetary boundaries” that can guide us in protecting our planet’s many overlapping ecosystems.

(Planetary boundaries graphic: Rockstrom et al. via Solutions Journal)

Ecological footprint pioneer William Rees on: ‘How to Convince People to Face Reality’

(Credit: Post Carbon Institute)

‘The Plentitude Economy’

From The Center for a New American Dream via Vimeo: 

This fun animation provides a vision of what a post-consumer society could look like, with people working fewer hours and pursuing re-skilling, homesteading, and small-scale enterprises that can help reduce the overall size and impact of the consumer economy. Narrated by economist and best-selling author Juliet Schor.

If you like this video you may want to check out Schor’s recent article, ‘Less Work, More Living’.

The Seattle Post Intelligencer’s Pulitzer-winning cartoonist David Horsey takes on climate change denial.