BuzzFlash Reviews
National Geographic: Six Degrees Could Change the World (DVD)
National Geographic, Narrated by Alec Baldwin
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As an online reviewer notes further down, global warming and the environment have been sorely neglected issues of vital national and international security.
What makes this National Geographic production so interesting (and National Georgraphic is not the stodgy institution that it used to be) is that it shows us quite vividly the increasing destruction to our planet as the earth warms degree by degree.
From National Geographic:
By the year 2100, many scientists believe that the Earth's average temperature could rise by as much as six degrees Celsius. In a compelling investigation, National Geographic leads a degree-by-degree journey to explore what each rising�and critical�degree could mean for the future of our people and planet. Through powerful filmmaking and intimate profiles, this special illustrates how global warming has already affected the reefs of Australia, the ice fields of Greenland, and the Amazonian rain forest. With a sobering look at the effects of our world's insatiable appetite for energy, Six Degrees Could Change the World explains what's real, what's still controversial, and how existing technologies and remedies could help dial back the global thermometer.
Through powerful filmmaking and intimate profiles, this special illustrates how global warming has already affected the reefs of Australia, the ice fields of Greenland, and the Amazonian rain forest. With a sobering look at the effects of our world's insatiable appetite for energy, Six Degrees Could Change the World explains what's real, what's still controversial, and how existing technologies and remedies could help dial back the global thermometer.
From an online reviewer:
It's a shame how militarists have so narrowly defined "national security" as an issue to focus us on war-making. But as ample evidence shows, we have security issues that involve building a sustainable economy, renewable energy, sensible transit, green architecture, new urbanism and much else.
I saw "Six Degrees" on the National Geographic Channel, and the author of the book was recently interviewed on C-SPAN's BookTV. As impactful as these media efforts have been, social change is being stalled by reckless voices on radio stations around the country (Limbaugh alone is on over 700 stations) who are misinforming millions of politically engaged people. These same people insist that we spare no expense when it comes to threats from foreign policy blowback, but they refuse to acknowledge the potential catastrophe of double-glazing the planet in carbon dioxide.
"Security" does not have to mean more profits for weapons contractors Why We Fight. Security can come to mean more profits for businesses that work on wind, solar, and tidal power; as well as efficiency and conservation innovations Sustainable Industries.
Many of our energy "needs" have actually been manufactured and marketed by industries that want to maximize the use of their commodity. Overcoming the "perception management" campaigns of those entrenched business interests is a daunting task, but so much progress has already been made that corporatists are increasingly desperate in their media efforts. The general public may not have PR firms funded by Exxon to advocate for their interests Everything's Cool, but we do have countless people who can write letters to editors, blog, call into talk radio (progressive and right-wing shows), post on message boards, share DVDs Refugees of the Blue Planet, subscribe to magazines Plenty Magazine, teach Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, preach A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and Our Planet's Future and invest green Green Investing: A Guide to Making Money through Environment Friendly Stocks.
True security doesn't mean designing evermore destructive weapons of war; but, rather, designing evermore constructive methods of sustainability e2: Design Season 2.
"Humanity has entered into a condition that is in some sense more globally united and interconnected, more sensitized to the experiences and suffering of others, in certain respects more spiritually awakened, more conscious of alternative future possibilities and ideals, more capable of collective healing and compassion, and, aided by technological advances in communication media, more able to think, feel, and respond together in a spiritually evolved manner to the world's swiftly changing realities than has ever before been possible."
-Richard Tarnas, quoted in Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beau
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