GREEN CITY For sisters Leila Conners Petersen and Nadia Conners, the last possible moment to lessen humanity's impact on the environment — the 11th hour, from which the new documentary they cowrote and codirected aptly takes its name — has come upon us. But unlike other doom-and-gloom envirodocs that engulf viewers with guilt about how we are tearing apart our only planet, this movie is supposed to demonstrate that it's not too late to shift old habits.
The 11th Hour "really helps you understand what's happening," Conners Petersen told the Guardian about the Warner Brothers Independent release, which opens in theaters Aug. 17. The movie places the often oxymoronic combination of pragmatism and idealism hand in hand: "You feel a better sense of control in that way," she says.
Conners Petersen and Conners spent three years conducting lengthy interviews with 71 top thinkers and activists, ranging from physicist Stephen Hawking to Paul Hawken, the Marin author of The Ecology of Commerce (Collins, 1994).
In their film, they juxtapose 91 minutes of the ecoexperts' wisest words with quick-paced, music video–<\d>style montages of both environmental destruction and at least partially counteracting ideas and innovations like biomimicry.
And unlike 2006's An Inconvenient Truth, this film — narrated and produced by seasoned ecoactivist Leonardo DiCaprio — spends only about seven minutes covering global warming. "Our film contextualizes global warming as being part of a larger problem," Conners says.
The codirectors emphasize this holistic, all-part-of-a-larger-puzzle approach, which they say the mass media seldom takes when examining any environmental problem.
The environment "isn't a single-article issue," Conners says. "When Leo's on camera, he says it's a convergence of crises. It's all of it together that's making it a tipping point. And all of it includes our behavior."
It's our habits of "disconnect, denial, and laziness," she adds, that keep people from bothering to examine — or change — their impact on the Earth. "It's like you're sick with a disease with a known cure, and the medicine's right there, and you look at it and say, 'I'm not taking that.'<\!s>"
Environmental action, they say, does not necessarily have to extend to planting trees in Kenya, as Nobel Peace Prize winner and 11th Hour interview subject Wangari Maathai did through the Green Belt movement, or running a scientific radio series, as did interviewee David Suzuki. It's about being aware of organic peaches that are shipped to the supermarket from Chile and drinking water that may not be from the finest geyser.
"Once you start connecting the detergent under your sink to a dead zone, you start seeing the world as a whole, and your relationship with this planet and life on it will deepen," Conners Petersen says.
The sisters created the Web site 11thhouraction.com to allow individuals and communities to discuss ways to bring the film's broad-scale ideas and innovations to the local level, whether those efforts involve sharing the most energy-efficient household appliances (compact fluorescent light ...
Completely rebuilding our energy infrastructure, and undergoing an economic and cultural revolution, seem like generational goals, not just a simple spontaneous decision to take the medicine.
This is the imminent problem:
"We now have evidence from the Earth's history that a similar event happened fifty-five million years ago when a geological accident released into the air more than a terraton of gaseous carbon compounds. As a consequence the temperature in the arctic and temperate regions rose eight degree Celsius and in tropical regions about five degrees, and it took over one hundred thousand years before normality was restored. We have already put more than half this quantity of carbon gas into the air and now the Earth is weakened by the loss of land we took to feed and house ourselves. In addition, the sun is now warmer, and as a consequence the Earth is now returning to the hot state it was in before, millions of years ago, and as it warms, most living things will die." (Revenge of Gaia)
It is predictable that within the next couple of decades the carrying capacity of the earth is going to start rapidly declining, so such ambitious generational changes like a social and economic revolution will most likely be stifled by a lack of resources and increased pressures.
If only it was as simple as deciding to take the medicine for a disease with a known cure. Instead, it is like completely changing the lifestyle of everyone-a much much more ambitious goal.
I recently saw this film at an advanced screening in San Francisco. I was able to speak with the
directors of this film in a Q + A and in person.
First off, I've worked with Paul Hawken on the WiserEarth.org project. So I was
personally excited to see him in the film.
This film is not a film about global warming. It is about the sustainability
of human culture.
As anyone who has read Ishmael, the story of B, or listened to Kenny's
comments in the film, they understand that when human culture's move beyond
their ecological limits, the cultures go extinct. This is a large concept, and
the most important one we as a culture have ever contemplated. If this film is
able to bring this level of thinking into the popular imagination, then it
would be, as Paul said, "What an exciting time to be alive."
The film did lack a bit of momentum for the first third, at least it seemed
to me. My thinking may have been skewed because, as I watched it without
foreknowledge of the eventual outcome, I thought they were taking the subject
too broadly and would never be able to fill the breadth with any depth. And I
also thought that the inter-splicing of so many different people would not
allow a coherent narrative.
Well I was extremely surprised, I admit, when I was totally wrong about
this. The film somehow silently gains momentum about a third of way through,
and never once loses it for the rest of the film. The soundtrack is wonderful,
but I was usually to busy thinking to hear it.
The reason I thought it was too broad in the beginning was because I thought
this movie was about global warming, just another inconvenient truth. The film
addresses our intention as a human species, it addresses sustainability, it
frames the discussion in the true parameters in which global warming resides.
If this film gains popular exposure and acceptance, the impetuous to change
our society will never be stronger. I've been in the streets on this
fundamental issue for many years, this may be the thing that brings the soccer
moms and senior citizens out there with the us 20-somethings too.
Speaking with Nadia, she philosophized that real change may not happen until
this is seen as a human rights movement, comparing this movement with the civil
rights movement, and the amount of social unrest and cohesion which propelled
that through the laggard politicians of the day.
"Make the connection" as Leonardo said. This film challenges the
viewer to realize the connections between the actions of humanity and the
myriad environmental impacts. Are droughts in Africa, melting ice sheets in the
Antarctic, and large hurricanes in the US simply isolated incidents? David
Suzuki notes in the film that there is not humanity and nature, we are nature.
Paul Hawken's latest book, Blessed Unrest, speaks to the interconnection of the
social justice and environmental sustainability movements, saying there is no
such thing as a difference between them for that same reason. The book also
claims that all of the disparate groups and people in the NPO and NGO sector
are all part of one movement, an "immune response" the collective
organism of humanity to the pathogens of power, corruption, and degradation.
This film's highest value is that it shows us the truth of
interconnectedness.
A note about the leaders in this film. For one, if you can look at Stephen
Hawking and still think that global warming proponents are uninformed, you've
drank the kool-aid and may never come back. Also, many of these leaders have
been saying these things for more than twenty years, but only now is the public
starting to listen to what they are saying. Bill McKibben wrote The End of
Nature in 1989, and his conclusions are still the same today.
One thing many conservatives don't want to admit, their worldview took us to
Iraq
on bald faced lies, while the worldview of the barefoot granola hitting the
streets on Feb 15 was 100% accurate. Now should we ask, which worldview was
more attenuated with the truth?
This movie is transideological, caring about the quality of life for the
future of humanity should never be wrapped up transient and petty politics,
religion, or business. When sustainability is not built into these
institutions, they do not exist for long on this earth.
As Paul said, "Life creates the conditions for life."
Well, perhaps your reading of this review shows someone a little
over-enthused on the subject. I contend that watching this movie will give you
exactly this empowered sense. As Bill McDonough says we get to image what it
means to "re-design design itself." This is really the context of the
movie, the path that humanity must walk if our culture is to survive. What a
worldview based in truth will not obfuscate.
-Daniel Bell
you can reach me online at wiserearth.org/user/danielbell
While media showers attention on business and government, scant attention has been given to the third pillar of our society: civil society. But for over a century now, people have been organizing themselves around social and environmental issues. These people have been tireless advocates for conservation and justice in a myriad of areas such as sustainable agriculture, elephants, child rights, human trafficking, and industrial ecology. Recently WiserEarth ([link]) was developed to improve the quality of connections between these organizations so solutions in one area can be shared with others.
WiserEarth provides answers for a spectrum of people. Whether you want to reduce your household impact, find volunteer experiences in your area, or start your own nonprofit, WiserEarth is filled with organizations that can help. In addition, it is continuously expanding its capabilities to help people find the connections and information they are looking for.
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