About ten years ago, Rob Stewart was making the film Sharkwater under his questionable conviction that, "If people knew shark populations were decreasing by 90%, they'd do something."
A question from the audience at a preview changed everything for him: "What's the point of stopping shark finning if fisheries will collapse by 2048?"
Stewart immersed himself in the larger issues with the ocean, until he got to the point of recognizing that, "The only thing we can do which will control ocean acidification is to stop burning fossil fuels." So then he got on the climate change activism path until he recognized, "We know what to do... it's down to political will," and that "We don't just have a climate problem; we have a human problem." It took most of the film before he realized that all the planes he was taking to go around the world to talk about these issues and film animals might actually be adding to the problem.
All of the current problems are interrelated, and he didn't even touch on poverty and inequity. We do have to fix them all, but we can jump in anywhere. As we work we soon find the threads leading to the next issue. It can be overwhelming, but we just have to stay afloat and keep on track to slow down our own fossil fuel use while we work together to motivate politicians and corporations (by whatever means possible) to change the system before it's too late.
The film has beautiful images that remind us of what we're going to lose if we don't get our act together. It makes it all the more devastating.
You can buy or rent the movie here. For every movie sold, $1 will go to World Wildlife Fund.
Stewart also made a series of short educational videos. Here is more information on...
Ocean Acidification:
Ocean Acidification World Issue Video from Rob Stewart on Vimeo.
Deforestation:
Deforestation World Issue Video from Rob Stewart on Vimeo.
Climate Change:
Climate Change World Issue Video from Rob Stewart on Vimeo.
Overfishing:
Overfishing World Issue Video from Rob Stewart on Vimeo.
Same the Humans:
Save the Humans World Issue Video from Rob Stewart on Vimeo.
2 comments:
I can't recall ever hearing ocean acidification or even sea level rise even debated at the federal level (although I'm sure Elizabeth May has raised these issues). We can't discuss these things because they're integral to our atmospheric carbon loading which then links them to anthropogenic global warming and climate change. This government works harder on denying climate change and subverting international consensus on effective action than on anything else - bar none.
Germany is hosting this year's G7 summit. It's said that Harper is already working to undermine the Germans' focus on getting a consensus to deal with climate change. He's done this for years and yet it consistently fails to make a stir with the folks at home.
This fellow, Stewart, is right that climate change is but one of a number of looming threats to the continuation of our civilization, all of which must be resolved if we're to succeed on any. There is a host of incidents but they can be generally sorted under three categories - climate change, overpopulation and over-consumption.
It will take more than will to tackle these threats. It will take genuine courage on a mass scale. The magnitude of these challenges will overwhelm anything less. Our existing models - economic, industrial, political - are antiquated and obsolete. They worked reasonably well (for us at least) to the point where our population passed about 3.5-billion, our planet's ecological carrying capacity. Beyond that their utility waned and instead of serving mankind, these models came to beset us. Our slavish obsession with perpetual, exponential growth even as we degrade our environment's capacity to support us is proof positive of this. Yet Harper, Trudeau and Mulcair all speak warmly of future economic growth and no one dares challenge their orthodoxy.
Yes, we don't have a true party on the left right now when we really need it. I find the film a little plodding, but what I like is how honestly he portrays his own naivety as he starts to figure out how enormous this issue really is.
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