Here are a few documentaries that provide insight into achievable climate solutions.
Carbon Nation is one of my favorites, highlighting a cornucopia of innovations and people from all walks of life employing them.
carbon nation is a documentary movie about climate change SOLUTIONS. Even if you doubt the severity of the impact of climate change or just don’t buy it at all, this is still a compelling and relevant film that illustrates how SOLUTIONS to climate change also address other social, economic and national security issues. You’ll meet a host of entertaining and endearing characters along the way.
- carbon nation is an optimistic, solutions-based, non-preachy, non-partisan, big tent film that shows tackling climate change boosts the economy, increases national & energy security and promotes health & a clean environment.
- Public opinion is sliding the wrong way – far fewer people are concerned about climate change than even a year ago. We’ve made carbon nation to give a majority of people an entertaining, informed and pragmatic primer about why it’s incredibly smart to be a part of the new, low-carbon economy: it’s good business.
- carbon nation’s optimism and pragmatism are appealing across the political spectrum. While other good films have been about problems, blame and guilt, carbon nation is a film that celebrates solutions, inspiration and action.
On their website they have a lot of resources and a half-dozen or so videos of interesting folks, doing interesting things. I recommend A Thousand Beating Hearts part of the Carbon Cowboys series (click here for all their videos).
Next up is a new documentary Kiss The Ground which continues the ideas of soil regeneration and carbon sequestration. It’s on Netflix at the moment.
Kiss the Ground is a full-length documentary narrated by Woody Harrelson that sheds light on an alternative approach to farming called “regenerative agriculture” that has the potential to balance our climate, replenish our vast water supplies, and feed the world.
And again there many resources on their Kiss the Ground website here.
And the granddaddy of all documentaries, An Inconvenient Truth
An Inconvenient Truth makes the compelling case that global warming is real, man-made, and its effects will be cataclysmic if we don’t act now. Gore presents a wide array of facts and information in a thoughtful and compelling way: often humorous, frequently emotional, and always fascinating. In the end, An Inconvenient Truth accomplishes what all great films should: it leaves the viewer shaken, involved and inspired.
The first hour is a real downer (as in, we are seeing everything projected twenty years ago manifesting at a faster rate then scientists expected). But the last thirty minutes outlines accessible ways to address climate change and how quickly those changes can make a difference and reverse the effects of our current dilemma. It’s available on DVD, rent from Amazon and it plays occasionally on IFC and BBCAmerica.
There is also a sequel and it’s a bit darker because of course, we are at a tipping point. And it details how to take political and social actions.
That should get you started and provide you with a lot of hope for our ability to affect change. If we start today.
Sorry for that last video image. Please vote to save our climate.
Please share any resources on climate solutions you favor in the comments. Films, books, articles. And besides voting, what steps are you taking?
For all the resources I’ve been posting, click on the Climate Change Solutions category.
x-posted at LivingLightlyTV.com
Betty
Great information. Thank you for sharing it. I will pass it along.
Bill Arnold
For a straight science feed, usually with links to papers,
https://phys.org/earth-news/
You’ll see stuff in easy-read form a week or three before it’s in the press.
Humans heed to stop burning fossil carbon, and focus on decarbonization: hydro, nuclear(at least keep existing plants), wind, solar, storage, long-distance transmission, alternatives to fossil fuels for transportation (including shipping and aircraft). There are plenty of detailed analyses of approaches to decarbonization, which must sadly include the politics involved in fighting the path dependencies created and protected by the fossil fuel industries, and creating new dependencies for renewables.
Jerzy Russian
I had solar panels installed this week. We are waiting for the inspection before everything is connected. The monthly payment is about half to a third of the monthly electric bill. We will sell power to the grid in the day, and the nighttime use from the electric company will be at a lower rate. If all goes well, we get a good sized check from the electric company as the amount sold during the day is more than what was used at night.
Bill Arnold
@Jerzy Russian:
Where is this?
(My power company (mid Hudson valley NY is not so cooperative.)
Citizen Alan
I really do think the fate of the human race depends on next month’s election. We have to win the White House. We have to retake the Senate. And we have to have enough Dem Senators with the courage to pack SCOTUS. Because otherwise, not only will we be completely unable to address climate change, but things will become vastly worse. If the GOP wins, I anticipate a SCOTUS opinion no later than 2024 that strikes down the EPA as unconstitutional and holds that the federal government has absolutely no authority to legislate climate change matters.
That’s assuming, of course, that we’re not already past the point of no return, which we probably were after Gore was robbed in 2000.
Every day, I give praise to God that I never brought children into this doomed world.
DaveInOz
By coincidence, I was reading an article on regenerative farming here in Australia last week
https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2019-03-10/regenerative-agriculture-attracts-solid-backing-amid-success/10871130
Looks like it makes a huge difference, especially in a drought-afflicted country like this one. The agricultural pharmaceutical industry isn’t happy about it of course so the Government won’t be doing anything about it anytime soon.
Sure Lurkalot
I can recommend the Biggest Little Farm…and thanks for Kiss the Ground tip. Looks good for tonight!
joel hanes
I shill for The Land Institute in these threads.
Agriculture is the greatest shaper of land use.
The Land Institute is 30 years into a research program that aims to replace annual grain crops, which require frequent tillage and planting, fertilizer, and chemical inputs, and have shallow roots that make them susceptible to droughts and promote soil compaction and erosion, with a regime of grain crops based on perennial plants.
Plant once, harvest for many years. Deep roots build and improve soil, sequester CO2, provide drought resistance, inhibit runoff. Less need for herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizer.
They’re a small operation growing larger, having gotten through their visionary-hippie founding phase and moved on to operational and market trials, expansion of the research project, and scaling up. They could use a few dollars of your support.
https://landinstitute.org/
MomSense
@Sure Lurkalot:
I loved the biggest little farm. Watched Kiss the Ground this morning and found it very hopeful. I signed up on the website and have started receiving information.
Jerzy Russian
@Bill Arnold: San Diego.
mali muso
Another documentary I would recommend (it’s on Netflix) is Islands of Faith. It showcases how various communities in Indonesia are dealing with the practical implications of climate change and coming up with locally sourced community based solutions. Very inspiring.
NotMax
Made to order place for a linky.
:)
OT (mentioned because it’s nuclear). Recently fell into a rabbit hole of refreshing and expanding my knowledge of “nuclear stimulation,” going back to the original Project Gasbuggy and subsequent Operation Plowshare planning. Head shakingly astonishing the mix of boneheadedness and hubris promoting the whole schmear.
Mary G
@Jerzy Russian: That’s what I’m going to do, but I don’t think I’ll get any money back from the electric co.
Since the Rona arrived, we have 3x more fans in the house that run 24/7 and my bill reflects that. It’ll be nice not to feel as guilty about it.
joel hanes
@NotMax:
Hey, what effect do you think a nuclear explosion would have on ….. beer?
https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/09/18/161338723/u-s-explodes-atomic-bombs-near-beers-to-see-if-they-are-safe-to-drink
Jerzy Russian
@Mary G: Our electric bills have gone up probably by a factor or three within the last three years. Combination of rate increases and more usage.
J R in WV
Watching football yesterday afternoon, WV game in Morgantown. No, not Off Topic at all.
We both noticed that over the hill in the foreground in wide shots of the empty stadium, you could see giant windmill blades turning. if the windmills are in WV, they will be everywhere pretty soon — they are already all over the midwestern plains from Kansas to West Texas, hundreds of them.
Amazing to see the giant wind farms, giant blades turning almost in unison.
We have solar panels at our tiny house in AZ, not connected to the grid at all, that would have cost more than the solar installation. There’s a small Honda generator, and a bank of batteries, for night time and seriously cloudy periods, but we’ve never needed that so far. Batteries are expensive, and don’t last very long. So far…
Geminid
@J R in WV: I drove I-20 from Atlanta to New Mexico last spring and was struck by all the windmills in West Texas, often on ridges above pumps pumping Permian Basin oil. When I hit New Mexico there were not many wind generators. But New Mexico governor Michelle Lujan Griffen won in 2018 on a clean energy platform in 2018, and pushed clean power legislation through the NM legislature last year, and I expect I’ll see some more windmills there if I can make it out this coming year. Costs of solar and wind power have reached parity with natural gas electrical generation, so the transition to clean electrical energy is not a heavy lift. Heavy transport will take longer, but car and small truck aren’t so tough to convert to battery power. And conservation can eliminate up to 40% of our carbon footprint. The U.N.’s climate panel’s goal of net neutral carbon by 2050 is very realistic. (That may be why they picked that date). If we achieve that goal, smart agricultural practices, afforestation and other net negative activities can start bringing CO2 levels back down to 350 rpm or lower.
Dan B
We loved Kiss the Ground. I was a landscape designer for 30 years and soil was a big part of plant health so the idea that soil could do more to absorbing CO2 than any other affordable was not new to me but the details were great!
We had dinner with friends – outside and distanced – and explained how healthy soil absorbed CO2. One friend couldn’t figure out how. We had to get to basic chemistry: plants are primarily carbon as are their roots and all living things. I can imagine many legislators having similar difficulties.
P.S. We have solar PV panels in cloudy Seattle. We get about $3,000 per year from Seattle City Light. Their interest is obtaining clean energy. Hydro is tapped out and good wind is hundreds of miles from our rapidly growing region so local solar makes economic sense. Since they don’t have to finance the install it’s great for them.
TaMara (HFG)
Again, thanks everyone! Next week I think we’ll tackle wind power resources.