That'd be great. I hope it happens.

Let's hope this growing concern about the environment isn't just a trend that will pass in afew years once the money to be made is gone. Let us hope his film will have a long lasting effect on how people look at the issue.

If something like that got a tenth as big as An Inconvenient Truth, it could really make an impact.

There will certainly be a backlash against Green, so people should be attuned to criticism of the movement that exists now and prepare.

One of the best critiques I've seen is the South Park about how the Toyota Prius gives of clouds of deadly SMUG. The cloud of smug from San Francisco combines with the cloud of smug generated by George Cloony's 2006 Oscar acceptance speech and lays waste to the nation. I recently bought the Worldchanging book, and although I love it, parts of it are illegible through the smug.

The Moral Majority occupies the bully pulpit in the nation now, and they abuse it. How can we avoid committing the same abuses now that we are acquiring a pulpit of our own?

Finally.

Gore's work is great and good and passionate but it doesn't give you the tools you need to make the necessary changes in your life. If Spielberg and McDonough make a film that does, it will be great.

However, from seeing McDonough a number of times, I fear that it will concentrate on the BIG rather than the small, the bite-sized, the things you and I and everybody else can do today or tomorrow. If they concentrate on the practical and the practice, the amount of SMUG will be diminished rather than increased. ()f course, South Park is kinda smug itself for isn't snark just smug with a sense of wicked humor?)

I happen to have an outline for a video series on what you can do with one south-facing window if anybody knows Spielberg's phone number.

FYI, there's already The Next Industrial Revolution - William McDonough, Michael Braungart and the Birth of the Sustainable Economy, a 55-min. video narrated by Susan Sarandon; it covers some very interesting green projects at Nike, Ford's Rouge plant, Herman Miller Furniture, Oberlin College. I bought the DVD; highly recommended, as is their excellent book, Cradle to Cradle - Remaking the Way We Make Things. (As mentioned on the website, the video is for sale only to individuals for personal use; libraries, institutions, and organizations are directed to the publisher, Bullfrog Films to order a copy.)

I've seen The Next Industrial Revolution, and I must admit that I was kind of disappointed. The movie seems at least as concerned with advertising the services provided by McDonough's firms as actually talking about sustainable design. Which is fine, and useful, but it's not what I had hoped for.

A much better McDonough presentation is the one that he gave at Bioneers in 2000. The references to current work are dated, of course, but the basic sustainable design philosophy is all in there, in McDonough's usual passionate and undiluted form.

I am hosting quicktime versions of the speech, for your downloading pleasure. It's about 45 minutes long. You can download a small version (80MB) or a large version (600 MB). (Use Quicktime 7 to view the larger one, or any Quicktime version for the smaller one.) I also have it on DVD if anyone wants to distribute it that way. (Apologies for the quality -- it's ripped from videotape.)

Links didn't come through on my post for some reason. Let's try this the old fashioned way:
Small video: http://tinyurl.com/823dp
Large video: http://tinyurl.com/cuj8e

Here is my critique of Al Gore movie An Inconvenient Truth, as posted on his forum in an effort to help him be more powerful and effective.
Hopefully Speilberg's movie will have these elements and be more effective.

"...I think that you would have been even more powerful and more effectual in your beautiful mission to educate and mobilize the nation and the world to fight global warming if you had done and said the following things.

- You are shown being driven in a car in the movie and that car could have been a Hydrogen fuel cell car. Which you could have shown everyone how it works and drank the water off the tall pipe, because that's the only emission, water and heat. These cars exists, their just expensive and you have millions of dollars laying around, so you could have played it that way, and didn't.

or That car could have been a gas burning car that has been converted to a hydrogen burning car - which regular people are doing on the American Hydrogen Association's website and you could have shown us how everyone can convert their own cars and generate our own hydrogen from solar, wind, and water.

- You could have called upon the rich and celebrities to convert their mansions and cars to hydrogen fuel cells and said "Bling your fuel cell if you want, but do your end to fight global warming." If people who can afford it did it now, that would support hydrogen technology manufactures and eventually bring the price down for everyone else. (I call for that on my Hero for the Planet Awards page of my website Ideas to Save the Planet

- You could have converted your ranch to solar, wind, and residential fuel cells and given us a tour of your zero emission home. You have the money and the technology already exists.

Bush runs his Texas Ranch on hydrogen fuels cell right now. But Bush get his hydrogen from Oil, Natural gas, and Nuclear and Water, not Solar, Wind and Water. So in the media - Bush is doing more about hydrogen that you are Al. You could be turning that around by showing them by example and by converting your own home. You could say to the world “It's stupid to get zero emission hydrogen from a nuclear power plant that produces deadly waste for millions of years.”

(Al, you could have taken Oprah on a tour of zero emission hydrogen solar, wind and water powered home, too.)

- Your lecture hall, in the movie, could have been powered by fuel cells.

I emailed you before and suggested that you to drive up to the premiere of your movie in a hydrogen fuel cell car. If you had you would have been on the news about it, and been walking your talk more, and people would taken you even more seriously. I'm sorry that you didn't take up my suggestion.

I emailed you and told you to convert your homes and cars to hydrogen, solar, and wind and water, too. I have a friend who was shocked that you’re not already living that way. You have been talking about Global warming for 20 years, but you haven't been living in a zero emission home for 20 years, at least as far as I know. If you have, you didn't mention it in the movie.

- You could have said that the Kyoto accords only call for an 8% reduction in green house emissions. They originally wanted 80% but it got thinned down to only 8%. Then you could have said that “Bush won’t even agree to 8%, and I'm talking about 100%”, (which you didn't call for either, but could have).

- You could have spent more time on the solutions and put them in the movie more and not left them to the credits.

- and finally you didn't talk about specific details about the technologies enough nor did you speak powerfully enough about the concrete actions that we can take.

You said what I'm saying in My Call to Greatness to the American People, which is that if we have beaten slavery and segregation, and won WWI and II and went to the moon, then we can mobilize to fight global warming. But you didn't say how.

I'm speaking more powerfully than you are, because I'm saying that we can convert the entire nation to hydrogen, solar, and wind and water in only 4 years not 20-50 years, and do the whole planet in 20 or less, if we only made it a national and international priority to do so.

If you would have said that, and was specific about mobilizing the nation to fight global warming as the true defense of the nation and build solar panels, wind generators, hydrogen fuel cells, hydrogen gas tanks, electrolyzers (which get hydrogen out of water and was invented in 1805, 201 years ago), and install them in every home and building in the country, build millions of fuel cells cars for the US and then the world, convert existing cars to burn hydrogen, convert existing power plants and factories to burn hydrogen instead of coal, build desalinization plants, and water pipelines.... like we did in WWII to build guns, bullets, tanks, and planes... I think that would have been even more powerful, because you would have inspired the nation to take action toward a specific future, instead of just spending 3/4 of the movie scaring people.

I think people do need to be educated and even scared into action and you did a great job of speaking powerfully about that.

But all I hear people talk about when that talk about that movie is how scary it was and one friend of mine couldn't even finish watching it because it was too scary for her. All I'm saying is that people could be talking about how inspired to action they are after seeing that movie, instead.

Anyway, that's just my opinion, thanks for listening to all that Al. Thanks for taking up my Invitation to Be More Powerful by choosing to act on these suggestions and maybe even re-editing your movie or changing the way you make your next movie. Maybe it will be called "It is possible to Save the Planet, let's get on it!"

Todd Norman
Ideas To Save the Planet
www.ideastosavetheplanet.org

It will be great. I hope spielberg and company help to put the Cradle to Cradle philosophy into the mainstream of the public opinion and that way maybe Manufacturers and Investors start considering to use MDBC.com certification as important as others like LEED and GreenGuard.

Let's see if Spielberg manages to sleaze in a few of his crafty anti-Italian subtleties into his documentary! I do not waste my time or money on any of Spielberg's films. His is a hypocritical shit, and in 1996 he actually dared to receive a grant to "preach tolerance". Yet in many of his films, he hides anti-Italian sentiments, and although he did not direct it, he denied the blatant Italian stereotypes which were forced upon children in 2004's "Shark's Tale". This was a Dreamworks production, and he was well aware of its harmful content, especially on minors. Furthermore, he injects his stupid subjectivities into every plot, and his movies are overrated. I don't give a rat's ass about any of his past or future projects.

Hey, I don't see Haggar's entry anywhere! Oh well, I guess that means the site owner is a hardcore Spielberg fan. But yeah... Spielberg never really impressed me. All credit for his successful films goes to the creative special effect teams, key grips and so on. And yeah, come to think of it, Spielberg does seem kind of hateful of Italians. He's a real jerkoff if you really take a good look.

Re: McDonogh and Spielberg. If it happens, great. But great movie on McDonogh already exists. See www.thenextindustrialrevolution.org
Definitely the most hopeful and practical ilm out there, and better than Inconvenient Truth. And it's linked on McDonogh's website.