Dicaprio's 11th Hour Features Real Environmental Superstars
by Olivia Zaleski, New York City, USA on 08. 7.07
Two weeks ago, fellow Treehugger George Spyros and I had the opportunity to catch a sneak preview of Leonardo Dicaprio’s The 11th Hour. Organized by Project Greenhouse, the screening was appropriately held outdoors and under the stars at Marders, an organic nursery in Long Island. The film’s mantra, “Consume Less Live More.” Ironically, an adjacent shopping center blared signage for Gap, Yankee Candle Co, and T.J. Maxx.
A reference to the very last moment when change is possible, The 11th Hour, explores humanity’s past, present, and future: how we came to meet this desperate tipping point, how we live and impact our earth’s ecosystems, and what we must do to ensure a worthwhile future.
The film is a collection of vivid imagery accompanied by commentary and meditation from an impressive collection of political leaders, designers, and visionaries—a proverbial team of environmental rock stars. Cast members include former Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev, scientist Stephen Hawking, and sustainable design authority William McDonough . . . to name a few. In total, the film features 50 independent voices, bringing expertise, experience, and emotion to the crisis at hand. Their words are informative, powerful, and inspiring—perhaps some of the great quotes of our time. For more on the film, the cast of experts and their words, jump to the next page.
The 11th Hour is essentially a film about man’s relationship to earth. Filmmakers and sisters Nadia and Leila Conners (Global Warning, Water Planet) gathered an impressive range of credible voices to speak to the history and future of the human species. The cast of experts includes scientists, designers, historians, advocates, psychologists, and thinkers.
“The big rupture came in the 1800s, with the steam engine, the fossil fuel age, the industrial revolution,” says Nathan Gardels, author, editor and Media Fellow of the World Economic Forum. “This was a great rupture from earlier forms and rhythms of life, which were generally regenerative. What happened after the industrial revolution was that nature was converted to a resource and that resource was seen as, essentially, eternally abundant. This led to the idea, and the conception behind progress which is: limitless growth, limitless expansion.”
“Finding coal here, and little bit of oil there, and between that and the agricultural revolution, slowly our population crept up until we hit our fist one billion people,” says Thom Hartmann, a best-selling author and progressive radio talk show host. “It didn’t take us a hundred thousand years to go from one billion to two billion. Our second billion only took us a hundred and thirty years. We hit two billion people in 1930. Our third billion took only 30 years, 1960. It’s amazing when you think about it. When John Kennedy was inaugurated, there were half as many people on the planet as there are today.”
“As we go forward, with technology even more powerful than before, we have magnified the presence of the human race inside the ecology, therefore we can do vastly more damage with our technological prowess than we could before,” says Nathan Gardels. “And we have to be even more cautious.”
“Seventy countries in the world no longer have any intact or original forests,” comments Tzeporah Berman, Program Director for ForestEthics, “And here in the United States, ninety five percent of our old growth forests are already gone.”
Wangari Maathai, who won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the Green Belt Movement in Kenya, adds: “In my own part of the part of the world, I keep telling people, ‘Let us not cut trees irresponsibly. Let us not destroy especially the forested mountains. Because if you destroy the forests on these mountains, the rivers will stop flowing and the rains will become irregular and the crops will fail and you will die of hunger and starvation. Now the problem is, people don’t make those linkages.”
As humanity continues to detach itself from nature and we head further and further into the 11th hour, I strongly recommend you see this film. Bring your children too. Educate them on the problems they will inherit and the necessary solutions they will be forced to take on. I also encourage you to visit the film’s website for a full cast of experts and their fascinating and inspiring bios.
Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:
- HEAT Documentary Looks at Global Struggle to Reinvent Fossil Fuel Use
- Preview Hessnatur by Miguel Adrover's Spring 2009 Collection
- Saying Goodbye to Oscar Grimm, Leonardo Di Caprio Asks You to Vote, Green Thing Wallchart, and More
- Greenwash Watch: Pitney Bowes Chairman on the Benefits of Junk Mail
Consume Best, Live Better! ;-)
My Review
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