TalkClimateChange

The 15^th of February 2008 will see the release of “The 11^th Hour” in cinemas across the US. Produced and narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, the movie tells the story of mankind’s wanton disregard for our planet and outlines the tragedy and consequence of our actions.

We didn’t want to like this film. We fully expected to mock its ill-founded claims, hyped-up statements and glaring scientific inaccuracies. We were almost looking forward to writing a scathing piece about Gulfstream environmentalist actors and Champagne socialists.

Ok, we haven’t seen the film yet, so we might change our minds, but judging by the pre-release information we are beginning to think that we are going to like it.

We’ve discovered that DiCaprio - a fully solar powered celebrity who shuns private jets in favour of commercial services - makes some well crafted statements that we find hard to disagree with, even in our most cynical moments.

The film describes how since the dawn of the industrial revolution our civilisation has become progressively disengaged from nature. Generally regenerative practices which relied on what we could grow, hunt or rear have been replaced by industrial processes which use nature as a resource - a resource which has been seen as generally limitless.

This problem has been exasperated by explosive growth in population. Thom Hartmann, a best-selling author quoted in the film says:

“Slowly our population crept up until we hit our first one billion people. It didn’t take us a hundred thousand years to go from one billion to two billion. Our second billion only took us 130 years. We hit 2bn 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.”

We find it hard to argue with these statements and have to agree that whilst the industrial revolution has been a good thing, many of our practices are not indefinitely sustainable.

Of course, Leonardo loses it a bit at the end where he advocates an impossible and utopian solution involving a complete redesign of our lives replacing fossil fuels with renewables and the implementation of technology to remove 90% of our carbon emissions. However, let’s remember that it’s a film, and its job is to inspire action rather than dampen enthusiasm (that’s our job).

So, for now we say “Well done Leonardo”.

We know that many of our readers may not feel the same way, and can’t wait to hear your views here, and on the forum.