For Earth Day: A New Series About Climate Change

Posted on April 13, 2014 at 3:59 pm

Some people do not believe scientists or the global community, who are united in the warnings about climate change. Maybe they will believe celebrities. That’s the idea behind this series, “The Years of Living Dangerously.” It premieres tonight on Showtime and the first episode is available below. Harrison Ford, Don Cheadle, and others visit ordinary Americans living with heatwaves and drought and interview scientists about the human causes of climate change.

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Environment/Green Television

Celebrate Earth Day With These Great Movies

Posted on April 22, 2013 at 8:00 am

In addition to previously recommended Earth Day movies, take a look at these gorgeous documentaries about the creatures with whom we share this great planet:

1. March of the Penguins This worldwide sensation takes us to Antarctica, where these elegant birds triumph over brutal cold to protect their fragile eggs and tender chicks.

2. Flow: For Love of Water Our most precious natural resource and the threats from corporations, governments, and our own short-sightedness.

3. Winged Migration Soar with the birds in this breathtaking film.

4. Microcosmos The tiny creatures of the insect world are explored in mesmerizing close-up.

5. Born to Be Wild Rescue efforts for elephants and orangutans are heartwarming and inspiring in this beautifully filmed real-life story.

Jennifer Merin has a great list of Earth Day documentaries, too.

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More about Fracking: Gasland

Posted on January 4, 2013 at 3:59 pm

This week’s release of “Promised Land,” with Matt Damon and Frances McDormand as representatives of a natural gas extraction company trying to persuade residents of a farm community to permit drilling, should inspire viewers to find out more about the controversial practice of “fracking.” You can watch the 2010 documentary, Gasland, online.

And there are a number of books on the subject like Shale Gas: The Promise and the Peril, this progress report from EPA, and this report from the United States Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources as well as a fascinating episode of This American Life.

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Documentary Environment/Green

Scholastic is Selling Coal Power — to Children

Posted on May 11, 2011 at 2:34 pm

The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood reports that esteemed publisher Scholastic is sending out “teaching materials” to schools that amounts to a commercial for coal power. The coal industry, through the American Coal Foundation, has hired Scholastic to produce The United States of Energy, sent to tens of thousands of 4th grade classrooms around the country. CCFC says:

Teachers are told that the curriculum aligns with national standards because it teaches children the advantages and disadvantages of different types of energy. But while the lessons do extol the advantages of coal, they fail to mention a single disadvantage. Nothing about the Appalachian mountains chopped down to get at coal seams. Nothing about the poisons released when coal is burned. Nothing about the fact that burning coal is the single biggest contributor to human-created greenhouse gases.

Schools should teach fully and honestly about coal and other forms of energy. However, the materials produced by Scholastic are not genuinely educational; they are industry PR.

With budget cuts and inadequate resources, it is tempting to take advantage of these kinds of “free” materials created with industry support. But schools should not present commercial material as a part of the curriculum — unless it is to teach children how to separate advocacy from objective, balanced information. To protest this slanted information masquerading as a book and degradation of the Scholastic imprint, write to Scholastic CEO Richard Robinson.

Oceans

Posted on October 19, 2010 at 8:00 am

Forget about “Star Wars” and “Aliens” — there are creatures living beneath the waves on this very planet that are far weirder and more exotic than anything Hollywood has conjured up.
Huge, swooping creatures with bright speckles; shape transforming beasts that pounce and gobble up crabs; gelatinous monsters that glow; all this and more is captured in “Oceans,” from Disneynature.
The documentary is accompanied by a narration by Pierce Brosnan which sometimes gets overly flowery, but at its best adds an element of poetry to help young audiences understand that there is a larger significance to the images they are seeing. “Oceans” also offers a message of concern about pollution and the environment (appropriate for its Earth Day release). But the star of “Oceans” is clearly not the words but the pictures, and they are worth the price of admission many times over.
Scenes of the predatory side of ocean life are kept to a minimum, and are usually shot from a tasteful distance. There are cute moments — a sea otter floating on it back in the sunshine at Monterey bay keeps a rock on its stomach, to use in cracking open the shellfish it gobbles up– and tender moments– an ugly mother walrus sweetly nuzzles her even uglier baby walrus, or a mother seal coaxing her baby into the water for the first time. The cameras of directors/writers Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud do a good job of conveying the vast range of the ocean, by contrasting the powerful crashing of immense waves in a storm with quiet glimpses of delicate life forms suspended in the tranquil depths; they contrast huge whales with tiny one celled creatures.

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