Wednesday, January 25 at 7:30 pm

Climate Refugees

by Michael Nash

There is a new phenomenon in the global arena called “Climate Refugees.”  A climate refugee is a person displaced by climatically induced environmental disasters.  Such disasters result from incremental and rapid ecological change, resulting in increased droughts, desertification, sea level rise, and the more frequent occurrence of extreme weather events such as hurricanes, cyclones, fires, mass flooding, and tornadoes.  All this is causing mass global migration and border conflicts.  For the first time, the Pentagon now considers climate change a national security risk and the term climate wars is being talked about in war-room like environments in Washington D.C.

To make his film, filmmaker Michael Nash visited nearly 50 countries in about 18 months to interview politicians, scientists, health workers, and victims of floods, cyclones, hurricanes, and droughts.  His film shows how people all around the world are already grappling with the social, economic, and environmental effects of climate change.  His conclusion is that major changes in climate are causing vast numbers of people to abandon their jobs, homes, and countries to seek better lives elsewhere, or simply to survive.  He poses a basic question:  What will become of the millions of people whose lack of access to food and clean water leads them to take increasingly desperate measures?   What type of strains will huge migration put on resources in more developed countries?  Whatever is causing the climate to change, people still have to deal with islands going under water and people running out of food.  The film shows how our new green values of sustainability are as economic and social as they are environmental.  And Michael Nash also interviews prominent leaders from the U.S. and elsewhere to point out that solutions — particularly in energy transformations — are possible and within our reach.

http://www.climaterefugees.com/

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Wednesday, January 11 at 7:30 pm

Stormageddon

Why Extreme Weather Is Hitting Us Today

by National Geographic Channel

Historic snows and bitter cold across North America;  massive floods in Australia and Pakistan;  deadly mudslides in Brazil;  epic drought and wildfires in Russia;  2010 was one of the most destructive years in human history — one of the worst years for extreme weather and one of the most expensive.  And 2011 is following in its footsteps, or perhaps, its flood waters.  National Geographic presents the dramatic images of this catastrophic weather year — and introduces the people who risked their lives to capture them on film.  National Geographic Channel’s program, Explorer, looks at some of the worst such weather and also the surprising cause behind much of it:  water, too much water.  All precipitation starts in the ocean with gaseous water vapor providing fuel for storms.  The sun transforms water into vapor, which increases first heat and then evaporation, with energy building up in the atmosphere, which further increases the potential for more extreme weather.  Water vapor is the most efficient transmitter of solar power, increasing energy steadily as we can see when looking back:  9 out of 10 of the hottest years on record have happened since 2002.  Nineteen nations set new record high temperatures.  2010 was also the wettest year on record.

In a single hurricane, the condensation of water vapor produces 200 times the energy of the total electrical production of the entire world.  Then, a storm surge brings its extra destructive power. Surge is important because of the oceans rising.  Thermal expansion is what happens when the water warms.  It expands, increasing evaporation and then vapor, and the ocean then rises, covering low-lying areas like Bangladesh for example.  It has been a difficult decade and there is worse to come.  Increased sea levels lead to increased severe storms, hurricanes, and destructive storm surges — all the result of a gradual warming of the planet, global warming.  It is easy to forget that the largest amount of greenhouse gas is water vapor, not carbon dioxide, even though the latter is a big contributor as well.

http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/news-stormageddon

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Wednesday, December 28 at 7:30 pm

The Private Life of Plants

Episode I:  Traveling

by David Attenborough

This first Episode looks at how plants are able to move.  The bramble is an aggressive example:  it advances forcefully from side to side and, once settled on its course, there is little that can stand in its way.  An altogether faster species is the birdcage plant, which inhabits Californian sand dunes.  When its location becomes exposed, it shifts at great speed to another one with the assistance of wind — and it is this that allows many forms of vegetation to distribute their seeds.  While not strictly a plant, the spores of fungi are also spread in a similar fashion.  One of the most successful (and intricate) flowers to use the wind is the dandelion, whose seeds travel with the aid of “parachutes.”  They are needed to travel miles away from their parents, who are too densely packed to allow any new arrivals.  Trees have the advantage of height to send their seeds further, and the cottonwood is shown as a specialist in this regard.  The humidity of the tropical rainforest creates transportation problems, and the liana is one plant whose seeds are aerodynamic “gliders.”  Some, such as those of the sycamore, take the form of “helicopters,” while others, such as the squirting cucumber release their seeds by “exploding.”  Water is also a widely used method of propulsion.  However, most plants use living couriers, whether they be dogs, humans, and other primates, ants, or birds, etc., and to that end, they use color and smell to signify when they are ripe for picking.

This amazing film utilizes time-lapse sequences extensively in order to grant insights that would otherwise be impossible.  Plants live on a different time scale, and even though their life is highly complex and often surprising, most of it is invisible to humans unless events that happen over months or even years are shown within seconds.

Like many traditional wildlife documentaries, this film makes use of almost no computer animation.  The mechanisms of evolution are taught transparently by showing the advantages of various types of plant behavior in action.  The adaptations are often complex, as it becomes clear that the environment to which plants must adapt comprises not just soil, water, and weather, but also other plants, fungi, insects, and other animals, and even humans.  This film shows that co-operative strategies are often much more effective than predatory ones, as these often lead to the prey developing methods of self-defense — from plants growing spikes to insects learning to recognize mimicry.

http://www.bbcearth.com/programmes/the-private-life-of-plants/

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Saturday and Sunday, August 20 and 21

The Third Annual Oshun Festival

Produced by Tammy Webb

Saturday at 6:30 pm

The Oshun festival is a festive, community cultural gathering.  It is also a time to express serious reverence for Oshun, the Yoruban goddess of love and sweet or fresh waters (as opposed to salt water).  The “Emese” are messengers of the African diaspora.  Fresh water is in short supply today.  The Emese community will screen the film Flow: For Love of Water this evening to show some of the causes and ramifications of the scarcity of fresh water.  This eye-opening film, directed by Irena Salina, investigates the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century:  the world water crisis.  After the film, special guest community leaders will open the space for a roundtable conversation and join everyone to talk about the role of the orisha community and artists in protecting the environment.  Food will be available to snack on.

In this important film, Director Irena Salina builds a case against the growing privatization of the world’s dwindling fresh water supply with an unflinching focus on politics, pollution, human rights, and the emergence of a domineering world water cartel.  Interviews with scientists and activists intelligently reveal the rapidly building crisis, at both the global and human scale, and the film introduces many of the governmental and corporate culprits behind the water grab, while begging the question: “Can anyone really own water?”  Beyond identifying the problem, this film also gives us a look at the people and institutions providing practical solutions to the water crisis and those developing new technologies, which are fast becoming blueprints for a successful global and economic turnaround.

Sunday at 12:30 pm

It is that time of year to celebrate the many manifestations of Oshun.  The Emese are continuing their festival this afternoon to honor the mother of fresh and sweet waters:  “Omi Tutu,” mother of Oshun.  Daughters of the fresh waters and the sacred groves invite everyone to join them in community to celebrate this 3rd Annual Oshun Festival honoring: “Omi Tutu.”  Everyone will experience healing prayers, sacred stories, songs, dance, food, vendors, and more.  Special activities for the children will be provided.  This is definitely a family affair!  This year’s festival will look at Iya Lode as manifested as fresh cool water.  This year there will be singing for Eggun and singing and dancing for Oshun.   The community is invited to lift their voices with spoken word and prayers to Iya Lode, and host a community market place.

$5 Donations Accepted

http://www.emesemotad.com/

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Wednesday, April 27 at 7:30 pm

Gasland

by Josh Fox

We may think of natural gas as a clean burning fuel.  Gasland gives us the inside story of “clean.”  Natural gas is not a clean energy, and if this is our bridge fuel, we aren’t going far.  It’s another dirty fossil fuel that creates massive amounts of toxic and radioactive waste for which industry has no plan.  They are spreading this waste on our farmland, dumping it in streams and ditches and burying it in fields.  The water use is simply not sustainable and our surface and groundwater is being contaminated.  A scarcity of clean water is one of the greatest problems in arid western states, so pumping millions of gallons of water underground to retrieve natural gas is a huge concern, not to mention water contamination.  The emissions make natural gas worse for the climate than coal!  This film Gasland could be as significant as Silent Spring.  It is surely one of the best eco-documentaries ever made.

Rising demand for natural gas has drillers looking to less easily-recoverable sources.  A new process called “hydraulic fracturing” is being used by companies like Cabot Oil and Gas and Chesapeake Energy to extract natural gas that is bound up in the rock of a geologic formation called the Marcellus Shale, which stretches from New York and Pennsylvania through West Virginia, Ohio, and into eastern Kentucky and Tennessee.  The natural gas drilling industry uses a new technology called hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” that causes groundwater pollution and other grave environmental damage.   From unregulated air pollution to poisoned wells to ear-splitting round-the-clock noise to muddied streams to wildlife and fish kills, large swaths of the United States are getting fracked.  “Fracking” injects enormous quantities of water and a witches brew of toxic chemicals including benzene and glycol ethers, under extremely high pressure to break up the underground shale formation, releasing the natural gas from the rock.  The gas is then pumped to the surface where it is processed, compressed, and then piped away.  Some of the water and toxic chemicals used to fracture the shale are pumped back to the surface, and stored in open pits.  Thanks to the “Halliburton Loophole” passed in 2005 during the Bush-Cheney administration, natural gas drilling is exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act.

Fracking is underground.  On ground level, this incredible film highlights the nightmare scenario of what is really happening to our lands.  It is as if America were taken over by evil aliens, intent on sucking the earth dry, regardless of the consequences to the planet — or to humanity.  It’s really happening and it’s worse than anyone can imagine.  Josh Fox has filmed it all, venturing out into the small towns of America and actually speaking to regular citizens who are now paying the ultimate price for “clean” gas drilling with permanent health effects, including brain damage, chronic respiratory conditions, and many other serious conditions.  Their land is worthless, their water undrinkable.  The now famous scene where the tap water actually bursts into flame is just the tip of the iceburg.  The epidemic of fracking now taking place in America is worse than any disease we’ve ever encountered.  It destroys our water, our air, our animals, our vegetation (including farm crops), our livestock, our health and our lives.  Fracking is the destructive power of exploding nuclear power plants times fifty.

http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/

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Wednesday, April  13  at 7:30 pm

Coal Country

by Mari-Lynn Evans and Phylis Geller

Passions are running high in the mountains of Appalachia.  Families and communities are deeply split over what is being done to the land of West Virginia by Big Coal, the coal mining corporations now practicing mountain top removal.  This is the latest form of strip mining where coal companies blast the tops off mountains and run the debris into valleys and streams.  Appalachian streams feed the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.  So these waters, too, are being poisoned by West Virginia mining operations.   After getting the coal from the exposed seams of coal after blasting off a mountain top, the coal companies transport it to processing plants.  Using mountain top removal and completely disregarding the waste products of mining coal, at these plants, coal is mined more cheaply than ever, and so America is still heavily dependent on coal just as it is on cheap oil.  Coal is the source for half of America’s energy.  But the air and water are filled with chemicals and an ancient mountain range is disappearing forever.

This is the story of coal.  But see this film for the human stories as well.  Learn about the devastation that is taking place in the lives of people who live in Appalachia.  And so many other poor creatures, from the creatures in the rivers and streams to the bear and deer in mountain forests have died because of mountain top removal.  Miners themselves have suffered and died working on these mines, and of course, virtually all of the area has physically been destroyed.  There is no other place on earth that has suffered like the mountain-top-removal-demolished mountains of Appalachia.  This film shows the devastation wrought on the people and the land of southern West Virginia.  It is devastation on a monstrous scale and most Americans are  probably not aware of the extent of it.

http://www.coalcountrythemovie.com/

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Wednesday, April  6 at 7:30 pm

Crude:  The Real Price of Oil

by Joe Berlinger

This is a film about the famous class-action lawsuit involving Big Oil and the indigenous people of Ecuador –  some 30,000 indigenous people of Ecuador vs. Chevron.  The Texaco/Chevron oil corporation was drilling for oil in the pristine jungles of the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador from the 1960s to the 1990s.  Big Oil always wants to make a fast buck — so it actually prefers drilling for oil in rainforests in the most economic way:  the water contained in the crude oil is simply spilled into the rivers and streams, without any preliminary treatment.  The gas is burned, since this is considered to be “cheaper” than conducting it to an end user.  The result is that the water, the soil, and the air are contaminated, poisoning the people living in the area, and producing cancers on a massive scale. By the time Texaco/Chevron was kicked out of Ecuador in the 1990s, the corporation had left behind in the Ecudorean forests hundreds of toxic waste pits, many of which were designed to drain polluted water into nearby rivers and streams.  Many of those poisonous waste pits have remained open for years, despite the fact that poor people in the Amazon forest region live near these rivers and streams and depend on them to live.  In this eye-opening film you can see scientists and lawyers for Big Oil look the camera straight in the eye and lie about the toxic effects of petroleum drilling and dumping in the environment.  At the same time you can see indigenous Amazonian tribes struggling to hold on to what little they have left in the “dead zones” of the Amazon rainforest where Chevron/Texaco once ruled supreme and see the strength of these people as they seek to stay alive in their traditional homes without getting poisoned on a daily basis by oil and petroleum waste.

This film is a David and Goliath story told through interviews with both the corporate lawyers and the indigenous people.  It shows the indigenous hero, Pablo Fajardo, and his lawyers on one side, and the coporate lawyers and scientists for Chevron on the other.  The indigenous people tell their own story in their own words from their own homes in the Amazon tropical rainforest.  These people are indeed poor but before Texaco/Chevron contaminated their world, they had everything they needed to live a simple life abundant with gifts from nature.   Pablo Fajardo is a humble man from a fiscally poor but morally wealthy family taking on one of the most complicated cases in history and coming out ahead.

This film could easily have been made in Colombia (Uwa), or in Nigeria (Ogoni), and in many other places where Big Oil has done its devastation.  Ecuador was fortunate to elect a President who cannot be bought off so that this lawsuit involving Texaco/Chevron was not a slam dunk in its favor.

http://www.crudethemovie.com/

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Wednesday, March 16 at 7:30 pm

A Crude Awakening:  The Oil Crash

by Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack

All of the major energy experts including M. King Hubbert are interviewed in this film.  Just about every conceivable concept related to the world’s energy use, past, present, and future, along with great comments regarding the various alternative possibilities (solar, wind, nuclear, hydrogen, etc.), are illustrated in this film.  Oil is depicted as a “miracle elixir”  –  an incredibly efficient energy source so cheap it has transformed human civilization and makes it possible for us to sustain a global population of nearly 7 billion people (and projected to reach ten billion this century).

Yet in the big picture the “oil age” will be remembered as a mere 200-300 year “blip” in human history  –  a brief orgy of cheap energy.  This is a limited commodity and when gone we are unlikely to have a good replacement.  Alternate energy sources lack oil’s cheap abundance and efficiency.   If we convert to nuclear on a global scale, in addition to hazards of waste disposal, we will shortly deplete the earth’s uranium.  Solar and wind power are simply inadequate to the task of replacing petroleum.   Hydrogen and ethanol are expensive and require petroleum to produce.  Much is made of discovering more reserves and expanded production, but these are being absorbed by huge new markets in Asia and Africa and so they merely accelerate our dash toward depletion.  The U.S. alone uses nearly 21 million barrels of oil per day.   This volume is equal to the flow of water over the Niagara Falls in 19 minutes.  This kind of volume is obviously unsustainable for very long, as is our human population now in overshoot.  We must do what we can to ward off a cataclysmic implosion of the world’s seven to ten billion human population.

Most people today are concentrated in vast urban areas which produce no food and little water.  Food must be shipped into cities 24/7 via truck, rail, and air on a massive scale.  When that becomes economically unfeasible, a few local farmer’s markets will not fix it.   Starvation, disease, and local militias could run rampant until populations are reduced to economically sustainable local levels.  Already catastrophes related to oil have gone down  –  the megadeath in Iraq, the propping up of dictators, the oil production waste sites in Nigeria and Ecuador, and so on.  We must discover our power as consumers, investors, citizen advocates, conservationists, activists, socially responsible entrepreneurs, organic farmers and gardeners, and so forth, and make our way towards a world that would be not only sustainable, but a lot more fun.

This alarming film shows just how oil permeates so much of our lives in the products we buy and the way we live.  Our lives depend on oil not only for energy.  All the plastic is made from oil.  The food we eat depends on oil for fertilizers, pesticides, and of course for the fuel to drive tractors, etc.  In fact the “green revolution” that made it possible to feed billions more on the same (or comparable) arable surface as in the 1950′s depends on the availability of cheap oil.   There is still no energy source as cheap or as compact as oil (in terms of energy per gallon — for instance it takes 50% more ethanol than gasoline, by volume, to run a car).  We will soon begin to produce less oil, helpless to meet demand.  Cover-ups of reserve declines by many oil producing nations, a lack of viable alternatives, and a lack of time to make an effective transition ring the alarm bell loudly.  But there is a positive side to oil depletion that this film does not mention:  a new oil-free world should help with the global warming.

http://www.oilcrashmovie.com/

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Wednesday, March 9 at 7:30 pm

Collapse

by National Geographic Channel

This National Geographic Channel documentary about the collapse of civilizations is based primarily on Jared Diamond’s and Joseph Tainter’s monumental scientific works on this subject.  Nat Geo, following Diamond and Tainter, talks of the upcoming collapse of our own civilization not just to be negatively sensational but to make a straight forward comparison between our current society and that of the Romans, Aztecs, Anasazi, and others.  Nat Geo reminds us that we have been burning ancient sunlight  –  oil and coal  –  for 120 years with little regard for the limits of these resources or the consequences of burning them.  Nat Geo includes interviews with Jared Diamond and Joseph Tainter — major collapse scholars — and James Howard Kunstler in this film to add to its scientific authenticity.

Today it is well to remember older civilizations that collapsed because their civilizations, like ours, were unsustainable.  The Roman civilization, for example, as well as the City of Phoenix of the Aztecs overshot the earth’s carrying capacity for them.  They depleted their resources, including water.  Politics and short-term decisions trumped long-term sustainability considerations.  War and territorial expansion took priority over food, sustainable living, and even health!  This film tells us that, as a species, we humans are genetically equipped to deal with short-term crises, but unable to plan ahead for long-term needs and limits.  The film shows that each culture left a footprint of its short-term thinking in denial of climate change, food, water limitations, and transportation constraints.

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/collapse-based-on-the-book-by-jared-diamond-4436/Overview#tab-Overview

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Wednesday, February 18 at 7:00 pm

END:CIV Resist or Die

by Franklin Lopez

– appearing in person

This amazing film examines our culture’s addiction to systematic violence and environmental exploitation, and probes the resulting epidemic of poisoned landscapes and shell-shocked nations. But it’s more than a film. It’s a movement. You can feel the anger and the urgency in every scene. The film takes you on a whirlwind ride of emotion as you view the destruction that civilization has caused to the Earth and humanity. Even though most of this film may be old information for those of us who keep on top of social, economic, political, environmental, and ecological collapse, the way it’s presented is so visceral that it will feed your inner revolutionary. After watching this film, you may immediately want to get out and fight the capitalist system that’s causing so much suffering and death in the world. The film calls on us to act as if we truly love this land. It’s so invigorating to see the opinions of direct action activists finally put on the screen. There is no walking on eggs in this movie. It doesn’t hide the fact that violence must be used to stop these out-of-control political systems from killing us all. This film does an amazing job at putting forth some of the key arguments of Derrick Jensen’s End Game. Derrick Jensen famously says: “If your homeland was invaded by aliens who cut down the forests, poisoned the water and air, and contaminated the food supply, would you resist?” Everyone should see this film and join the movement to end the tyranny that is civiLIEzation.

$10 donations are accepted

http://submedia.tv/endciv/

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