Tonkel+11th+Hour

1. The 11th hour directed by Leila Conners Petersen and Nadia Conners and released in August of 2007. 2. The main message of this film is that our planet cannot sustain life if humans continue to exploit nature’s resources and do not change our patterns of consumption. The documentary goes through many global problems and how they are interconnected. 3. The film addresses many sustainable issues: sustainable use of natural resources, sustainable consumption, sustainable design of products and buildings and manufacturing procedures, a sustainable view of economy and the sustainability of our culture and lifestyles. 4. The film had a few very compelling small facts that bring out the intensity of our problems. For example, to completely replace what nature does for our environment would require 32 trillion dollars per year. All the economies of the world combined only have 18 trillion dollars a year. Nature does twice as much work as the economy and all for free. This was so compelling because so many people today view the economy as more important than the environment. Many see it as being a great force for increasing society’s quality of life, but without nature there would be no economy. The other major issue the film addresses is over population. There is a great analogy of oil be ancient sunlight and how now everything we make is subsidized by this ancient sunlight so that we don’t ever really pay the full price. From there the expert goes on to say that living the way we currently do and using only natural sunlight, and not oil, the earth could only sustain about 1 billion people. This is a very terrifying fact because I interpret it as saying that unless we drastically change our ways that 5 billion people will have to die. Lastly this is not project for 100 years from now it is in 20 years, 50 at most. It all has to change in our lifetime. (not a tech issue) 5. I found it very difficult to not be convinced by any part of this movie. There were so many different experts that the director brought in that it made everything that was mentioned feel very credible. If I had to pick one portion of the film that I was the least compelled by it would have to be when previous year’s disasters, such as hurricane Katrina, are attributed to global warming. I do believe the severity of the particular hurricane increased due to global warming but natural disasters have been occurring long before global warming. However, with the recent earthquakes in Haiti and now in Chile that spawn tsunamis in Hawaii, it is very hard to ignore the signs. 6. One of the best aspects of this film for me was that it addressed so many environmental issues and tried to tie each of them to each other. The film doesn’t get to spend a large amount of time on any one issue and leaves it up to the viewer to further research the particular issues that strike him or her on their own. The one of the two issues I found very interesting and would like to research further would be the technology that can be implemented in homes and other buildings to make them much more self sufficient. The other that is also a very technological issue is the way we create our materials for building. One of the experts talked about how we create steel the exact opposite of how nature does it and that we need to start looking towards bio-mimicry to develop our materials. A great example of this would be how the spider makes its web. This web which is much stronger than any human made thread is created without expending huge sums of energy to heat the material to thousands of degrees in order to strengthen it. It uses chemical reactions and the proteins in its body and diet. 7. I think everyone should see this film; it is done very well and will resonate in the hearts of anyone who cares about their future generations. I do believe is offers the most enlightenment for older generations who are not currently in school because there is so much information to be discovered that will shock them. Also, today’s adults are constantly worrying about money and the economy, which is not a terrible thing, but this film does a good job at trying to show how without nature the economy wouldn’t exist. Secondly, this film is also directed at the younger generations like myself that are going to be those in charge of making changes and decisions that will drastically change our planet. 8. The main point of action the film suggests is simple. Do anything you can to help, the problem is so severe and spans across so many sectors that no one plan or change will fix it. It does suggest a few paths of action in all directions. These would include changing public policy, bio-mimicry and efficiency, but mostly the film stresses changing the way our culture see the planet from an unlimited resource. There are two things in this world, you’re either a person or your property of a person, and that way of thinking has to change. Nature deserves respect and should not be owned by any one person but should be shared amongst all of its inhabitants. 9. One of the hardest parts about the film was that it had so many great little facts that are incredibly hard to remember. One of the best things this film could do to enhance its educational value would be to have a printable list of the most compelling facts that it covered. I know that I actually watched this film twice and still can only recall ten or so compelling facts. Usually people don’t have the opportunity or time to watch something twice and this way each listed fact would spark five or so more when they reflect back on the film.