FilmAnnotation3

Max Scheder Kim Fortun Sustainability Problems 10/04/2010 Annotation: Six Degrees Could Change the World

The movie, __Six Degrees Could Change the World__ by Rob Bowman is a 2008 film on climate change. The movie claims that the world is heating up and goes through the problems that the earth will face as the average temperature rises. It is a call for action film and pushes us towards solutions to the problem. The movie covers acknowledges that there is more to solving global warming that is on the surface. They go into depth with the cheeseburger situation and look at how large of a carbon footprint one cheeseburger has. What the movie doesn't do though is look even further and calculate in the carbon footprint that the customer creates from driving to get the burger or from the company's advertisement for the burger. The movie also offers wind power as part of the solution for global warming but they do not consider that windmills cannot store energy over night and that they need wind to generate power. The movie contained a lot of arguments for global warming's existence and for why we should care. Some of their arguments were better than others. The part of the movie covering bush and wildfires was especially compelling to me. Although some may argue that the argue relied on ones pathos too much since I live near areas affected by wildfires it was an effective argument. Their arguments about the ocean becoming more acidic and the coral reefs dying were the other arguments that stood out for me. I enjoy scuba diving and have seen first hand what reefs look like before and after a bleaching. The largest argument that stood out for me was their claim that America would turn into a desert. If it were only humans that would be effected it wouldn't be too bad. But with the locations of arid and fertile climate zones changing there would he mass extinctions in areas that changed climate too rapidly for the animals to adapt to. Climate change will not be the end of fertile and gentle climates. The locations of these climates will just be in other places than they are now. Sure it will cause challenges, but It is a heart wrenching sight. Other arguments were not as strong. The movie tried linking Hurricane Katrina with global warming but immediately afterwards stated that there is no evidence that connects the two together. This movie covered almost solely what I already knew about global warming and climate change. For that reason I see this film's audience as freshman and sophmores in highschool. The film is a more basic level of education about what is going on with our climate today. It is more of an introductory movie to the concept of climate change and is very broad in it's scope. Therefore I feel as though its audience base could be expanded further to older people who are simply less aware about climate change than I am. I feel like this movie was a little too intense and graphic (especially the scene with the dads staying behind to protect their homes from the wildfire) for younger audiences. The solutions that the movie offered were very generic and basic solutions. Use flourescent lights, use alternative energy sources, drive more efficient cars. As well as a more unique solution, stopping “vampire” energy leaks. I have heard of this solution before, but I don't see it as much as the other solutions mentioned in the film. This involves unplugging appliances because even though they may not be turned on, the fact that they are plugged into the wall means that they will still drain small amounts of energy. Although it is only tiny amounts they can add up over time creating a lot of waste energy. The movie does not go deep into the matrix of problems that their solutions bring about. This is probably because they wanted to keep the movie more simple for their audience. Because I knew the least amount about the “vampire” energy leaks I decided to do some research in the area. As it turns out vampire energy leaks cost American consumers over $3 billion annually. If you own a product long enough, like a microwave or a TV, they will end up using more energy from being plugged in and turned off then from them actually being used. According to UC Berkley America uses 26% of the world's power about 5% of which is from vampire power. The most basic solution to fighting this is to unplug ones electronics when they are not in use. An idea I had was adding switches to houses, next to light switches, that turn off the flow of power to that room. Therefore when one leaves the room you don't have to worry about vampire energy being used.

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