The 11th Hour

Finally saw this film this week. Thought it was quite good - not necessarily the most flashy and entertaining film on the subject, but rather packed with lots of experts and information. I liked it for that: it was more like a text book on the subject in which you can go back again & again for research (like The Corporation.) There was lots of quips and quotes I can draw from the film but perhaps the most memorable included those on the legal definition of nature: it is not 'person' in the eyes of the law and therefore has not 'rights', but is rather seen as property. Now it's a tricky area to get into assigning nature legal rights - but perhaps the time has come ensue some legal means to protecting the environment. Not sure how that would happen - I'm no legal expert - but when you look at the great social movements of the past, in particular the abolition of slavery and the woman's suffrage movement the major breakthroughs occurred when people (ie. women and slaves) were no longer seen as property under the law but as persons. Nature is currently de-personified and is abused as property. Like the legal definitions that created and empowered the corporation in our world (with help from government) perhaps nature should be recognized in a different legal light - other than property.

David Suzuki had some interesting quotes in this film, in particular to the case of the economy being a sub-system of ecology. It seems whenever environmental protection action is proposed opponents cite the economy as the most important thing in the world and that it will suffer. In the film it was figured out how much the dollar worth of the services nature does for humanity in cleaning the air, soil fertility, water management, etc. The dollar figure was 35 trillion dollars for services rendered per year. The total worth of the global economy in one year is about 16 trillion dollars. That puts things in perspective.

In all the first 3/4 of the film is pretty depressing - environmental doom & gloom but the end does go into solutions and showcases the intellect & technology that can make a huge difference if humanity chooses to act soon. Once again it seems that it is our governments, acting at the behest of corporations, that are stalling and standing in the way of progress.