August
29
Inconvenient Clarification for 11th Hour Docu?
[Posted by Peter Debruge]
I have a hard enough time keeping up with arguments about whether carbs are going to kill me that the arguments and counter-arguments featured in all these sky-is-falling environmental documentaries, such as Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and Leonardo DiCaprio's The 11th Hour, are starting to drive me crazy. The latest salvo, from Greenpeace co-founder Dr. Patrick Moore (who calls Hour "another example of anti-forestry scare tactics"):
Rather than cutting fewer trees and using less wood, DiCaprio and Berman ought to promote the growth of more trees and the use of more wood. ...There is a misconception that cutting down an old tree will result in a net release of carbon. Yet wooden furniture made in the Elizabethan era still holds the carbon fixed hundreds of years ago.
Berman, a veteran of the forestry protest movement, should by now have learned that young forests outperform old growth in carbon sequestration.
It's worth noting that Moore isn't contradicting the movie's alarm over global climate change (as these films' harsher critics have), just clarifying the strategies we need to fight it. For me, the movie that really conveyed the scale of how humans are changing the earth is a terrific documentary, Manufactured Landscapes, that's flown largely under the radar all summer. Though not political per se, the film is more reflective (rather than reactive) as photographer Edward Burtinsky records the profound effect industrialization has on our environment (particularly in China, which is repeating today many of the mistakes Western culture made more than a century ago).
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With all due respect to efforts made to protect our environment from preventable mistakes, it is truly unbelievable how proponents of the THEORY of evolution are now proclaiming as TRUTH that man is in control of the destruction of this planet. It speaks of tremendous arrogance from people who cannot account for clouds or acurately predict the weather, or for that matter cure the common cold.
There are notable scientists on the other side of this shrieking, fatalistic mantra about the melting caps, etc., but because of the notoriety and big bucks behind those who are pushing this agenda, few are listening.
Ultimately, the One who created it will destroy it and make a new one.
Posted by: Nicole | August 30, 2007 at 01:36 PM
The countless essential advantages that come from the complex ecosystem of an old-growth forest that has evolved since the Pleistocene can never, ever, in this year or the next 2000 years, be replaced by planting rows of mono-specied pine trees.
Posted by: seenmyverite? | September 07, 2007 at 04:15 PM
11th Hour has an especially interesting special feature, "Nature's Operating Instructions" ... apparently there is some amazing technology built into nature, a lot there that we should use as a model for our own technology
Posted by: patrick | May 27, 2008 at 11:03 AM