11th Hour Reflection

The post-apocalyptic subject in the film industry is an area that often thrives at the box office. People thoroughly enjoy watching movies that exhibit Earth’s tarnished environment and humans’ last means of survival. At one point of time or another, the scenes in these once fictional movies may come true with the way humans are abusing the planet. Elizabeth Kolbert’s novel, The Sixth Extinction, discusses the five major causes of mass extinction. She alludes human existence as the cause of the next mass extinction. The author cites established chemist, Paul Crutzen, claiming “we are no longer in the Holocene; we are in the Anthropocene” (Kolbert 108). The Anthropocene is human dominated epoch that is disrupting other species’ existence. Of

This movie explores issues of greed, human relationships, betrayal and redemption, personal innocence and responsibility as well as the effects on the human mind

“The End of Nature,” by Bill McKibben is a startling book of non-fiction depicting the future in store for the environment and humans. His somber yet hopeful approach allows readers to sense the real intensity of this situation of mass environmental changes whilst remaining expectant of the advancements in the

It encourages human beings to see themselves as part of the ecological system and to be one with nature. It questions the hierarchies of empires and of the human and natural world itself, suggesting that we must learn to love and transcend with the natural world, instead of seeking domination over it.

The “Rise of ecology” was a very interesting and mind refreshing documentary film depicting the 10 different disasters that have devastated our planet. This documentary was a good teachable moment for us to take the necessary measure to ensure the safety of the citizens and the planet. The film also emphasized that we should minimize the amount to pollution that we release in to our atmosphere. We see that its always the people who suffer at the hands of major corporations who are just hungry for profits. The film mentions that these major corporations take the consequences of catastrophic events lightly. They do everything they can to increase the profits even at the expense of their own workers. The movie “Pandora” which I recently watched shares a lot of similarities to the documentary film “Rise of ecology” in a way that took me by a surprise. The movie tells a story of how human error came to cause the malfunction of a nuclear power plant causing the nation to go in to panic mode. The movie starts in an interesting way, a flashback where the main character and his friends were just children making assumptions of what the new mysterious development in their town was all about. Some of the kids responded by saying that the nuclear reactor plant was a rice cooker, another a robot and finally the little girl responded by saying that her teacher told her that “it was a box and that if it was open they would all be in trouble”.

Unlike the two stories we read in class, everyone struggles for survival, the naturalism idea in the movie is represented by people’s lust and greed, the desire for dominance of pleasure. People do whatever possible to gain those things.

The film is not only able to show the way humanity has lost contact with nature but also how much they appreciate and want it back in their society.

In a world that we, as humans, have begun to destroy and shape for the worse, there is still so much that we are oblivious to. From the illegal endangered animal trade to harmful CO2 and methane, Racing Extinction has revealed to both myself and society the constantly ticking clock that is Earth.

justice system on the black community. The film opens with the harrowing statics spoken by

I find the aspect of buying what one desires versus what one needs very compelling especially today. As a society, we buy may more things than we need, and per the documentary we have Edward Bernays to thank for that. It is a great thing for the economy, but it is an attempt to fix our problems through buying unnecessary items. Something else I found very interesting is the views on democracy presented in the documentary. I have always believed it to be an active citizenship type of government like President Hoover envisioned; however, I can see how many people are simply passive consumers like Bernays thought. This passive leads to a power in big business and politicians because they can play off our irrational yet predictable

Due to modern-day industrial activities, environmental issues continue to occur including, accelerated sea level rise and longer, more intense heat waves. Unfortunately, however, for the past decade scientists have been warning the public of climate change but have hardly made any progress to express the urgency of the matter, all of which was discussed in the 2006 documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Subsequently, the world has fallen short on implementing serious industrial change. On the contrary, the trailer for “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power”, published by Paramount Pictures under the direction of Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk, effectively convinces its audience to watch the documentary by conveying the devastating effects of

According to scientific research, the average temperature of the earth has risen by between ten and twenty degrees Celsius (M.L. Weitzman, 2008). These high temperatures could well be described as a ‘recipe for disaster’, and could produce results that would be catastrophic on a global scale. What is more alarming however, is that there is already a lot of evidence of predicted results of climate change, for instance, in Australia especially, severe draughts have been common in farming areas in the last few decades, there has been an increase of intense and extreme weather events, for example floods, flash floods, tsunamis, earthquakes and tornados, almost all of the natural disasters listed have occurred for ‘unknown’ reasons in the past few years. Rises in sea water level and temperature due to higher acid levels caused by global warming, threaten the existence of species and in some areas, entire eco-systems resulting in the loss of natural biodiversity. ‘Climate change is pushing the world to the verge of environmental and economic collapse, whether global deniers want to believe it or not’ (N. Klein, 2011).

“A Letter from the Future” by Richard Heinberg describes to readers of a not too distant future (2101) an Earth in which its resources have been squandered and is facing an irreversible environmental meltdown caused by human’s greediness and mismanagement. Heinberg writes from the future to try and educate past civilization on what is happening in the future and how if their actions don’t change in how they treat their natural resources their future will irrefutably be destroyed for all mankind. Heinberg wrote this letter in order to explain just how dangerously high our current use of resources are and how it will impact the future.

We as a society have reached one of the most crucial time periods in the history of our world. Due to the way we have used the resources on this earth we have created a situation in which our climate is drastically changing. The burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil has caused gases like carbon dioxide to become trapped in the atmosphere causing a natural greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect has caused the earth’s average temperature to rise and has resulted in arctic glaciers melting. These glaciers had gases trapped inside them that are now being released into the atmosphere further raising the earth's temperature. Due to the way we are polluting our air we have caused global warming. This global warming has caused stronger natural disasters such as hurricanes and wildfires putting our society in more danger than ever before.

As globalization continues and the earth’s natural processes transform local problems into international issues, few societies are being left untouched by major environmental problems like flooding, global warming, strange death of humans and animals, loss of biodiversity among others. This outcome of the global environmental disasters have produces a bloodstone to the