Cinema Politica-Earth Keepers

Tonight I went to Concordia's Cinema Politica to watch Earth Keepers. You can view the trailer at the site at the Earth Keepers site on NFB.ca
 

It was a really good documentary. Instead of being a doom and gloom type film about how we are destroying the earth, they tried to show us that we should have hope. They packed a lot of cool interviews with people into 83 minutes. I learned a lot.


Most intriguingly that Sweden has cities that are called "Eco Villages". They showed an example of one place where the McDonalds had a "green" roof and some how the used the grease from the fryers to supply energy for the Ford garage next door! It was pretty neat. Also in Sweden, at one of their Universities, they have a Masters Program that is made specifically to teach people how to become leaders in Sustainability. In the class they showed in the film, there are students from 20 different countries. It was inspiring to see that young people, all around the world are interested in the same thing.

Another thing that was pretty interesting was the question of if overpopulation is the cause of all the problems we have right now. They showed a graph of fertility versus quality of life. When quality of life was low, fertility was the highest and when quality of life was high, fertility was low. Someone suggested that if the rich people/countries started to try and help improve the lives of those with a low quality of life they would be helping out drastically with the amount of children being born.


There was so much information that I have to digest...


The main point that I could take away from this film is that we have to work together. We have to join up with like minded people to make changes in our local environment for it to spill out into the world in general. Multiple people in the film stated that my generation will be the ones to make this happen and that the years 2010-2020 are going to be important years for this change. We have to find ways to move forward to make a sustainable future.


"We need to enlighten people to live by their own means"


"Change happens when there is a balance between despair and hope"