The 11th Hour

Since I watched this film at the start of the summer, I've been wanting to write a comment or review on it. The film surprised me, in a positive way. It doesn't shy away from the complexity of the themes which it opens up, and overall treats the issues without excessive poignancy, drama or simplification.

The way the film is put together, like many other documentaries, involves Various strands of narratives being juxtaposed, ideas from commentators, scientists, sociologists, philosophers, etc. But without there being a clear, single message overall (unlike the Inconvenient Truth, if my memory serves at all). All the contributors are intelligent people, they just don't seem to be able to agree with one another which gives the film somewhat of a schizophrenic feel and perhaps a slight lack of coherence because of the number of different angles presented.It leaves the viewer coming away with more questions than answers and a few uneasy contradictions to ponder. But that's no bad thing.

The really beautiful and inspiring thing about the film is that it reminds us we should be in a permanent state of awe at the planet. Not just at the world as a whole, but also the most seemingly mundane everyday details like our own bodies which are, I dont want to say masterpieces or miracles to avoid straying anywhere near creationist lingo, but you know what I mean.One commentator takes a moment to express his wonderment at the millions of simultaneous processes going on every split second inside our own bodies, something I think it's worth remembering every so often.

But this film is a long, long way from creationism and that's one of the things I liked most about it. It extolls the reassuring continuity of existence, the sheer beauty of evolution. And, for example, presents something like extinction as fundamentally natural, and an integral part of that process, far from being a failure of the system. I think this is where the film's superior strength really lies, as a celebration of evolution.The idea that life goes on whatever happens, and how wonderful that is.

The other thing I like about the film is its breadth of scope, its ambition. Not so much about asking people to turn the red light off as calling for a full-scale paradigm shift, and being upfront about the fact that nothing short of that is going to turn things around.

We need a shift from "Well-having" to "wellbeing" says Nathan Gardels, we need to change the object of desire, putting welfare as the objective, rather than growth. In other words, we need a cultural transformation, a shift in the way our culture interacts with the environment.

It's useful to be reminded of just how superficial and tenuous are the doctrines which regiment our lives and systems of belief. Our expectations are growing with the resources are not. The economy can be regarded as a subsystem, while the parent-system (the biosphere) doesn't grow (again that wonderful constancy). This failure to see the linkages, the arrogance of it, are fundamentally short-sighted, it is as if one floats above the other rather than being embedded within it, completely dependant on it. More evidence of that disconnect that now exists between us and our environment.

Another commentator describes what we have currently as a waste-producing economy, in other words we are in a cycle of transforming resources into waste. In nature there is no waste, and so green design needs to find inspiration from natural processes (I beleive the term one lady has coined is "biomimicry").

Worth mentioning also is Thom Hartmann's "Ancient sunlight" notion to describe the energy we use which enables to sustain 10 billion people on the planet. In other words - we are seriously pushing our luck.

Some of those contradictions I mentioned:

- Will the earth regenerate itself or will it turn into a frozen wasteland like Venus forever? The predictions are contradictory.

- I was also not convinced by the initial footage of natural disasters which unfortunately is used to open the film (we'll indulge them and call it a necessary visual "accroche" device) alongside the claim that these are not just isolated events, even though the media portrays them as such (arguable). Are there more natural disasters or is there just more coverage?

- And a parallel question - are there more diseases or just too many people in the world? Are chemicals leading to cancer or are we just living longer?

Besides which, images of natural disasters used carelessly is seriously at risk of falling into unoriginal over-simplified scare-mongering. And it's certainly not unnatural, in fact chaos and upheaval are profoundly natural, as opposed to the pristine, fragile, perfect view of nature favoured by creationists and the wrong sort of conservationists.

If there is a overarching thread that runs through the entire film it seems to be that life is tenacious and adaptable, as a whole, but paradoxically individual elements within it (such as our own species) are intensely vulnerable. If we remain under the delusion that nature is fragile while we ourselves are invincible, we will fall into a trap that is quite literally as old as the hills.