Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

Janis One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Francene Odetta It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

vailsy I found the final words in this documentary to be quite haunting.. where the speaker talks of 'the continuation' of humanity with a kind of glazed look in his eyes. If we do A, B and C then WE can survive When you boil it down and get to the essence, this is the problem in it's purist form. The likes of Stephen Hawkins also disappointingly express this argument.. we need to get to other planets if we are to maintain our survival. Isn't that point of view precisely what got us where we are? Did explorers not look out to sea thinking exactly the same thing? Going out and destroying multiple planets is the answer..So the super brains are just as disappointing to me as the bankers who they predictably criticize throughout for everything.. we have lots of artistic images of suited guys with briefcases drowning under lily pads, Chinese poor boys made good etc etc and the obvious comparisons to the Roman Empire and the Mayan's, even though our present day situation is infinitely different We are also treated to lots of middle class environmentalists, some of whom tried sustainable living (for a year).. no doubt in their expensive New York apartments which they already bought and paid for. They try sustainable living but are already sitting pretty, yet they are supposed to be role models for the rest of us. They are so humble that they can even compare themselves to apes and in doing so are thoroughly patronizing in my view.. to apes that is Just because you are self aware does not mean that you are not part of the problem. This documentary offers no practical solutions about how we can go about making this world a better place to live in for future life living on it... All species of life, not just humans This documentary reaffirmed to me that people on the right and the left are both the enemy.. the actively and passively greedy. The people that consume and the people that just sit there and observe, write books and make documentaries about itI saw just one person who is part of an environmental police force in Brazil that is actively out there actually trying to make a difference, something that needs to be done on a much wider scale. Otherwise I saw nothing here of interest

fitimh There are very many documentaries of this sort, where the goal of it is to convince the viewer of the message they're trying to convey. In so doing, we get a completely one sided argument, looking more as an indoctrination video, then as a informative source. But the message it tries to convey is so important, that every effort to bring this issue to the attention of the public, is needed if we're to avert a major catastrophe.The documentary starts by explaining how human nature is not designed to deal with the complexity of 21st century life. As the movie progresses it goes in more and more situations of how today's civilization (mainly the rich countries) is on a course to destroy our environment which may very well bring the end to our civilization.My main point of contention lies in the fact that the situation is presented as a scenario that requires total abandonment conventional approaches and when one is presented, the filmmakers present a counter argument based on nothing but an opinion. Having a science background I tend to look for supporting and opposing information for an issue before coming to a conclusion, whereas this movie presents only one sided biased point of view. Therein lies the problem, which is inherent of today's society, that is preventing any progress in developing a more sustainable way of life. Our society is completely ignorant of the dangers we're facing today, no matter how much one tries to inform, there seems to be a glitch with the way a human brain works that's renders it incapable to respond to pessimistic scenarios. Therefore if society is not willing to even wake up to the fact we're at a crossroads, its impossible for them to change completely the way of life the film is proposing. Whereas the film is not giving any room for any other solution then changing completely our way of life, there's other solutions.The film should have mentioned how the number of people earth could sustain, has increased where even in the 60's it was widely believed that the Earth could not sustain more then 4 billion. The very idea the movie dismissed (that of genetic engineering) has allowed for shift. Another issue I had a problem with is the issue with economics. It's true economics is not a science, but not because, as Dr. Suzuki puts it "view environmental impact as externality" but because economy is dependent on humans. Environmental concerns are constant, predictable, thus can be taken into account in a scientific sense. Human beings on the other hand, are unpredictable, reactionary, and utterly irrational, thus making any conclusions that would stand scientific inquiry impossible.This film is important because it can raise awareness, but fails on impartiality. So if a person with an opposing point of view, I believe will dismiss the whole thing as left wing propaganda, therefore it won't change anybodies misconceptions.

oodloveoo This movie has all the same diatribes that you've heard a zillion times. Capitalism is evil seems to be the unmentioned theme of the movie. The earth is dying and China is about to consume everything, run for you life. So if you're in the mood for some self hate, check this movie out right now. They have been saying that the world is overpopulated and will run out of food forever. Next thing you know its 20 years later and we still haven't run out of food and the population is larger than what they thought. Obviously, because these people never seem to factor in technological advances. Doom and gloom without any positive information. The world is going to hell in a hand-basket and its all your fault! Unless you think like they do and still go around consuming and creating garbage.

ALB This liberal feel-good (or feel-bad) documentary, adapted from a book by Ronald Wright, makes the case that our society is a kind of bubble that may soon burst. Specifically, Wright argues that modern humans have fallen into a "progress trap." As with ancient hunters who became so adept at slaughtering mammoths that they killed off the source of their wealth, we have become so adept at exploiting natural resources that we are exceeding the capacity of Earth to regenerate them. He gives 1980 as the date when we began to do this on a global scale, although the film echoes people like Population Bomb author Paul Ehrlich, whose warnings of catastrophe began 40 years ago and proved, at least, premature. It's not quite clear why 1980 is the key date, but perhaps it's not coincidental that that's when Ronald Reagan was elected. That's also when the United States began to experience an increasing concentration of wealth that continues. The film implies, not entirely correctly, that this is a phenomenon everywhere. Economist Michael Hudson links wealth concentration to the fall of the Roman Empire and says "that's what's threatening to bring in the Dark Ages again."Only the fiercest anti-environmentalists would deny that the explosive growth in output and wasteful use of resources in the last decades brings challenges with it. But to declare, as the film does, that a phenomenon that has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty in Asia since 1980s is a "failed experiment" is at best premature and overstated. Geneticist David Suzuki broadly criticize economics, which is "not a science," for ignoring pollution and other societal costs. "Economists call these externalities…that's nuts." However, plenty of economists, including Nobel Prize-winner Paul Krugman, have written about the problems of externalities. Suzuki seems to disparage the profession for having created the very term. Repeatedly, the documentary argues by such assertion, rather than proof, wielding very little empirical data. A detour to Brazil provides some detail about deforestation, but, generally, I longed for more specificity.To be fair, proving such a bold thesis is well beyond the purview of a feature-length documentary. Wright's book, which I have not read, dwells more on past civilizations than our current one. Given that it's far easier to explain the past than predict the future, perhaps the directors, Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks, should have followed that path. Alternately, they might have deeply delved into some specific areas where the negative effects of human activity are undeniable. There's a lot of talent on hand here—the talking heads include Jane Goodall, Stephen and Hawking, and authors Robert Wright and Margaret Atwood—and building a film around any one of them might have been better than giving each a few sound bites. One participant, writer-engineer Colin Beavan, actually made his own film about his and his wife's experiment in non-consumption. Though based on a gimmick, Beavan's No Impact Man: The Documentary nonetheless seriously grapples with the idea of conservation in a more concrete (and entertaining) way.The positives of the film include some nifty time-lapse simulations and the opening and closing segments, in which gorillas trying to solve a logic problem. (This sort of ties into the idea that our brains have not evolved too far beyond that of apes, so we're lousy at anticipating long-term consequences.) But the most worthwhile portion of the documentary is the one about solutions, which includes the expected warnings (by Beavan and others) about the need to conserve but also interviews with geneticists, notably Craig Ventner, about the possibility of generating artificial organisms to repair damage or even improve upon human physiology. Like everything else here, it's quite speculative, but since the turf is less familiar, also fascinating.