Earth Movies! \”Witness: To The Last Drop\” and \”A Fierce Green Fire\”

The era we live in now has been renamed the \”Anthropocene\” because humans have changed the earth so completely, changing not just temperatures, and weather, but whether a species lives or dies and reshaping the land. Our filmmakers have kept a close eye on those changes. In the last few years we\’ve seen some incredible movies on climate and environment.

Chasing Ice

The Island President

The Last Mountain

If  A Tree Falls…

Gasland

and way back when, An Inconvenient Truth (2006)

I don\’t recommend watching these with your kids until you screen them first. Be ready to discuss the scary and unacceptable ways we humans have exploited and ruined so much of the earth. It would be easy to try to defend human behavior to our kids, or explain away the immoral and outrageous attack on our own essential planetary systems as \”necessary and unavoidable\”, but not take the next harder step of opening the door to a more vital conversation about the world as we humans have shaped it and what we must do differently now. Right now. Watching these movies makes me crazy, and leaves me ready to take action, which is exactly the point, to finish the movie feeling like there is no way to sit still on the sofa, to feel compelled to make a change. As Dr. Seuss says at the end of The Lorax, \”UNLESS. Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot…\”

Do you remember the end of The Lorax?

\”Witness: To The Last Drop\” The Canadian Tar Sands in Alberta has to be seen to be believed. The scope is unimaginable. Once you see it, you will never forget how our neighbor to the north is decimating the boreal forests to supply us with cheap oil. This movie notice comes from a friend at a 350 strategy session who wants to make a difference reducing our carbon footprint. I can\’t think of an easier way to accomplish that goal than witnessing a  meaningful movie in the neighborhood, a movie that makes you want to do anything to stop buying gasoline!

WALLINGFORD MEANINGFUL MOVIES PRESENTS: \”Witness: To the Last Drop\” The Alberta tar sands are now the world’s largest construction project. Its further expansion will have an estimated $1.7 Trillion impact on the Canadian economy over the coming decades. An area of the ancient Boreal forest the size of Greece will be affected by the open pit mine. The effects on climate is calculated to be disastrous. Pollution is extensive with toxic chemicals affecting every aspect of the environment. Air & Water laden with a litany of chemicals flow downwind and downstream. The XL pipeline will extend the damage further.

FREE! – Open to the Public www.meaningfulmovies.org …donations kindly accepted. Discussion afterwards.

Fri, MAR 29, 7:00PM
Keystone Congregational Church
5019 Keystone Place N., Seattle
1/2 Block N of NE 50th; 1 block E of Meridian. Metro Bus 16, 26 & 44

If you can\’t make it out Friday night, you can watch the movie online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDDb1iTw6pQ

Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You…

A FIERCE GREEN FIRE: The Battle for a Living Planet is the first big-picture exploration of the environmental movement – grassroots and global activism spanning fifty years from conservation to climate change. Directed and written by Mark Kitchell, Academy Award-nominated director of Berkeley in the Sixties, and narrated by Robert Redford, Ashley Judd, Van Jones, Isabel Allende and Meryl Streep, the film premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2012, has won acclaim at festivals around the world, and in 2013 begins theatrical release as well as educational distribution and use by environmental groups and grassroots activists.

A FIERCE GREEN FIRE chronicles the largest movement of the 20th century and one of the keys to the 21st. It brings together all the major parts of environmentalism and connects them. It focuses on activism, people fighting to save their homes, their lives, the future – and succeeding against all odds.

\”A Fierce Green Fire\” OPENS APRIL 5th in Seattle. See the schedule for your city\’s opening date.