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Friday, July 5, 2013

The 11th Hour (2007) [PG] ****



Imagine Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance meets Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. We're shown a series of disturbing images interspersed with a series of scientific talking heads, all reciting facts and statistics, and expressing amazement at our collective ignorance. Much of The 11th Hour is similar to programming regularly seen on the Discovery Channel or the National Geographic Channel. As a result, this film is unlikely to change many minds, or compel those in the corridors of political and economic power in Washington and New York to take forceful action. Corporations, the symbols of our greed, have an unbounded, limitless appetite for growth in a bounded, limited natural world; and in the world of globalization, the U.S. government exists to support U.S. multinational corporations.

Thus, we continue to treat the Earth as our property, her mountains and plains, lakes and rivers, forests and oceans, fish and wildlife as resources to be harvested, clear cut, drilled, strip mined, polluted and despoiled as we choose. If we do not reject the growth model and embrace the sustainability model, our exponential growth will be followed by a devastating crash. And how many of our nearly seven billion will be left alive... one billion? And what will our planet be like? Will it be the lovely blue-green pearl we presently inhabit, or an arid, toxic wasteland? Most of us are still in denial; we cannot imagine how much we could all lose. But, after we've destroyed our biosphere and ourselves, what was unimaginable will have become obvious. Unfortunately, for our children and our grandchildren, it will be much too late. Sadly, we don't seem to care, possibly because most of us are focused on the past and the present; it is hard for us to plan for the future. And by the time our grandchildren are adults... most of us will have passed away. 

Label: climate-change, documentary, environment, prophetic

Internet Movie Database 7.3/10
Metacritic 63/100
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=65, viewers=74)

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