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Home
Tonight we watched Yann Arthus-Bertrand's astonishing movie Home, which a couple of weeks ago was released simultaneously all over the world to cinemas, on DVD, on YouTube, to various free download sites, etc.; you can go watch a fairly hi-res version at the movie's home-site here or download it (assuming you have the requisite software) here.*
The description on the latter site, and on Wikipedia, is quite seriously misleading in that it understates the movie. This is so very much more than a film "almost entirely composed of aerial shots of various places around Earth, taken in over 50 countries in the process. It shows the diversity of life on Earth and how humanity is threatening the ecological balance of the planet". Although Home is often an amazingly beautiful movie -- sometimes so lovely it's hard not to weep -- what it really is is an unspeakably stark warning about the hair-thin proximity to the precipice we've allowed our technology and our greed and our stupidity and our sheer numbers to bring us. I would say this is a far better movie, and certainly a far more visually extraordinary one, than An Inconvenient Truth.
There are particular categories of people who, it immediately occurred to Pam and myself, should be urgently recommended to watch Home.
First, of course, there are the incumbents of the Senate and House -- and White House. Some of them probably will take the trouble to see it. Most, I suspect, will be too incompetent and/or stupid and/or mendacious and/or ideologically hogtied to do so -- or maybe just too bloody lazy to give a flying whatsit about the near-incomprehensible levels of human suffering this century will almost certainly witness even if we start changing our ways pronto.
As an example of the urgency here, we have approximately a decade -- unless we take strong action now -- before the Siberian permafrost melts sufficiently to start releasing into the atmosphere the huge stores of methane gas imprisoned beneath it. Methane is an even fiercer greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. As the movie makes plain, the effect of such an enormous release will be to alter radically the very nature of the planet we live on.
A second category of people who should see this movie urgently is the young. And here there's something even more depressing than the witless Inhofes and the scientifically challenged Jindalls. Many and perhaps most schools in this country would not dare show Home to the kids, because its arguments are scientifically based and consequently assume such items as the antiquity of the earth, the interconnectedness of all lifeforms including ourselves, and of course human evolution; its makers quite rightly don't waste time pussyfooting around with imbecilities like young-earth creationism. Since the US is still the most powerful nation in the world, the importance of educating its youth in the concerns of this movie cannot be underestimated; yet the self-indulgent fantasies of the willfully ignorant are going to make that vital piece of education impossible in so many parts of the land.
So much for my random thoughts. Home is a wonderful movie, and an important one, and you can watch it for nothing in the privacy of your own home. Do so. Please.
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Footnote: *I think you can download it directly from iTunes, but I'm resistant to all of the spyware lurking in the software Apple insists you install in order to go that route.
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It is, indeed, a nightmare. And in the meantime the Inhofes of our Congress are wasting time so that we all have to listen to their ignorant, egocentric, narcissistic bullshit. I get very angry.
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She may find the scene of the factory farm disturbing -- nothing gory, just a bit ghastly.
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(Anonymous) 2009-06-23 03:13 pm (UTC)(link)I have plenty of friends who will also be very interested
John
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Glad to've been of help!
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I'll need to watch this, even though I already know what our species has done and is still doing to this beautiful planet. Do you remember the term "Demiurge" from any of your research over the years? It's a gnostic term for a false god which mankind has created . . . I think the term is applicable to the destruction we have wreaked on the earth. The Demiurge does not, metaphorically speaking, love the earth.
I will forward the Home link to my son and family.
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I understand your demiurge analogy only too well!
I hope your son and family (and of course yourself) enjoy the movie. Seems strange to use the term "enjoy" when so much of what it's saying is grim (despite the last few, finally optimistic minutes), yet there is much to enjoy here.
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