Upon realising her generation won’t have a future unless the world’s politicians act now on climate change, 15-year-old Greta Thunberg skipped school in August 2018 to protest outside the Swedish parliament. What started as a one person strike soon gained global momentum. We follow Greta and the organisers of the school strikes for climate as they are cementing a worldwide movement ahead of their first global protest that took place on March 15th, 2019. It was the biggest climate strike in history with up to 1.6 million students in more than 125 countries.
Facing the climate change urgency, a large part of the youth chose civil desobedience and action. The fascinating account, in immersion, of an unprecedented rallying.
The Salton Sea: An inland ocean of massive fish kills, rotting resorts, and 120 degree nights located just minutes from urban Southern California. This film details the rise and fall of the Salton Sea, from its heyday as the "California Riviera" where boaters and Beach Boys mingled in paradise to its present state of decaying, forgotten ecological disaster.
At the heart of the Moroccan High Atlas mountains, water is a resource in short supply. The village of Tizi N'Oucheg has undergone a transformation thanks to Rachid Mandili, who is well-aware that the development of his village depends on access to clean water and on his strong leadership of this project. Mandili rallies all the villagers together and calls upon the knowledge of French and Moroccan scientists to tap water sources, to purify, and reuse waste water for irrigation. The documentary highlights the Berbers' community ties and ingenuity in their dream of independently managing their village water resources. It equally paints a portrait of a man whose initiative and resourcefulness has opened Tizi N'Oucheg up to modernity while still conserving its cultural heritage. Tizi's example presents some of the problems of water access in semi-arid regions and puts forward concrete solutions to these problems.
NGC visualizes in spectacular HD the devastating ecological impact each single degree increase in temperature could have on our planet over the next century.
In Fabrizio Terranova’s film, Donna Haraway – an original thinker and activist, one of the founders of cyberfeminism and the author of A Cyborg Manifesto, which proposed a number of innovative theories about the existence of scientific knowledge – calls for the abandonment of the idea of human exceptionalism and for a conception of the world as complex web of interconnections between people, animals and machines. Jellyfish can be seen flying around her home while she discusses the stories that are necessary for Earth’s preservation and reads her fantastic tale of the art of survival on a broken planet, and of fusion and care between the species.
As the most dammed, dibbed, and diverted river in the world struggles to support thirty million people and the peace-keeping agreement known as the Colorado River Pact reaches its limits, WATERSHED introduces hope. Can we meet the needs of a growing population in the face of rising temperatures and lower rainfall in an already arid land? Can we find harmony amongst the competing interests of cities, agriculture, industry, recreation, wildlife, and indigenous communities with rights to the water? Sweeping through seven U.S. and two Mexican states, the Colorado River is a lifeline to expanding populations and booming urban centers that demand water for drinking, sanitation and energy generation. And with 70% of the rivers’ water supporting agriculture, the river already runs dry before it reaches its natural end at the Gulf of California. Unless action is taken, the river will continue its retreat – a potentially catastrophic scenario for the millions who depend on it.
The rarely seen lives of an Arctic tribe who try to continue to honor their way of life 80 miles above the Arctic Circle on a fragile barrier island disappearing due to climate change.
Pilot JP Schulze and filmmaker Louis Cole set off to circumnavigate the world in a single-engine, 1974 Cessna T210L airplane named Balloo. They had 90 days to complete the journey, and as they traveled they met people from many different cultures and asked them - is what divides us greater than what brings us together?
Every day our changing climate pushes us closer to an environmental catastrophe, but for most the problem is easy to ignore. David Hallquist, a Vermont utility executive, has made it his mission to take on one of the largest contributors of this global crisis-our electric grid. But when his son Derek tries to tell his father's story, the film is soon derailed by a staggering family secret, one that forces Derek and David to turn their attention toward a much more personal struggle, one that can no longer be ignored. - Written by Aaron Woolf
This short film follows an intoxicated character's journey through the mystery, beauty and eeriness of his environment.
Chemical engineer and inventor Maria Telkes worked for nearly 50 years to harness the power of the sun, designing and building the world's first successful solar-heated modern residence and identifying a new chemical that could store solar heat like a battery. Telkes was undercut and thwarted by her (male) boss and colleagues at MIT, but she persevered. Upon her death in 1995 Telkes held more than 20 patents, and now she is recognized as a visionary pioneer in the field of sustainable energy whose work continues to shape how we power our lives today.
Dzerzhinsk, a Russian city 240 miles east of Moscow, is considered the most chemically polluted town on Earth. Factories producing industrial chemicals (and in Soviet times, chemical weapons) employ a quarter of the 300,000 residents in a city where life expectancy has fallen to 42-47 years, the death rate is 2.6 times higher than the birth rate, and the men are close to impotence. Reporter Tim Samuels recorded a series of in-depth interviews with the inhabitants of Dzerzhinsk for the Correspondent strand, revealing what life is like for the beleaguered populace.
Dr Helen Czerski delves into the Horizon archive to chart the transformation of a little-known theory into one of the greatest scientific undertakings in history.
Exploring the impact of human behavior on our environment from the perspective of one of South Florida's most beloved and fragile underwater creatures: the sea turtle. A critical look at the effects of global warming, water pollution, and our "throw-away" plastic lifestyle on this keystone species...and inevitably ourselves.
Climate change is among the world’s greatest challenges. As a small Caribbean island, Cuba is disproportionately affected by climate change through extreme weather events. Up to 10% of Cuban territory could be submerged by the end of the century, wiping out coastal towns, polluting water supplies, destroying agricultural lands and forcing one million people to relocate. Finding solutions is now essential. In this documentary, Dr Helen Yaffe goes to Cuba to find out about ‘Tarea Vida’ (Life Task), a long-term state plan to protect the population, environment and the economy from climate change. The Cuban approach combines environmental science, natural solutions and community participation in strategies for adaptation and mitigation. Produced by DaniFilms with Dr Helen Yaffe from the University of Glasgow for the COP26 conference in Glasgow.
Presenter Hannah Fry reveals how much our planet can change in just a single day and how these daily changes are essential to our existence.
Peter Westerveld, artist and visionary, doesn’t want institutions to resolve the problems linked to earth’s problems. Growing up in Africa, he witnessed the advance of the desert and dedicated himself to finding solutions for the ongoing erosion and desertification of the land. The film follows Peter and the NGO working with him to realise his project; to build contour trenches that capture and store rain water under the surface and replenish the desert land.
A decade on from its triple core meltdown, we take stock of the mammoth task of decommissioning the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, an undertaking fraught with both technical and social challenges. The Japanese government maintains the process will take up to 40 years, but the schedule has already been revised 5 times, with pivotal elements postponed. Meanwhile, as people return to their homes in surrounding areas, disposal of unprecedented volumes of radioactive waste has become a point of contention between residents and the government. We look back on the 10 years since the nuclear disaster and explore the choices that will shape Fukushima's future.