Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Forum: The 11th Hour



"The 11th Hour," which is currently available via Google Video, is being screened today on campus by the English Department as part of the composition program's curriculum. Vanity Fair published excerpts from the 2007 film shortly before its release by Warner Independent Pictures. The Internet Movie Database (IMDB) also lists commentators featured, including David Suzuki (pictured above). With their help, a civic action website related to the documentary produced a time capsule for viewers to watch in 2100. You can view their messages here ahead of schedule, courtesy of YouTube:



Below this post, please leave a public comment of at least 100 words that directly quotes and paraphrases the remarks of two people featured in the film whom you find compelling. (Some of the remarks you quote should fall outside of the
Vanity Fair excerpts.) As with our previous forums, you can question, analyze, interpret, respond, compare, contrast, or elaborate, but try not to engage in outright argument. In constructing your comment, pay particular attention to the rhetorical situation: has the source text already been introduced? What kind of author tag seems most appropriate? Has another comment already addressed the substance of your comment? How might you respond to that previous comment?


How to comment: Click on this post's "comments," then compose your comment in the box provided, select "Name/URL" under "Comment as," click "Preview" to proofread your draft, and finally click "Post Comment." Since we're practicing commenting on a public forum, rather than selecting a username from an account (such as Google) that might not reflect your real name, please provide at least your first initial and last name under "Name/URL."

31 comments:

  1. In this documentary, I found the first person to speak, Kenny Ausubel, to be one of the more notable people of the film. "When we all talk about "saving the environment" in a way it's misstated because the environment is going to survive. We are the ones who may not survive. Or we may survive in a world we don't particularly wanna live in." At a later point when the film returns to him, he elaborates on the current state of humanity, of how we could reduce our carbon footprint by 90% with products we can buy in stores right now. Another notable person was Betsy Taylor, who decided to focus on the lifestyles that prohibit us from saving ourselves. She mentions consumerism, but surprisingly does not demonize it. Rather, she acknowledges it as a natural part of human behavior, but the current state of it in America is out of control.

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  2. “Creation is everything that we can see and probably a whole lot that we can’t. Probably more that we can’t see” (Oren Lyans). The earth is a precious commodity, something that we take for granted. In “The 11th Hour”, a movie about climate change and specifically about our impact on the earth and the damage that we have caused, we get to see just how feeble earth’s life really is. It is amazing that out of all the planets we got one to live on. There are so many things that make earth special “…like the earth has the right temperature and pressure to have lived with water” (Stephen Hawking).

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  3. “The Eleventh Hour” documentary, directed by Leonardo Dicaprio, expresses the opinions and thoughts of several individuals regarding global warming. Two people in particular caught my attention with their views, Thom Hartmann and Tom Linzey. Hartmann spoke of how the human race believes themselves to be “superior” to every other form of life and nature. I agree with this statement completely. We think we are the alpha dogs and came alter and dictate every aspect of our world; however, as Hartmann states, we are clearly wrong. We are equal with nature and one with every single life form. Our culture needs to interact with science and nature, says the speaker, and I believe he is right. As for Tom Linzey, he brought up a whole idea I never thought of before. He announces that we need to rewrite our Constitution, because our “Four Fathers didn’t know anything about global warming,” so how can we keep going off those laws. New laws need to be put into place so action gets taken. But why can’t we accomplish that much?

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  4. After watching "The 11th Hour" I felt as though the whole issue of Climate Change has been underrated. I feel as though the society is not taking it as the extreme issue that it is. What was nice about the documentary was how a lot of the experts featured not only told problems, but gave possible solutions from all aspects, ranging from individual action, all the way through to government intervention. David Suzuki helped but some feelings at ease when he said that "99.9999%" of life that has ever been here on Earth has been extinct. He goes on to tell that "Extinction is a natural part of life." With the projections of how many species will be extinct within this century, it was nice to know that extinction is not something new due to recent Carbon Emissions. One idea that spoke to me comes from William McDonough who asks "What would it be like to design a building like a tree? What would it be like to design a city like a forest?" What he points out is how trees take CO2 and give oxygen, how trees provide home to numerous amounts of species, how trees take in sun light at release life. He also asks the audience to spark wonder: "What would it be like if we took solar energy and converted it to productive and delightful use?" He asks this question knowing that we as the audience know that this is possible; I feel he asks this to get some type of positive reaction out of us.

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  5. After viewing the film "The Eleventh Hour" I am definately a lot more aware of my human impact on the earth. I would have to say one of the people that I really liked in the film was Thom Hartman. He had a lot of good information that I had never heard before. There something’s that I obviously knew but I had never made the connection. For example he said, "We used to only use sunlight as our energy, and when the sun went down we didn't have any energy." Thinking about this in perspective to today is kind of scary because we barely rely on sunlight now. He also made an interesting correlation with how now that we use other energy I population has grown immensely. I also really liked what David Suzuki had to say when he said, "We could pay thirty five trillion dollars a year to do what nature does for us for free." Basically we need to wake up and stop taking advantage of everything we have.

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  6. Trying to form a base expectation, I asked around to find out what others had thought of the movie getting a general response of… “It’s so boring, and biased, I almost fell asleep.” Hearing this I was expecting the worst, and in a way they were completely right. The movie is biased. It does not give the “global warming is fake” theory the time of day. The movie enlists various experts to pummel this idea into nothingness very early on in the screening. For example, Stephen Hawking, regarded by some as the most intelligent man in the world, makes an early appearance describing temperature change as being feared of reaching a “self sustaining level.” Action needs to be taken before the fate of the world’s environment leaves our control was one of his main points. Not for our benefit though, seemed to be the common consensus. It is not for the protection of nature that we work to stop climate change. Nature will survive; it is the human race that will be lost. The movie made a strong effort to humble us as viewers and at least for me, it worked. I found myself feeling incredibly humbled, feeling at the mercy of this earth and not the other way around (which I would guess was primary initiative in that time). After the close of the movie, I felt myself renewed with a purpose of activism.

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  7. Narrated by Leonardo Dicaprio, the “11th Hour” was an extremely eye-opening film that truly shows how humanity in itself is destroying our world without even knowing. Two particular quotes popped out to me in this movie, and both showed exactly why the global warming crisis is not being addressed properly or understood fully. According to Michel Gelobten, the way our world is set up is the government is responding to a higher power, and that higher power deals with wealth, money and corporate power. Gelobten states “Exxon Mobil, one oil company, is worth more than the sum of the value of all the auto companies…the higher power is the fossil fuel industry.” Now changing that factor is one of the biggest things blocking the solutions to our crisis. Herman Daly also noted that “the larger system is our biosphere, and the subsystem is the economy. The problem is the subsystem is geared for growth whereas the parent system doesn’t grow and stays the same size.” People just don’t understand that and we talk about renewable resources or scare resources, and the truth is, the resource that is the most limited is our environment, but most just don’t understand.

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  8. "The 11th Hour", narrarated by Leonardo Dicaprio, shows the very clear connection between humans and nature. When told that our cells are, "90 percent not human," by Paul Hawken, was astounding. It is something like that that does not just connect us to nature, but tells us we are nature. However there are some quotes that almost drive me to be a nihilist, such as the analogy that we were born at the end of Earth's life makes life feel close to pointless.

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  9. In The Eleventh hour, a movie of global warming and possible human extinction, Leonardo Dicaprio persuades the audience's emotions into a spiral of guilt and awe. Dicaprio talks about how " ecosystems are unraveling, industrial damage is continuing, and why are we not stoping it?" the growth of economics has an opposite effect on the environment. it's a matter of " theres too many of us using too much" (Richard Heinberg)and at the rate that fossil fuels are being emitted into the atmosphere, it is soon going to prove fatal. ultimately humanity will come to an end based on our own foolishness and ignorance if we don't rise up now and decide that we want something better for our children and for their children.

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  10. The Eleventh hour is a documentary about how humans have affectively changed the world we live in. Throughout this documentary there were several moving testimonies by scientists. I felt the quote that set a freighting tone for humanity was by (Kenny Ausubel) who said “we talk about saving the environment but it’s misspoken because the earth will survive. It’s humans that will be gone.” To me this quote was the more in your face then traditional environmental facts. It is also true that most people think that we are killing the environment while in reality we are spelling our own demise because it is us that are going to have to live in this destroy smog polluted world that we created. Forget not being able to see the national forests again, people should be motivated to recycle so that they can breath clean air in the future. Another quote that showed the massive impact that humans have was “We got here 15 min before midnight December 31st if the world were on a 12 month calendar” This by (Janine Benyus) showing us that we have only been on earth for a fraction of a second as far as time in the universe is concerned but in that time we have managed to hurt the world we live in so much that we are on a path of destruction. This was a great documentary to show that hazards that we have created, but it also offers hope, because in seeing this documentary makes you want to change hopefully that could be a start to a bright future.

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  11. The way humans live, is out of sync with nature. Jenine Benyus says, "The way we make things...through our industrial proccesses...it's one hundred and eighty degrees different than how life makes things." I agree, we produce so many unnatural things without opening our eyes and seeing how the very nature around us would make it. Nature naturally recycles, one man's trash is another mans treasure is an everday occurance. Our waste gas is carbon dioxide and we need oxygen to live, plants need carbon dioxide and their byproduct is oxygen. Nature is meant to be cyclical, we live as if there is nothing on this earth but humans. We need to begin to look to nature more to solve our problems, and think about the byproducts of our solutions.

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  12. The documentary the 11th Hour is a movie in which narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, and segments by numerous experts stress the rapidly increasing issue of climate change and environmental destruction. Bruce Mau states how "all of life is a design project today," and explains how people of the planet today must devote everything to saving what humans have destroyed if they want the human race to go on. Oren Lyons explains "the earth has all the time in the world, but we don’t," stressing that the planet will survive, but at this rate the condition it will become won’t sustain human life. All the experts in this movie come together and show how people need to know, do, and have a strong mindset that this current societies way of living will not do, and even states that if nothing drastic doesn’t change very soon, even 20-30 years could be too late.

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  13. In "The 11th Hour" multiple scientists were asked to discuss the causes and effects of global warming not only for Earth, but our species as well. Nathan Gardels said, "We don't know the future, we know the past part through Greek mythology. The kind of revenge of the gods or the revenge of nature. We're seeing that now already, after 200 years of the industrial revolution, we didn't know what we were creating, the damage that was being created. So as we go forward with technology even more powerful than before we have magnified the presence of the human race inside the ecology. Therefore we can do even more damage..." Also in the documentary the argument was made by Theo Colborn that not only are we putting planet Earth at risk by emitting multiple amounts of CO2, but our health as well. She discussed that she thinks disorders like autism, ADHD, childhood cancer, diabetes, epidemics of prostate and breast cancer can all be due "to [the] exposure to chemicals prior to birth could be contributing to these disturbing findings."

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  14. The movie "The 11th Hour" by Leonardo DiCaprio creates a powerful message, that entices its audience and paints a picture of the terrifying reality of climate change and global warming. In the moive, many perspectives are shown. However, there were two notible statements in the film that caught my attention. The first was by DiCaprio himself, he said "global civilization was created by human minds" to follw later, David Suzuki said "human mind is the key to survival...the human brain can effect the future, look ahead." these two statements put it into perspective, humans created this, and now we need to use our minds and create a cleaner, better world before it is too late.

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  15. "The 11th Hour" is a moving video that demonstrates the selfishness of humans in the 21st century. People today are more concerned with the economy and the way they live by a day to day basis. The future can be affected by what we do today, the problem being that we aren't contributing anything to the environment. Many years back with the beginning of the industrial revolution, humans had no idea about the damage we could do to harm the planet that is affecting us today. Technology since has become a vast part if our way of life. "It was the human mind that was the key to our very survival," said David Suzuki, "the human mind invented the concept of the future." Technology that we have created has become more dangerous. We are dependent on technology, keeping us from making any quick decisions or actions to stop climate change. We are not separated from nature, we as a society don't focus on the big problem we are facing today. The question we need to ask ourselves is if we enjoy living in happiness and do we love the planet we live in. Many people don't know what it means to be living in the 21st century. Its our job to create a world where we can live in harmony with society and nature, or we may cross a point in our lives where we loose control of climate change.

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  16. In the film the 11th Hour there are almost enough expert testaments to scare people into actually doing something about climate change. Wes Jackson said, “It's not just global warming. It's not just fossil-fuel dependency. It's not just soil erosion It's not just chemical contamination of our land and water. It's not just the population problem. And it's not just all of those. - The deterioration of the environment of our planet is an outward mirror of an inner condition. - Like inside, like outside. And that's a part of the Great Work.” This quote makes you realize how many problems there really are, and that these are all problems of a larger condition, our mindset. Probably the scariest part of the whole film came when Stephen Hawking declares that, “One of the most serious consequences of our actions is global warming brought about by rising levels of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. The danger is that the temperature increase might become self-sustaining if it has not done so already.” We always hear that it is not too late to turn the problem around, but Hawking suggest that the problem may be self sustaining. What if there is nothing we can do anymore?

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  17. In the documentary “The 11th Hour,” narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, many scientist, and authors give their views and opinions and facts about the relationship between man and nature, and the changing environment. The dire situation of our planet is stressed through the whole movie, and yet one quote in particular really stood out to me. Kenny Ausubel said “At the end of the day, when we all talk about saving the environment, in a way it’s misstated because the environment is going to survive. Were the ones who may not survive. Or we may survive in a world we don’t particularly want to live in.” I totally agree. The earth itself and our environment have gone through drastic climate changes before and survived, it’s always the organisms living at the time that die off. Another thought I found interesting was from David Suzuki, who stated “- I think it was the human mind basically, that threw us out of balance with the rest of nature. The tragedy is that it was the human mind that was the key to our survival… and our taking over the planet…But because the human mind invented the concept of a future, were the only animal on the planet that actually was able to recognize we could affect the future by what we do today.” Now we must use that knowledge and that concept of a future to protect not only our own species, but every species on this planet that we put at risk of early extinction.

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  18. The film The 11th Hour was quite a different film then I expected. I thought that if would be a typical documentary but instead uses scare tactics and violent images to try to make people care more about it than they already do. Leonardo Decaprio states that “The evidence is now clear, Industrial civilization has caused irreparable damage.” The movie definitely does a good job of conveying this by using countless no-name scientist, besides the lively Stephen Hawking, to tell us of how bad we are and all the damage we have done to the environment. Many of the scientists such as David Suzuki tell us over and over in this movie that we need to change. Unfortunately I did not feel so compelled to change after seeing the movie and instead felt an urge to help save the poor baby seal that the movie showed being bashed over the head by a garden hoe.

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  19. After watching the 11th Hour, there was one particular comment that made me stop and think. It was that as Dan Porter also commented on; "The environment will last, we won't." Kenny Ausubel stresses, " we are nature" , as humans we believe that we are superior to all other organisms in our home, even though we are as much part of the earth as all the other organisms are. Somewhere along the line in our brief past here on Earth, we have developed a false impression that nature is separate from us. The idea that what we have done is most likely permanent, rather irreversible as Hawking was already tagged for, is frightening for me to think that our one and only home may be gone one of these days. The screening was quite an eye-opener for me. I was aware of the climate issue, naturally since that's the class subject matter, but there was a lot of information I obtained that made me question some of the damages humans have incurred on our home, for instance, why are we continually letting whale wars happen?

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  20. The documentary, "The 11th Hour", was a big eye-opener. If anyone doubts global warming is real they should definitely view this film because it leaves no question in my mind that our climate is changing for the worst. I was astonished when Thom Hartmann was talking about how rapidly the human population is growing. It took "130 years to reach our second billion" and then only "thirty years to reach 3 billion people." This is all because of fossil fuels. As we all know our world thrives on oil, but we don't think about the consequences of using this resource. As Vijay Vaitheeswaran stated in the documentary, we don't think about the "externalities" of using fossil fuels. Things like acid rain and other climatic changes and as Vaitheeswaran stated the cost of keeping troops in other countries to protect our oil assests. These are all things we overlook when we drive our big, gas guzzling vehicles and turn up the thermostat. We need to change or else we will not be able to live on our planet.

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  21. In the movie The 11th Hour, many people showed how the world was in need of some serious repair and scientist and others stated ways that we could maybe help and what they thought about climate control as a whole. This movie was really interesting to me because it really show you how the world is in trouble and climate change is a big issue and it is going to become bigger if we don’t do something now. I thought it was interesting how one of the guys on the video said that 99.9% of nature and species die and come extinct but yet there is so much life on earth, which really made me think that that is so true. Another thing that was said is that if people where to become extinct the world would move on, which also made me think wow that’s crazy. I had never thought of it like that before.

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  22. David Suzuki said that the human’s greatest asset is the mind. The human mind is what sets us apart from the other animals in the world. If it were not for our minds we would not be able to survive because we lack other kinds of natural advantages. Suzuki says that the mind is also our greatest weakness because it has allowed us to think that we are better than nature and do not need it to survive. We feel superior to nature even though we need it desperately to survive. This is where we must change this cycle by using our minds to find a way to fix nature. Kenny Asbul suggested that we turn our cities into forest like areas where our buildings are powered by solar energy. This would reduce our carbon footprint by up to 90%. Although the road to change seems like an extremely difficult one it is not impossible to iguana outfitting out skyscrapers with solar panels. This one step could make the world of difference for the environment. And even if it doesn’t make a difference if every building was powered by its own solar grid, the businesses would save money on energy costs.

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  23. After viewing "The 11th Hour", I was truly amazed at how simple they make everything sound, but how disaturous our future really could be. I think that the part in the movie that struck me the most was when the scientists said that we survived 150,000 years ago and became the leading species on the planet was because of our evolved brain that allowed us to comprehend that there is a future and the things we do right now could change that future. But what happened? Our ignorance has led us to believe that because we are supreme, we are gods.It has created this mentality that We are apart from nature and apart from our world which, in the end, could lead to a simple destruction of humankind.

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  24. After watching "The 11th Hour," I feel that I have a better understanding of what we can do to fix climate change, a problem we ourselves created. One person who caught my attention was Wes Jackson. He explained how human action could warm the oceans to the point that they would become stagnant, producing no more waves and preventing heat from being cycled to the bottom of the ocean. The last time the oceans were stagnant, a mass extinction occurred. Before seeing "The 11th Hour," I couldn't have imagined that humans could have such a large impact on the climate that we could actually stop natural processes that are essesntial to our survival. Though this realization is terrifying, I found some comfort in David Suzuki's remarks. Suzuki said, "Some technologies would never be able to do what nature does...nature is doing twice as much service for us as the economies of the world." He explained how nature can produce energy much easier and efficiently than people can and at no cost. Perhaps the solution to climate change is allowing nature to do what it already does and humans partially returning to a more natural way of life in which we utilize more of nature's processes and we depend on natural resources other than fossil fuels, like solar and wind.

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  25. Before I saw “The 11th Hour”, I knew that it was going be another global warming informational video that is only intended to scare the audience. Although I thought most of the speakers in the movie had a lot of great points and solutions that regarded climate change, I believe they were too focused on how the planet and its people are all going to die soon. What I didn’t like about the movie, was that they used a lot of scenes of severe hurricanes and humans as well as animals brutally dying. We all now know that its going to take a lot of convincing to get the American population to change their energy habits but I’m personally not convinced that we’re living in the “last hour” of this planet. I found it very interesting to see how we can use all kinds of movement to create energy.

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  26. Before watching "The 11th Hour". I had seen many global warming videos. The way this film was formatted was interesting and informative. There were a couple of speakers that said things that seemed significant to me. For example, Stephen Hawking said that we don't know where global warming will stop. But, if it continues this way, Earth could turn out like Venus with a temperature of 230 degrees Celsius and raining sulfuric acid. That freaked me out a little bit... It's a scary thought to picture Earth that way. Although some people think it was just another movie that was made to "scare" people, I think that may be what people need to realize just how much damage we're doing.

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  27. After watching the documentary “The 11th Hour” I would have to agree with Dan Porter in saying that Kenny Ausubel was one of the most notable speakers in the film. He says “with existing technologies that we basically already have on the self, or things we know we can develop in a very rapid amount of time we could literally reduce the human footprint on planet earth by ninety percent.” By saying this Ausubel is basically stating that we can change the climate for the better, in fact we have the materials on hand or at least the ideas to do so. This just blows my mind that there can be distinguished researchers and scientists saying this but on the other hand creditable groups who feel the exact opposite. One of the other speakers that sparked my attention was James Woolsey who was speaking about creating incentives to move into not using oil as the first resources for energy.

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  28. I found the documentary "The 11th Hour," to be very interesting and I was intriuged by information that differed from most videos and publications about global warming. I have spent a great deal of time researching climate change and pondering the possible reasons for the rapid change in human lifestyle throughout the past century, and some speakers in the video enlightened me on some interesting ideas. The direct problem is not that humans emit excessive carbon through fossil fuels, but that there are far too many humans as a result of the energy stored within fossil fuels. Before fossil fuel discovery, the earth's human population maintained at less than a billion as the sun could only provide enough energy for that limited amount to survive. Once we began acquiring fuel energy, it enabled humans to grow almost limitlessly as oil provided accessible energy far beyond that of the sun. Herman Daly, a guest speaker, makes the point that “the larger system is our biosphere, and the subsystem is the economy. The problem is the subsystem is geared for growth, whereas the parent system doesn’t grow and stays the same size.” Right now, the affects from gas emmissions are easily overlooked, but it seems that human existance in mass numbers will soon end as the the earth cannot naturally produce enough energy to sustain this lifestyle. Thom Hartmann makes a shocking point that "were doing it all, on ancient sunlight." Without fossil fuels and alternative forms of energy, life is very possible for mankind, but I truly think that without modern forms of energy large human populations don't stand a chance.

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  29. After watching “The Eleventh Hour”, directed by Leonardo Decaprio, was a look at climate change and the need for immediate action. Two people who commented were particularly memorable. Stephen Hawking helps put this in perspective as he says of humanity’s effect on the planet “Nearly all of the available land has been cleared of forest and is now used for agriculture or urban development. The polar icecaps are shrinking and the desert areas are increasing” and goes on to mention other drastic changes caused by man. Stephen Hawking is extremely credible, which is one reason he was memorable. It shows that climate change is a very real issue. As far as the cause of it goes, many speakers had insight. Kenny Ausubell states “Probably the greatest weapon of mass destruction is corporate economic globalization.” This really simplifies things, and helped me realize how big of a force it is. This documentary was an eye opener an really shows the need for immediate action.

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  30. In “The 11th Hour” it became truly clear as to how horrible global warming is. Reality hit and the problems expecting to occur in the future are now here, in the present. Despite the fact that the video and how it was presented was entirely to scare us, it was still completely true. The purpose of the video was to scare us into acting “greener.” A good statement that Leonardo Decaprio said was that “The evidence is now clear, industrial civilization has caused irreparable damage.” By saying how the damage is “irreparable” it makes it seem as if there is nothing we as a nation can do to prevent it. Yet towards the end of the movie it acknowledges that with greener actions, we still are able to benefit the economy and that there still is hope.

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  31. The 11th Hour is documentary on climate change trying to get the average person involved in thinking about global warming, and it's effects. The film presents a number of different scientists giving their information and statistics, trying to tie them into the topic of Global Warming. I noticed a lack of climatologists and geoscientists speaking, and found that to be an interesting thing. One may wonder, how much of this film is just is just Hollywood hype? The film makes many points that may not necessarily be tied to climate change. One speaker mentions a rise in asthma rates, but I was wondering if there is really a tie to climate change in that statistic, as any number of other factors could influence it just a much.

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