Opinion: Disney presents a visually stunning call for action in ‘Earth’
April 29, 2009
By Armando Vega
Staff writer
Photo from Disney Studios A movie poster of Earth, which, according to the movie’s
producers, “tells the remarkable story of three animal families and their |
April 22 was Earth Day, and the release date for the new film Earth, a documentary coming to us from a joint partnership between BBC and the new Disneynature. If you've seen the former’s phenomenal Planet Earth series—with its crystalline cinematography portraying beautiful, stunning vistas and the flora and fauna inhabiting them—then imagine those movies superimposed with a kind of narrative trailing the lives of different wildlife families, voiced by James Earl Jones. That’s Earth.
Reality is nature’s only genre, in all its cruelty and elegance, so it is no surprise that this new movie does not deviate much from its predecessor. Yet, it captures nature’s glory so magnificently, and in a manner palatable to the masses (read: no chastisement) such that environmental awareness is perceived less a political issue and more a practical one—as it should be.
“We live on finite planet and you can not run a linear system on a finite planet indefinitely,” states Annie Leonard, creator of “Story of Stuff,” a 20-minute flash video produced in late 2007 which has already garnered over five and a half million views.
From extraction to production to distribution to consumption to disposal, the short highlights the infeasibility of our current economic system, designed as it is around a voracious propensity to consume, and it does so with uncomfortable truths: one-third of our Earth’s natural resources consumed in the last 30 years; 40 percent of our waterways unfit for drinking. A production system leaking all manner of untested chemicals and toxins into our bodies and planet; and 99 percent of our purchases trashed after just six months.
This is not about the individual. It is a systemic failure brought on by pushing true-costs of production onto the environment, the taxpayer, and human well-being, in an effort to promote “growth,” whether that growth actually reflects technical development or the amassment of so many things, whether or not they truly serve our well-being or even make us worse off.
There are so many different vantage points with which to view our current trend-lines as troubling, both philosophically and pragmatically. Taken from the latter perspective, there simply exist a limited number of natural resources from which an ever-expanding human population can make use. With global warming exacerbating the situation, what is to prevent World War III from being touched off by nations warring over dwindling agricultural plots of land, or access to the last remaining spigots of clean water?
I do not care how “civilized” you are—when your children are starving no options are off the table. If such a war does take place, it could potentially involve (at that point) the world’s largest military powers—the U.S. and China. And in a war for survival, does anyone really doubt the deployment of nuclear arms? I know I am presenting meandering thoughts here, and certainly this all represents a worst-case scenario, but that is the point of this thought-exercise: just how ugly could things get if we continue down this path? Of course, technology’s the great unknown in all of this, but I shudder to think what happens to the human body when all its sustenance is derived artificially, and I do not see “population control” entering the popular lexicon anytime soon.
Philosophically, as a society, we seem to be meandering—at times floundering even—with no ultimate purpose. I had always thought that our purpose in life was to acquire an understanding of our place and promote the betterment of mankind. Plenty of people would tell me that I am being naive, if they did not already think I was being boring. Whatever. In a world so messy, I guess I will take a little bit of comfort in the fact that, thanks to Disney, at least I can witness the splendors of the world. If I wake up one day to find a world paved over with cement, elbow-to-elbow with the intemperate and unhealthy, I’ll pop in Earth and let my mind glaze over at what the world used to be, with a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door. Please don’t.
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