Media Edge

"Climate Change is Happening. Here's How We Adapt" (14.5 minutes)

Imagine the hottest day you've ever experienced. Now imagine it's six, 10 or 12 degrees hotter. According to climate researcher Alice Bows-Larkin, that's the type of future in store for us if we don't significantly cut our greenhouse gas emissions now. In this June 2015 TED Talk, she suggests that it's time we do things differently — a whole system change, in fact — and seriously consider trading economic growth for climate stability.

"Why Climate Change is a Threat to Human Rights" (21.5 minutes)

Climate change is unfair. While rich countries can fight against rising oceans and dying farm fields, poor people around the world are already having their lives upended — and their human rights threatened — by killer storms, starvation and the loss of their own lands. In this May 2015 TED Talk, Mary Robinson asks us to join the movement for worldwide climate justice.

"Last Hours" (11 minutes)

“Last Hours” was written by Thom Hartmann and co-produced by Leonardo DiCaprio’s father, George.  This short documentary leaps far ahead of immediate issues of oceans rising to take away coastland.  Frequent extreme weather events are happening in unusual places, causing record breaking destruction. Hurricanes, tornados, ice, hail and snow storms, floods, droughts, wildfires all over the planet are happening nearly every week. Even the Department of Defense and the CIA have identified global warming as a threat to national security, as people around the world become climate change refugees, driven from their homes by the ensuing loss of food, water, livestock, shelter and employment.

Narrated by Thom Hartmann, “Last Hours” is tightly focused on the macro view of geologists, and scientists interested in the Permian Period, in which global warming resulted in the extinction of 95% of all life on Earth. The event was started by a massive volcano in Siberia, which raised the temperature 6 degrees.  Then, warming of the oceans melted frozen methane at the bottom, so when it bubbled up and turned into gas, it entered the atmosphere and triggered the planet catastrophe.

There have been Five Mass Extinctions since life began on Earth.  The purpose of “Last Hours” is to start looking at the possibility of a Sixth Mass Extinction, triggered by the burning of fossil fuels. The film examines situations like the melting of the Arctic Ice Sheet. In July 2013 it melted at the rate of the size of Kansas, every two days.

Endorsements for "Last Hours":  Al Gore; Robert Kennedy, Jr; Michael Brune, Sierra Club; Lester Brown, Earth Policy Institute; Denis Hayes, founder of Earth Day; and others too numerous to mention.

"Over Troubled Waters" (45 minutes)

The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the largest estuary on the west coast of the Americas, is a national treasure being squandered by greed. In this visually rich documentary, Ed Begley, Jr. narrates the story of the battle being fought by the people of the Delta to protect the region they love and encourage saner water policies for all of the people of California.

"Wild Versus Wall" (19 minutes)

The Sierra Club border film, Wild Versus Wall, details the unique and diverse natural areas along the southern borders of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, and explains how they have been and will be affected by current and planned federal border policy and infrastructure, as well as the danger to our rights and safety imposed by sweeping new powers granted to the Department of Homeland Security.