"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, tornadoes, 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.
"Peak Moment" (49 minutes)
Nora Gedgaudas used to believe a plant-based diet was the healthiest. That belief got turned upside down when she spent a summer studying wolves near the North Pole. "We are fundamentally ice-age hunter-gatherers," states the nutritionist and author of Primal Body, Primal Mind. She points out that our genes are 99.9% the same as our ancestors - they haven't yet adapted to the relatively recent agriculturally-based lifestyle based on grains. As a result, our bodies have no need for dietary carbohydrates. By contrast, "Fat, to us means survival.... Dietary fat is the most nutrient-dense thing we can consume, rich in fat-soluble nutrients, and essential for the functioning of our brain and nervous systems."
Is our ancestors' hunter-gatherer diet the best for optimal health and longevity, in our stress- and pollution-filled world? Not entirely, says Gedgaudas. She advocates a ketogenic diet, where fats are the primary fuel source rather than carbohydrates, moderate protein (from grass-fed or wild caught animals), very low starch and natural sugars, plentiful fibrous green vegetables, generous natural fats, and no vegetable oils. "Once [our ancestors] adopted ketones as a primary source of fuel, our cerebral blood flow and oxygenation increased by over 39% in normal human brains." Returning to a ketogenic diet improves brain function and can help treat or even prevent diabetes and Alzheimers.
"Catching Fire" (54 minutes)
Catching Fire tells a compelling story of how a small but committed group of local, tribal, state and federal land managers are bringing back the use of prescribed fire as a tool to protect communities and ecosystems across Northern California. It examines the use of fire by the Karuk Tribe of California, and the connection between the rise of megafires across the West and the last century of fire suppression. Drawing on interviews with fire scientists, tribal and federal land managers, and fire savvy residents from across the North State, this film provides insight on how our relationship to fire can be restored through strategic use of fire as a powerful management tool.
