Environmental Videos
Climate Change 1958
The Bell Telephone Science Hour | 1958 | Running Time: 1:54
A brief but accurate explanation of global warming and its consequences from 66 years ago.
The greenhouse effect and planet Earth
CBC | January 24, 1984 | Running Time: 30:57
An excellent overview of global warming from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Carl Sagan testifying before Congress on climate change
C-Span | Carl Sagan | December 10, 1985 | Running Time: 16:53
The famous American astronomer appeared before Congress in 1985 to explain the "greenhouse effect". He said that action must be urgently taken on a problem that could massively impact "our children and grandchildren". He pointed to the extreme sensitivity of the Earth's climate system and declared that the world's nations must unite to create a "global consciousness". The IPCC was formed in 1988 to permit tight capitalist control over the climate message, in part by marginalizing independent voices such as Sagan's.
A surprising idea for "solving" climate Change
TED Talk | David Keith | November 15, 2007 | Running Time: 16:04
Keith is a leading expert on stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), and is commercially involved with the carbon dioxide removal (CDR) company Carbon Engineering. In this video he states that we have known about the climate problem for fifty years, have talked about it incessantly, but have accomplished "close to zip". He says that the problem is solvable through SAI, and that this approach is both fast and "absurdly cheap". Unfortunately Keith embraces the emissions-reductions fairy tale, claims that we can adapt to climate change, and heavily emphasizes the extremely weak "moral hazard" argument.
Earth 2100 The Final Century of Civilization
ABC | April 20, 2012 | Running Time: 1:23:07
A dramatized look at the Earth and its changes from a survivor in the year 2100.
Earth from Space
Nova | July 15, 2014 | Running Time: 1:54:21>
An in-depth look at the intricate and surprising web of forces that sustains life on Earth. Produced in extensive consultation with NASA scientists.
Our time is running out - The Arctic sea ice is going!
University of Earth | Peter Wadhams | June 20, 2015 | Running Time: 33:13
An interview with Peter Wadhams where he explains the Arctic meltdown and his fears for the future.
Movie clip: "The Founder"
2016 | Running Time: 5:02
This clip is from an excellent movie about McDonald's "founder" Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton). It depicts several aspects of capitalism's economic logic, but the ecologically significant moment comes at 1:10 when an employee tells a puzzled Kroc, "You just eat it straight out of the wrapper, and then you throw it all out." In 1955 this violated a social norm about garbage and littering, but it is fully consistent with the system's logic, which assumes that natural sinks are unlimited. The devastating releases of greenhouse gases in the ensuing decades were based on the same assumption: with respect to wastes, the economy can just "throw it all out".
Emergency medicine for our climate fever
TED Talk | Kelly Wanser | September 23, 2019 | Running Time: 1:40
Kelly Wanser is Executive Director of SilverLining, which promotes research and policy to address climate change, primarily through marine cloud brightening (MCB). She explains that the sulfur particles released by ships make marine clouds brighter, thereby reflecting sunlight and moderating the globe's warming rate. However, ships are now being forced to reduce their aerosol releases, which "will produce a measurable increase in global warming". (James Hansen has now confirmed this effect.) At 2:06 she shows an eye-opening diagram and makes a critical statement: "Scientists estimate that the total cooling effect [from aerosols] … may be as much as all of the warming we've experienced up until now." This aerosol "masking effect" is estimated to be between 0.5°C (IPCC) and 1.1°C (Hansen and others).
Storm Approaching! Overshoot, the Energy Conundrum and Climate Change
Lighter Living | Bill Rees | October 5, 2019 | Running Time: 20:11
Rees fully understands that the underlying environmental problem is overshoot, and he is passionately dedicated to solving the resulting ecological crisis. However, he ascribes humankind's unsustainable behavior to "our technological optimism and growth fetish", thereby ignoring capitalism and its ecocidal logic, and he embraces the untenable emissions-reductions story (see here). Although he acknowledges that sustainable behavior requires appropriate social and political conditions, he never considers an AI takeover or other fundamental shift to achieve these. Briefly stated, he is aware of the planet's critical condition, but succumbs to the capitalist order that created and perpetuates it.
Planet of the Humans
Jeff Gibbs & Michael Moore | April 21, 2020 | Running Time: 1:39:56
"Planet" made huge splash a few years ago because it questioned the prevailing faith among environmentalists: that capitalist lifestyles could continue if fossil-fuel energy is replaced by green, renewable energy. The documentary instead stated that the real problem is humankind's overall impact of on the Earth's ecosystems. It therefore called for sharp reductions in the global population and rich-world consumption. The film went even further by pointing out that much of the environmental movement is dominated by plutocratic capitalists. For more on this topic see appendix F in Youth Ecological Revolution.
Everything is a Rich Man's Trick
Francis Conolly | January 25, 2021 | Running Time: 3:27:55
This 3.5-hour video is remarkable because it makes credible historical assertions that go far beyond permissible thought. Independent historian Francis Conolly states that WWI taught capitalists that "war is good for business", which spurred them to greedily pursue further wars. He distinguishes between the pirate-like mentality of these ruling figures and the innocent misconceptions of the populace. Like George Orwell, he says that ruling classes always present people with a false view of the world. Perhaps most shocking is his claim that Hitler and the Nazis were actively sought out by American business interests to oppose communism, and that the real aim of the concentration camps was to exploit slave labor for profit. Watch this video, take careful notes, and then watch it again. It is devastatingly unique.
MEER Explainer Video on Solar Radiation Management
MEER | March 2, 2022 | Running Time: 4:45
MEER (Mirrors for Earth's Energy Rebalancing) clearly explains that planet-warming GHG concentrations cannot be reduced in time to prevent disaster. Solar radiation management (SRM) is therefore the only workable solution. Unfortunately the organization fixates on mirror technologies while rejecting other promising SRM measures - particularly stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI).
Is the IPCC Exacerbating Climate Change?
MEERTALK | Kyle Kimball | November 6, 2022 | Running Time: 51:59
Kimball is a law student who focuses on climate-induced migration and legal redress for the Global South. The title of his talk is, "Faster than expected: the IPCC's role in exacerbating climate change." He challenges the IPCC's methods for estimating mean surface temperature and climate sensitivity, its choice of obsolete data sets for analysis, its assumption that 90% of economic activities will be unaffected by rising temperatures, its use of computer models tied to neoclassical economics instead of physical reality, the domination of male voices from the Global North, and the low readability of its reports. These massive flaws have inevitably resulted in the organization's failure to effectively tackle the climate crisis. I fully agree with his conclusions: the IPCC cannot be trusted, and it is actively working against us.
Towards Quantitative Comparison of the Risks and Benefits of Solar Geoengineering
Energy Policy Seminar | David Keith | November 7, 2022 | Running Time: 1:06:25
Using a realistic example, Keith examines the global benefits and harms from stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI). His scenario lowers the global temperature by 1°C by using 120,000 flights that annually inject 1.5 million tons of sulfates into the upper atmosphere. (By comparison, commercial aviation involves 40 million flights a year, and industrial pollution annually injects 50 million tons of sulfates.) When he examined the globe for harmful temperature or rainfall effects, he found that none appeared in any region. When comparing the mortality effects of reduced emissions and SAI, he found the latter to be vastly superior. In his summary Keith points out that, globally, 100 people benefit for every one person who is harmed in his SAI scenario.