Home: where we've come from; where we're going

What do you think of when you think of "home"? Warmth, food, comfort, safety, family? A place to relax and be yourself? A place to leave your dirty socks lying around?

This ninety-three minute film is titled simply Home. It is stunningly shot, beautifully scored, nicely narrated and serves as one of the best short introductions to the current human predicament that forms the backdrop to my PhD research. It was apparently the largest film release in history, but somehow I hadn't heard of it until today. It has intentionally also been released for free viewing on YouTube. I would love to hear your reactions to it.

Most of the film consists of breath-taking aerial shots of places you've never seen, or of common things you've never seen like this before, while a female narrator takes us through the history of humanity and how we got to be where we are today, all in carefully scripted prose. After a twenty-minute introduction to life on earth and the history of homo sapiens, the bulk of the film covers many of the most pressing issues that are both caused by and threatening the continued existence of modern industrial society: peak oil, climate change, deforestation, soil erosion, pollution, over-fishing, sea level rises, wetland destruction, biodiversity loss, water depletion, mineral depletion, population explosion and social inequality (perhaps the only significant issues not touched upon are soil salination, desertification and introduced species - but, hey, they only had ninety-three minutes). The images progress from one case-study to the next, each standing for one of the issues under discussion. It is wide-ranging, but there is a coherent thread ("faster and faster") that unites the images, and the narration only occasionally lapses into breathless hyperbole.

And of course there is also the obligatory uplifting section found at the end of every mainstream eco-film. However, the hopeful possibilities held out, while inspiring, still felt mainly like wishful thinking. While deeply moving, it ultimately failed to convince me that "together, we can do it".

"It is too late for pessimism" the narrator repeatedly claims, but I wonder whether most forms of optimism require dishonesty (or at least a fair dollop of willful ignorance). At least, where that optimism is for something more or less like today, but perhaps with fewer cars, more efficient light bulbs and wall to wall windfarms. I am all for windfarms, but if even half of the claims in the first eighty minutes of the film are true, then it is too late for sustainable development. Things will have to get much worse before they get anything that approximates better. May God have mercy on us all.
All images from the film. Can you guess what each is of? H/T to Garth for the link and bringing the film to my attention.