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Film-maker Mike Freedman says we've hit "Critical Mass" toward extinction by over-population. Bill McKibben: why everybody in the world needs to battle the Tar Sands. Council of Canadians founder Maude Barlow links dirty energy to dirty politics. Native leader Caleb Behn on world's biggest frack, poisoned lives, & linking up around the world. With previews from film "Fractured Land".
Mike Freedman interview by Alex Smith for Radio Ecoshock. Clips from his upcoming film "Critical Mass"
Bill McKibben, Caleb Behn, Maude Barlow recorded by Alex Smith in Vancouver October 25th at anti-pipeline meeting.
Film clips from "Fractured Land" by Damien Gilles (fracturedland.com)
No copyright music.
Also available in 2 29 minute segments for stations requiring time for ID & announcements (posted below).
To make a bomb, you need critical mass. In the nuclear world, "critical mass" is the amount of radioactive material required to create a self-sustaining chain reaction, and a devastating explosion.
Millions of people around the world are wondering if we are heading toward that moment. Film maker Mike Freedman set out to document the really big picture, the forces that could culminate in disaster for humanity, and most living things.
Mike and I began by talking about another short documentary he posted on Vimeo on the Occupy London protests. It's called "Between Two Mirrors - Occupy London".
Several of Freedman's interview subjects have been on Radio Ecoshock, including Robert Rapier, Bill Rees, Richard Heinberg, and John Michael Greer. But he has Bill Rees and zoologist Desmond Morris, author of the "The Naked Ape", talking about population.
It's a cast of alternative thinker all-stars, on a nearly taboo subject these days. Even environment groups don't want to touch overpopulation - despite the huge impact an extra 80,000 or 200,000 new bodies a day has on this small planet.
Desmond Morris talks about the meme of "we'll go to space". Great, but by then, we'd have to launch 200,000 people a day! That's a lot of space ships.
The film "Critical Mass" is pretty well finished in production, but needs to raise another $30,000 to pay for the rights for all the weird and wonderful archival footage Mike Freedman weaves in. Find out how you can help launch this film at critcalmassfilm.com
Then we go to the Tar Sands, plus the network of proposed mega-pipelines which will let them double in size. Not to mention super-tankers on Canada's stormy west coast, or going out of Vancouver's gorgeous harbor.
NASA scienstist James Hansen clearly says if we burn all the oil from the Canadian Tar Sands, it's game over for the planet's climate (at least for us mammals). Now the American government has just agreed to big leases in Utah to start a Tar Sands operation there. Don't do it Utah! Listen to the growing mess of poison in Alberta Canada.
Listen to Caleb Behn, the lawyer-in-training and native leader who grew up in the Athabascan region. Behn's talk to a few hundred people in Burnaby B.C. (a suburb of Vancouver) on October 25th was short and bittersweet. A people already weakened by colonization is being systematically poisoned by air and water pollution from the Alberta Tar Sands.
I mix in some clips from the new film "Fractured Land" by Damien Gilles. That isn't out yet. Find a trailer at fracturedland.com.
As a British Columbia resident, even I didn't know the full extent of gas fracking in the remote north eastern part of the province. It's the world's biggest single fracking operation. The wild land there is being industrialized at a huge rate, while whole rivers of water are turned into toxic waste. It's painful just to hear about it.
Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org was there. His speech has already been posted at radio4all.net by the Redeye Collective.
In the Q and A, I asked McKibben why should my many American listeners bother with what is happening in a remote part of northern Canada? "They don't call it global warming for nothing." McKibben replied. You can debate about second hand smoking, but second hand carbon warms our whole world. Folks in from the far Pacific Islands right to the Rockaways of New York all pay the heavy price of burning the world's dirtiest energy, the Tar Sands oil.
The program ends with Maude Barlow, famous in Canada and the world. She founded the Council of Canadians, co-founded of the world water rights group Blue Planet Project, is a founding member of the San Francisco–based International Forum on Globalization, and a Councillor with the Hamburg-based World Future Council. Barlow has written more than a dozen books.
Barlow gives us a frightening overview of the Tar Sands, the pipelines that will release this dirty oil to the world, and the dirty politics behind it. A worthy listen.
