Super Bowl Sunday - a prototypically American celebration. Millions of people will gather around televisions, consume mass quantities of food and drink, party, cheer, groan, and otherwise forget the rest of the world for a time. The level of effort devoted to planning the spectacle from pre game chit chat to post game wrap ups and all that falls between approaches that of an invasion or a national political campaign. The amount of money that will be spent buying time for advertisements boggles the mind. For some people, the commercials may end up being more memorable than the game.
And what will it all amount to tomorrow? Hangovers, heartburn, pounds to shed, garbage to clean up. Meanwhile, there's a challenge out there that makes the Super Bowl look like a pick up game of touch football in the back yard. Forget waiting till next year; there's a ten year time frame on this one - only one shot at winning, and, only one team to root for.
more over the jump
Now, I'll admit to enjoying a good game of football, and with luck there'll be some memorable commercials. (I still like that one about herding cats.) But, I try to keep it in perspective. It's just an entertainment spectacle, one that will take a few hours out of my life in exchange some ephemeral diversion.
For roughly the same amount of time it takes to watch a Super Bowl, there's a spectacle of a very different kind available. It's only about an hour and a half long, no commercial breaks - and it's free. A fellow named Yann Arthus-Bertrand put together a film in 2009 called Home It's a staggering undertaking, filmed around the world from pole to pole. "It took 217 days of shooting in 54 countries, which added up to 488 hours of footage." It's all aerial photography (with some satellite imagery) that at times becomes surprisingly intimate. It is an astounding achievement. Home has some of the most hauntingly beautiful - and at times horrifying - imagery I've ever seen of this planet. You owe it to yourself to see it just for that alone.
The film has a simple message brought home with devastating clarity: we are changing a planet that has had life going back billions of years, and we are breaking the links that support it by our activities. We have perhaps ten years to change what we are doing before the changes we have unleashed overwhelm it, and there is no way of predicting what happens past that tipping point. It's no one but us - in just a few hundred thousand years we've come to dominate the planet everywhere like no other species since plants first learned how to turn sunlight into energy and oxygen.
For all of the threat of self-inflicted damage brought home with devastating clarity by the film, it ends with a message of hope for us as well: "It's too late to be a pessimist." It shows there are people taking action and finding solutions. This is the conversation we should be having. This is the challenge we should be tackling.
To get back to the extreme consumerist orgy that is the Super Bowl for a moment, it would not be possible without things that are routinely demonized in public discourse, or like the facts in this film, simply don't get heard. The game would not be possible without referees and rules that both sides observe. There are penalties that are imposed for breaking them, with remedies to challenge and review decisions by examining all available information in a timely manner. League 'Socialism' in the form of revenue sharing between teams and payroll limits ensures no one team becomes Too Big To Fail; every season starts with all teams having a shot at going the distance. (In theory at least...) Sometimes competition is cooperation in disguise. (Kauffman's Rule 25)
We're hearing talk about "Winning The Future" and having a "Race to the Top" These are metaphors that imply there will be winners AND losers; that emphasize competition. For all that "No Child Left Behind" has been a futile and destructive sham, the image the name conjures is one that is a better fit to our situation: we have to stop wasting our resources - especially human ones. This is the ultimate "Big Game" we're talking about here; we're competing against our own worst instincts and unthinking actions. If we don't get this one right, there will be no winners. It's going to take everything we have, starting now.
Is an hour and a half of your life too much to invest in understanding just where we are as a species at this moment? Seeing what we've done to our home? If you've seen An Inconvenient Truth, this is a film you must see. If anything, Home's impact is even greater.
It's now available on Youtube at this link in multiple languages. I highly recommend watching it on full screen with a good sound system.
You can find more information here if you want to watch the trailer first. You can go here for English and French versions of a website dedicated to getting the message out and providing resources. As it notes there:
We are living in exceptional times. Scientists tell us that we have 10 years to change the way we live, avert the depletion of natural resources and the catastrophic evolution of the Earth's climate. The stakes are high for us and our children. Everyone should take part in the effort, and HOME has been conceived to take a message of mobilization out to every human being. For this purpose, HOME needs to be free. A patron, the PPR Group, made this possible. EuropaCorp, the distributor, also pledged not to make any profit because Home is a non-profit film. HOME has been made for you : share it! And act for the planet.
Yann Arthus-Bertrand, GoodPlanet Foundation President
Hat Tip to The Scientist for the article pointing me to this documentary in the first place.
For those who want a shorter version of the message of Home (without the incredible images) check out The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard. In 20 minutes it uses simple animation to explain in ways even a criminally stupid Tea Party congressman ought to be able to understand how what we're doing as a species simply can not go on much longer.
Enjoy the game. May the Human Race and the Planet win.
UPDATE: Many thanks for the rescue. The word needs to get out on this film as far and wide as possible. From comments, I see it can be gotten through Netflix, and Amazon has it as well. Watch it, and spread the word.
UPDATE 2: Read Paul Krugman today and watch the film. Connecting the dots made easy.