Age of Stupid: Environmentalism is Alive and Well

On Monday night, I participated in the world's largest movie premier, for a documentary. The film, called the Age of Stupid has been hailed as the future of film, and criticized by some for its depressing take on the state of our planet's climate. I believe, however, that the film was revolutionary for slightly different reasons. Age of Stupid reveals that environmentalism is alive, well, and going mainstream. Even more, the film shows that our current consumer lifestyles are fundamentally incompatible with the reality of our climate situation. Either we convince our governments to intervene and take control, or prepare for the worst, as we waste time celebrating recycling our plastic water bottles.

A film about our last warnings is itself that warning

The film was harsh, there is no question about that. In the Age of Stupid, the planet and human race has been destroyed. The film's narrator, Pete Postlethwaite, reviews clips of Hurricane Katrina, melting glaciers, in disbelief that we had been so distracted by our pursuit of growth that we ignored our only chance to avoid literal suicide. The Age of Stupid itself is that warning.

The film's premiere came up a bit short with its MTV VJ host, Gideon Yago and celebrities who arrived by rowboat to walk down the green carpet made from recycled bottles. But, beneath the amateur mistakes of the fresh-out-of-the-theater Hollywood environmentalists, is a movement. In fact, contrary to sustainability poster boy Adam Werbach's vocal position in 2005, environmentalism is alive, well, and going mainstream.

As a film that was largely funded by its fans, it is, itself, the product of activism. And guess what? Watching this film might be like watching a depressing version of Sesame Street for all us old school environmentalists, but we don't speak the language of the mainstream anymore. While we are composting in our San Francisco homes, the rest of the world is celebrating recycling their plastic water bottles. And this movie finally told them that plastic water bottles take 800 times more energy for water that is zero times healthier. Age of Stupid finally reveals that we're still screwed, even if we drive Priuses and buy organic food and less toxic home cleaning products. Either we completely reinvent the way we live, or the fat lady sings. And she is warming up in back room.

Is Wall St. fundamentally incompatible with our climate situation?

The reason for mentioning Adam Werbach above is not because I like to pick on him. I tend to agree with him that it is businesses and their tremendous influences on our lives and governments' policies that hold the key to driving real change. This holds especially true when the government in question is too slow and conflicted to lead us along the right path. But Age of Stupid reveals that our consumer lifestyles and and our distraction with Wall Street's measure of wealth may be only be a red herring. Our stock markets could recover, but they don't measure the ultimate health and well-being of our society. As they exist today, it could be quite the opposite.

As brilliantly shown in the film, we have two choices. Our arguably conflicted governments introduce strict policies that limit and reverse our accelerating contributions to irreversible climate conditions, or we fundamentally reinvent the ways Wall Street measures its performance. We simply cannot afford to rely on the current incremental approach to buying "greener" stuff. The problem is the stuff. Yet, our economy will succeed. We will succeed. We are not in a recession. We are in a transition. And it all starts with a wake up call like this one.

Ryan Mickle is Co-publisher of Triple Pundit and Founder of Companiesandme. You can follow Ryan and Triple Pundit on Twitter.

Follow Ryan Mickle on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ryanm

Comments

[mbaty]

We have to rethink everything, especially money. In our system, money is not tied to any tangible resource, and, divorced of any real world implications, money becomes a mass hallucination. If I had enough money right now I could buy a rainforest and cut it down for cattle ranching. That would make me a lot more money, and hey, people have got to eat. And they want hamburgers. But we know that trees keep our atmosphere oxygenated and that many species depend on the rainforests to live in. Unfortunately, this "hidden cost" isn't considered, because I have a mountain of cash Right Now. Keep in mind that you need money to eat, to have a shelter, to have clean water, to have a car, and you need that money basically to survive. So do you sell me the rainforest? You see the problem. Money isn't tied to Real World Costs. And yet money is required for survival individually. Yet collectively trees are required for our survival. So if we put completely self-sustaining renewable systems in our houses and buildings, the utility companies would be out of luck. If we made all the major changes we need to for our society to be sustainable, a lot of people who rely on that unsustainability for their profits would be out of business. Capitalism has become something of a hindrance to our survival as a species unless we are willing to put it in its appropriate societal place.

[RMankovitz]

Rather than "The Age of Stupid", I view our present condition as "The Age of Arrogance." We have an anthropocentric view of the world (we rule over all other living things, we are free to multiply without limit, and technology will fix everything). I believe nature has a very different view of our place among living things, and it is not at the top. Actually, there is no top.

The very idea that the fate of our species is also the fate of the planet is clearly anthropocentric. In our absence, Nature has billions of years to cleanse herself of our legacy, regenerate, create millions of new species, and perhaps evolve an improved human model.

I subscribe to the hypothesis that the current human population far exceeds the planet’s carrying capacity, perhaps by double. Feeding and powering the population are only part of the problem. We seem to be running out of safe places to dump the toxic wastes we generate, and we may well drown in our own effluent.

When other species (plant or animal) have exceeded their sustainable level, they begin to die off until they either reach sustainability or become extinct. Nature is already hinting at how this will play out for us: forced population reduction as a result of mass starvation, wars, untreatable illnesses, and an environment so toxic it will no longer support the reproduction of our species.

Roy Mankovitz, Director
http://www.MontecitoWellness.com