1
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The picture you are about to see deals
with the problem of self-destruction.

2
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Its purpose was to enable people to better
understand the nature of this strange, tragic act.

3
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We shall not be able to diminish
this great human affliction

4
00:00:42,206 --> 00:00:47,337
until more people do understand it
and appreciate its seriousness.

5
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Voices in the Dark

6
00:00:53,651 --> 00:00:57,246
A lot of things about the world
these days are very scary.

7
00:01:07,832 --> 00:01:13,237
My generation may be one of the first
generations where a lot of us die...
...not of old age.

8
00:01:13,237 --> 00:01:15,501
Because a lot of us may not make it there.

9
00:01:20,411 --> 00:01:26,350
Global warming... it's gonna do this
and our climate's gonna go weird and...

10
00:01:27,351 --> 00:01:30,047
...like another ice age or something.

11
00:01:38,196 --> 00:01:41,256
I think the scariest things aren't for me.

12
00:01:41,666 --> 00:01:48,504
The scariest things are thinking that I
might leave a world to my children

13
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that would be really difficult and painful for them.

14
00:01:57,915 --> 00:02:00,418
I think we're all fucked. All of us.

15
00:02:00,418 --> 00:02:04,355
I think most of us in this room are
gonna die before we reach...

16
00:02:04,355 --> 00:02:07,191
I don't believe that we would
wipe ourselves out entirely.

17
00:02:07,191 --> 00:02:10,728
I believe that... I believe that
we can probably fall down to...

18
00:02:10,728 --> 00:02:13,898
There's gotta be a way. There's
gotta be a way to live through it...

19
00:02:13,898 --> 00:02:21,205
Once we're able to look at the world
without blinders and see the
really horrific mess we're making of it...

20
00:02:21,205 --> 00:02:25,977
We have got to change our whole idea
of the way that the world works...

21
00:02:25,977 --> 00:02:29,547
I generally just feel like
everything is out of balance.

22
00:02:29,547 --> 00:02:32,516
Nothing that I can do will make
any impact on the planet.

23
00:02:32,516 --> 00:02:37,922
We're living a way that doesn't work.
We have to live a way that does work.
So it's gonna change.

24
00:02:37,922 --> 00:02:42,552
You can't change what's happening in
Washington. You can't change what's
happening over in Iraq.

25
00:02:57,375 --> 00:02:59,605
"We've met the enemy and he is us. "

26
00:03:05,549 --> 00:03:11,283
I guess I just tell myself that it's all gonna
be OK. You kinda have to to keep going.

27
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It's not a happy thing to think about.

28
00:03:36,347 --> 00:03:40,249
There was a time in my life when I
was having this recurring daydream.

29
00:03:43,821 --> 00:03:50,727
I'd be sitting in my car, radio blaring,
slowly making my way forward
through a fast food drive thru.

30
00:03:54,932 --> 00:03:59,164
I'd get to the window and they'd hand
me my drink and my burger and fries.

31
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And as i waited for me change. . .
off in the distance. . .

32
00:04:06,477 --> 00:04:10,607
a bright flash... and a rising cloud.

33
00:04:12,316 --> 00:04:16,116
And as the full force of the
nuclear blast washed over me...

34
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...as the icy cold of my overturned
Coke seeped into my jeans...

35
00:04:25,730 --> 00:04:27,357
I'd think to myself...

36
00:04:28,666 --> 00:04:30,497
... what a way to go.

37
00:04:37,141 --> 00:04:42,813
Yeah I think that we might
wipe ourselves off the Earth.

38
00:04:42,813 --> 00:04:46,943
Definitely. I feel like that's where we're headed.

39
00:04:47,551 --> 00:04:50,554
There's an emptiness that other needs...

40
00:04:50,554 --> 00:04:51,922
the real needs...

41
00:04:51,922 --> 00:04:54,759
the real desires aren't being met.

42
00:04:54,759 --> 00:04:57,928
And we're just scrambling
with what our culture offers us.

43
00:04:57,928 --> 00:05:02,433
And our culture tells us... you know
our culture tells us we will find love

44
00:05:02,433 --> 00:05:06,937
if we buy this lipstick and that
make-up and these clothes and this car.

45
00:05:06,937 --> 00:05:09,974
I think it would be OK if we gave the Earth back

46
00:05:09,974 --> 00:05:14,078
to everybody else why is not as destructive.

47
00:05:14,078 --> 00:05:16,512
All the rest of the life on Earth.

48
00:05:25,589 --> 00:05:31,323
I was born in the American Midwest, central
Michigan, the "water winter wonderland".

49
00:05:31,996 --> 00:05:37,195
I was raised in the arms of an extended
rural family.: mostly farming folk...

50
00:05:37,435 --> 00:05:41,462
...solid, hard working, quiet, giving.

51
00:05:41,972 --> 00:05:48,275
I was bom into warmth and plenty to eat, a
sense of place, and a surety of security.

52
00:05:49,079 --> 00:05:51,138
And I was born into stories.

53
00:05:51,449 --> 00:05:54,850
Stories about the value of work
and the right way to live.

54
00:05:54,952 --> 00:06:01,050
Stories about God and country, about
community, loyalty, steadfastness, and resolve.

55
00:06:01,358 --> 00:06:04,987
Stories about the role and place
of humans on this planet.

56
00:06:05,863 --> 00:06:09,890
Stories about our relationship
to something we called "nature".

57
00:06:11,368 --> 00:06:13,427
I was born into stories.

58
00:06:16,106 --> 00:06:18,131
Nobody told me these stories.

59
00:06:18,375 --> 00:06:19,706
They didn't have to.

60
00:06:19,977 --> 00:06:25,847
The stories were the air I breathed, the water in
which I swam, the ground upon which I walked.

61
00:06:26,116 --> 00:06:27,777
They were all around me.

62
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We didn't even know they were stories.

63
00:06:30,988 --> 00:06:33,354
We just thought they were the way things are.

64
00:06:34,325 --> 00:06:36,225
My world was a playground.

65
00:06:36,327 --> 00:06:41,065
There were fish to catch, boats to row,
parades to watch, trails to hike,

66
00:06:41,065 --> 00:06:49,473
lakes to swim, snowmobiles to rlde,
games to play, presents to open,
and family to share it all with.

67
00:06:50,674 --> 00:06:53,444
The days would end with sunsets and fireworks

68
00:06:53,444 --> 00:06:56,880
and sometimes I would dance
until I collapsed with joy.

69
00:06:58,649 --> 00:07:02,486
It was a magical land...
cherry Popsicles and warm milk,

70
00:07:02,486 --> 00:07:06,855
birthday cakes and store-bought costumes
and brand-new chairs under the tree.

71
00:07:07,191 --> 00:07:10,361
A land of giant geese, well-dressed poodles,

72
00:07:10,361 --> 00:07:13,819
talented birds and even more talented people.

73
00:07:15,065 --> 00:07:19,703
The Earth was our merry-go-round,
our monkey bars, our swing set.

74
00:07:19,703 --> 00:07:23,833
As long as we didn't look down,
everything would be just fine.

75
00:07:27,945 --> 00:07:31,039
I was born halfway up the population explosion.

76
00:07:31,482 --> 00:07:34,474
I was born on the slope of rising CO2 levels.

77
00:07:34,852 --> 00:07:37,878
I was born in the foothills of a mass extinction.

78
00:07:38,322 --> 00:07:41,416
I was born on the rocky rise of oil production.

79
00:07:42,059 --> 00:07:48,032
I was bom facing forward, looking ever
upward, my first step a step upslope,

80
00:07:48,032 --> 00:07:52,937
a step into progress, a step into a
vast and glorious human future.

81
00:07:52,937 --> 00:07:56,574
We were moving on up.
There was no looking back.

82
00:07:56,574 --> 00:08:00,277
There was a mountain to conquer,
and conquer it we would.

83
00:08:00,277 --> 00:08:03,110
All we had to do was climb a bit further.

84
00:08:03,180 --> 00:08:06,750
But the mountain we were climbing
was not what we thought it was.

85
00:08:06,750 --> 00:08:13,679
Rather than rising from natural forces, the
slopes up which we were headed were the
results of imbalance and shortsightedness.

86
00:08:13,958 --> 00:08:18,729
In our efforts to progress, to succeed, to
improve, to strive, to overcome,

87
00:08:18,729 --> 00:08:21,799
to manage, to shape, to solve, and to grow,

88
00:08:21,799 --> 00:08:24,927
we wielded huge new forces across the globe.

89
00:08:25,402 --> 00:08:30,362
We walked as giants upon the Earth,:
unaware of the footprints we left behind.

90
00:08:32,842 --> 00:08:38,682
I have walked that path, unaware of my own
big feet, enacting the stories of our culture,

91
00:08:38,682 --> 00:08:43,176
not stopping long enough to feel
the instability of the slope underfoot.

92
00:08:45,089 --> 00:08:51,153
But in the late 80s, news of the ozone
hole and global warming first hit me,
and the ground began to shake.

93
00:08:52,930 --> 00:08:56,233
I stopped and looked
around me for the first time.

94
00:08:56,233 --> 00:08:59,031
I got scared. I got involved.

95
00:08:59,703 --> 00:09:04,163
And then the shaking subsided.
Or rather, I just got used to it.

96
00:09:05,209 --> 00:09:11,248
Life got more complex with the births of my three
children. And there was climbing still to do.

97
00:09:11,248 --> 00:09:13,113
So I continued to climb.

98
00:09:14,351 --> 00:09:16,587
But the tremors were still there, underfoot.

99
00:09:16,587 --> 00:09:21,091
At night I slept, but fitfully, clenched with worries,

100
00:09:21,091 --> 00:09:24,686
my dreams assaulted by
vague rumblings from the future.

101
00:09:25,462 --> 00:09:31,402
In my dreams, I would stand at the
pinnacle of the present, and look
out over the surrounding terrain.

102
00:09:31,402 --> 00:09:34,860
And it didn't look like I had thought it would. . .

103
00:09:48,285 --> 00:09:51,345
A faint howling in the distance pierces the night

104
00:09:51,922 --> 00:09:56,586
The monsters we have created
Lumbering to rampant life

105
00:09:57,094 --> 00:10:00,495
Are heading even now toward our village

106
00:10:02,700 --> 00:10:05,168
Nuclear weapons
biding their time

107
00:10:05,569 --> 00:10:08,265
Itching with purposes unfulfilled

108
00:10:09,740 --> 00:10:12,732
As hopeful fingers tremble near buttons

109
00:10:15,045 --> 00:10:17,240
Bunker Busters and Tactical nukes

110
00:10:19,450 --> 00:10:21,850
Suitcase bombs and terrorist acts

111
00:10:23,654 --> 00:10:26,248
Power plant accidents and leaking wastes

112
00:10:28,358 --> 00:10:32,294
Plutonium launched into space
In rockets known to explode

113
00:10:35,365 --> 00:10:40,325
And depleted uranium poisoning the battlefield
Depopulating the land

114
00:10:47,077 --> 00:10:50,342
Chemical warheads
And biological black magicks

115
00:10:51,181 --> 00:10:54,275
Sarin and Soman and VX and phosgene

116
00:10:55,586 --> 00:10:58,054
Anthrax and smallpox and plague

117
00:10:58,555 --> 00:11:03,515
Enough to take out entire cities
Enough to cover the planet

118
00:11:04,495 --> 00:11:08,864
And they don't care who lets them out
As long as they get to play

119
00:11:09,800 --> 00:11:12,564
Others nasties lurch toward us on their own

120
00:11:13,003 --> 00:11:16,495
Old friends, new creations and recent escapees

121
00:11:17,608 --> 00:11:20,577
Ebola, Marburg, Lassa and SARS

122
00:11:20,577 --> 00:11:23,876
Swine Flu, Bird Flu, HIV and AIDS

123
00:11:25,215 --> 00:11:29,515
The rebound of tuberculosis,
Cholera, malaria, and typhus

124
00:11:30,687 --> 00:11:35,249
Prions and mad cows
Scrapie sheep and chronic wasting disease

125
00:11:35,793 --> 00:11:41,595
Cancers that eat away our lungs our brains
Our breasts our testlcles and our ovaries

126
00:11:44,601 --> 00:11:47,126
And new monsters peer over the horizon

127
00:11:48,705 --> 00:11:52,971
Good intentions spliced to
Blind arrogance and numbing greed

128
00:11:55,445 --> 00:11:58,175
Frankenfoods and Terminator seeds

129
00:11:58,849 --> 00:12:02,012
Herbicide tolerant and pesticide laced crops

130
00:12:03,520 --> 00:12:08,184
Patented Life
Barely tested, quietly ticking. . .

131
00:12:08,692 --> 00:12:10,592
Let loose upon the land

132
00:12:11,261 --> 00:12:14,355
As if their creators, having looked at the world,

133
00:12:14,798 --> 00:12:17,733
Managed to learn nothing at all

134
00:12:20,137 --> 00:12:22,372
The monsters howls grow frenzied

135
00:12:22,372 --> 00:12:28,208
Chemicals in our land our sky our rain
Our rivers our food our bodies our babies

136
00:12:28,946 --> 00:12:33,576
Rising male infertility rates and
Superfund sites and ozone depletion

137
00:12:35,619 --> 00:12:38,383
Rivers dammed and salmon doomed

138
00:12:38,889 --> 00:12:41,517
Topsoil loss and fertilizer run-off

139
00:12:42,359 --> 00:12:45,817
Huge oceanic dead zones
And depleted fisheries

140
00:12:46,396 --> 00:12:51,026
And the ghosts of silent whales
Scraping over the corpses of coral reefs

141
00:12:55,239 --> 00:12:59,039
The monsters advance
And forests collapse under their feet

142
00:13:00,777 --> 00:13:06,044
Leaving indigenous cultures battered,
Homeless, soul-sick, or dead

143
00:13:06,717 --> 00:13:11,221
Disrupting water and oxygen cycles
And turning soil into deserts

144
00:13:11,221 --> 00:13:16,853
As tigers and salmon and tree frogs and falcons
Stumble down the path toward extinction

145
00:13:17,527 --> 00:13:20,664
Their heartrending voices
Lost in the chatter of chainsaws

146
00:13:20,664 --> 00:13:23,394
And the coughing insults of bulldozers

147
00:13:26,670 --> 00:13:29,298
And all the while the climate is changing. . .

148
00:13:30,741 --> 00:13:35,412
Angry summers, insistent floods,
Belligerent blizzards

149
00:13:35,412 --> 00:13:38,973
Grudging droughts and pissed-off hurricanes

150
00:13:39,349 --> 00:13:44,988
with poles warming and ice shelves calving
Permafrost slumping and glaciers receding

151
00:13:44,988 --> 00:13:47,821
Sea levels rising and big cities sinking

152
00:13:48,325 --> 00:13:53,897
As ocean currents halt and superstorms gust,
Deserts expand and rabbits run

153
00:13:53,897 --> 00:13:59,267
And locusts horde and army ants march
And mosquitoes hunt and rodents overrun

154
00:14:00,971 --> 00:14:03,769
The balance undone

155
00:14:05,142 --> 00:14:10,580
Leaving crops destroyed and diseases vectored
And famine and rioting and looting and war

156
00:14:10,580 --> 00:14:15,108
The ocean turns acld and corals
And shellfish and planktons dissolve

157
00:14:15,419 --> 00:14:19,456
The disruption of food chains,
The collapsing of ecosystems

158
00:14:19,456 --> 00:14:21,947
Tonight on the Weather Channel

159
00:14:24,828 --> 00:14:28,389
(commentator blathering)

160
00:14:28,832 --> 00:14:30,467
Watch it now, while you can

161
00:14:30,467 --> 00:14:33,903
Because oil is peaking,
with no clear replacements

162
00:14:35,005 --> 00:14:37,741
Production will falter
As demand keeps increasing

163
00:14:37,741 --> 00:14:42,838
And the price, which is rising now,
will just keep on rising

164
00:14:45,515 --> 00:14:50,487
Imagine the impact to the global economy
To the truckers and farmers

165
00:14:50,487 --> 00:14:52,387
To your neighbors

166
00:14:52,990 --> 00:14:54,423
Yourself

167
00:14:55,192 --> 00:14:59,196
Watch the bidding war rage
From trade floors to battlefields

168
00:14:59,196 --> 00:15:02,859
Watch the Pentagon plan and the patriots act

169
00:15:03,834 --> 00:15:07,099
Go look out the window
Do you feel a draft?

170
00:15:08,071 --> 00:15:14,169
World population is fueled by the input of oil
We could reach 7 billion by 2013

171
00:15:14,711 --> 00:15:18,704
That's billions of bodies more
Than the planet can sustain without oll

172
00:15:21,051 --> 00:15:26,490
We're consuming the planet and
Poisoning the soil and the air and
The water that we all need to live

173
00:15:26,490 --> 00:15:29,357
We're driving a high-speed train
To the end of life

174
00:15:29,659 --> 00:15:31,795
And we're taking the rest of the planet

175
00:15:31,795 --> 00:15:34,531
Trillions upon trillions of living souls

176
00:15:34,531 --> 00:15:36,624
Along with us

177
00:15:39,636 --> 00:15:41,194
And all of this

178
00:15:42,272 --> 00:15:43,739
All of this

179
00:15:44,908 --> 00:15:46,375
All of this

180
00:15:47,878 --> 00:15:49,470
All of this

181
00:15:50,647 --> 00:15:55,452
is wrapped tightly inside a culture of denials and
lies and absurdities so complex

182
00:15:55,452 --> 00:15:56,520
And so powerful

183
00:15:56,520 --> 00:15:58,886
That we can barely see through the smog

184
00:15:59,389 --> 00:16:02,325
The monsters are screeching
At the village's edge

185
00:16:02,325 --> 00:16:06,056
So huge and so horrible
That we cannot bear to look at them

186
00:16:06,396 --> 00:16:07,226
And we,

187
00:16:07,964 --> 00:16:11,301
Bound in a cultural straightjacket
Of our own making,

188
00:16:11,301 --> 00:16:13,804
Slumber on as they draw near

189
00:16:13,804 --> 00:16:18,208
Working jobs we hate
Consuming products that do not fulfill

190
00:16:18,208 --> 00:16:24,169
Distracting ourselves as best we can with
Television drugs food sex and entertainments

191
00:16:24,748 --> 00:16:27,808
Hoping our leaders will find some answers

192
00:16:28,452 --> 00:16:32,556
Awakening, finally,
In the still hours of early morning

193
00:16:32,556 --> 00:16:36,959
To the shapeless realization
That they will not

194
00:16:40,897 --> 00:16:47,962
(alarm clock begins to beep and grows louder...)

195
00:16:48,472 --> 00:16:49,905
(click off)

196
00:16:51,608 --> 00:16:55,635
Ah. . . what a nightmare. . .

197
00:16:57,981 --> 00:17:02,786
Well, Johnny, you are in a pretty serious situation.

198
00:17:02,786 --> 00:17:10,318
But we believe - your mother and
Mr. Benton and I - that you can
make good without being sent away.

199
00:17:15,866 --> 00:17:22,294
There has always been a part of me that has
suspected that I would see the end-of-the-world-
as-we-know-it in my lifetime.

200
00:17:23,205 --> 00:17:28,178
It seemed built into the situation,
a certainty of population dynamics,

201
00:17:28,178 --> 00:17:31,773
the inevitable end to Mr. Malthus' musings.

202
00:17:32,983 --> 00:17:35,051
At some point we would near the sun,

203
00:17:35,051 --> 00:17:38,851
our wings would fail, and we would
plummet back to the earth.

204
00:17:38,989 --> 00:17:39,683
"Fuck!"

205
00:17:40,190 --> 00:17:42,959
New voices spoke of possible futures.

206
00:17:42,959 --> 00:17:44,794
"Hey can i have some of those purple berries?"

207
00:17:44,794 --> 00:17:47,597
Crosby, Stills and Nash
sailed the Wooden Ships.

208
00:17:47,597 --> 00:17:49,166
"Shit, not again!"

209
00:17:49,166 --> 00:17:51,930
Riddley Walker wrote his connexions.

210
00:17:52,802 --> 00:17:58,175
And Charlton Heston ate Soylent Green with
The Omega Man on the Planet of the Apes.

211
00:17:58,175 --> 00:18:00,405
"You maniacs!"

212
00:18:01,711 --> 00:18:08,947
The world looked insane to me but nobody
else seemed to notice so I buried
my thoughts and muddled on.

213
00:18:09,819 --> 00:18:12,722
Deep inside, this was tearing me to pieces.

214
00:18:12,722 --> 00:18:19,252
I remember looking in at night on my
sleeping children, and feeling a deep
and gnawing terror for their futures.

215
00:18:20,397 --> 00:18:26,302
But I locked my fears tightly in my heart, hit the
snooze button, and slept a while longer.

216
00:18:26,836 --> 00:18:31,841
And then I came across Daniel Quinn and
Derrick Jensen, two writers who helped me,

217
00:18:31,841 --> 00:18:35,312
with books such as Ishmael and
The Culture of Make Believe,

218
00:18:35,312 --> 00:18:42,185
to recognize the stories of our culture,
the beliefs and assumptions and fables
that have shaped our lives,

219
00:18:42,185 --> 00:18:48,124
the fairy-tales we have told ourselves, the
madness we have made manifest in the world.

220
00:18:49,092 --> 00:18:54,764
Quinn speaks of the Nazi regime, of Adolph
Hitler and the story he told the German people.:

221
00:18:54,764 --> 00:19:00,670
a story about the lost destiny of the Aryan race,
a story of oppression and defilement,

222
00:19:00,670 --> 00:19:04,407
a story of victory and vengeance
and greatness regained.

223
00:19:04,407 --> 00:19:08,678
And Quinn explained how the entire nation,
oppressors and oppressed alike,

224
00:19:08,678 --> 00:19:14,514
Jews and Good Germans and Gypsies and
Gays, were all held captive by that story.

225
00:19:15,485 --> 00:19:21,224
We who live today inside the dominant global
culture are similarly captives of stories.:

226
00:19:21,224 --> 00:19:24,227
stories that surround us like the air we breathe,:

227
00:19:24,227 --> 00:19:27,097
stories that we enact at our own peril,:

228
00:19:27,097 --> 00:19:30,362
stories that threaten the community of life itself.

229
00:19:31,534 --> 00:19:38,497
Have you heard the one about humans
being separate from "nature", different,
special, the pinnacle of creation?

230
00:19:39,709 --> 00:19:44,373
Or about humans being innately flawed -
violent, selfish and greedy?

231
00:19:45,482 --> 00:19:52,122
How about the one that says that the world
was made for human beings, to manage,
control, and exploit as a resource,

232
00:19:52,122 --> 00:19:56,252
and that the world has
no value beyond its utility?

233
00:19:57,193 --> 00:20:03,496
Or the story about there being only one
right way to live, and one right way to
understand and view the world?

234
00:20:04,367 --> 00:20:09,896
Or about how unlimited growth, competition,
and production are all unquestionably good?

235
00:20:10,373 --> 00:20:13,043
Or the story that tells us
that we can have and do

236
00:20:13,043 --> 00:20:16,877
anything we think we want,
because there are no limits?

237
00:20:18,615 --> 00:20:22,385
There were people in the world looking
squarely at our cultural stories,

238
00:20:22,385 --> 00:20:23,887
and at the global predicament,

239
00:20:23,887 --> 00:20:25,722
and seeing what I saw.:

240
00:20:25,722 --> 00:20:30,682
our culture, in its present
configuration, could not last.

241
00:20:31,328 --> 00:20:33,228
I was not alone.

242
00:20:33,530 --> 00:20:38,297
But the transformation, or the
collapse, still seemed far away.

243
00:20:38,568 --> 00:20:41,799
It would come one day. But not now.

244
00:20:42,238 --> 00:20:45,537
There was time. There was hope.

245
00:20:46,276 --> 00:20:49,712
Somewhere, there were
people taking care of it all.

246
00:20:50,447 --> 00:20:53,983
And that's how it was for me, year after year.

247
00:20:53,983 --> 00:20:56,586
I lived the middle class American life.

248
00:20:56,586 --> 00:21:04,686
I lived the stories I had learned as a child
and tried as best I could to ignore the
rumblings of fear that haunted my depths.

249
00:21:06,196 --> 00:21:09,632
And then I started to work
on this documentary. . .

250
00:21:10,433 --> 00:21:18,274
Three years later, having chewed our way
through a mountain of books, articles, websites,
magazines, newspapers, and documentaries,

251
00:21:18,274 --> 00:21:21,911
having attended lectures and
meetings and salons and rallies,

252
00:21:21,911 --> 00:21:29,340
and having interviews with friends and neighbors,
scientists and researchers and writers and
activity and thinkers and feelers and more,

253
00:21:29,753 --> 00:21:36,559
and having talked and written and laughed and
cried and worried and despaired and regained
our power to plunge ahead again,

254
00:21:36,559 --> 00:21:38,117
one thing seems clear.:

255
00:21:38,728 --> 00:21:43,733
the global environmental, political and economic
predicament we live in today is critical,

256
00:21:43,733 --> 00:21:47,404
the possible scenarios range
into the highly disturbing,

257
00:21:47,404 --> 00:21:52,068
and the timeframe seems. . . well. . . imminent.

258
00:21:52,242 --> 00:21:55,879
It's as though we've awakened
to find ourselves on a runaway train,

259
00:21:55,879 --> 00:22:00,884
hurtling wildly down the tracks, held
in place by powerful cultural stories

260
00:22:00,884 --> 00:22:07,255
and fueled by our desperate consumption of the
very heart, blood, bones and flesh of this planet.

261
00:22:07,824 --> 00:22:10,894
If we don't find some way to stop this train soon,

262
00:22:10,894 --> 00:22:13,260
we're going to reach the end of the line.

263
00:22:30,814 --> 00:22:35,485
So what do you see when you wake up
on the train? I can tell you what I saw.

264
00:22:35,485 --> 00:22:43,358
I saw the ground beneath the pavement,
the man behind the curtain, the monster
under the bed, the real below the rails.

265
00:22:44,694 --> 00:22:51,701
The culture of Empire works every
moment of every day to distract my attention,
like a magician using sleight-of-hand.

266
00:22:51,701 --> 00:22:55,637
What happens when I look where
the conjurer does not want me to look?

267
00:22:56,172 --> 00:22:57,662
I see the trick.

268
00:22:58,708 --> 00:23:01,575
I see the reality behind the illusion.

269
00:23:03,346 --> 00:23:08,306
I see, if I look long enough,
that the Empire has no clothes.

270
00:23:11,120 --> 00:23:12,622
Ride with me a while.

271
00:23:12,622 --> 00:23:17,627
Look more closely at the train, and the tracks,
and the terrain through which we're speeding.

272
00:23:17,627 --> 00:23:23,691
If we are to respond effectively, we'll need a
clear understanding of the whole of the situation.

273
00:23:24,634 --> 00:23:27,937
For me, four aspects of our
predicament stand out.:

274
00:23:27,937 --> 00:23:33,109
Peak oil, climate change, mass
extinction and population overshoot.

275
00:23:33,109 --> 00:23:37,714
In the fall of 2005, Sally Erickson
and I circled the country by train,

276
00:23:37,714 --> 00:23:41,673
meeting with people to talk
about these issues, and many others.

277
00:23:42,886 --> 00:23:47,757
At some point you reach the place

278
00:23:47,757 --> 00:23:50,783
where you can't get it out any faster.

279
00:23:52,195 --> 00:23:56,733
So, when you get to that point you've reached
the peak. Then we start downhill.

280
00:23:56,733 --> 00:24:02,228
And once we start downhill that's when
economic collapse will occur.

281
00:24:03,072 --> 00:24:07,877
That's my friend Tom, talking about oll.
Peak Oil. And Economic Collapse.

282
00:24:07,877 --> 00:24:15,409
At first I didn't get it. So I started reading.
And on our trip I met with some people
who knew more about the situation.

283
00:24:15,919 --> 00:24:20,924
Over the last 150 years we've
created a society that runs on oil.

284
00:24:20,924 --> 00:24:23,626
And it's inevitable that we would have done so,

285
00:24:23,626 --> 00:24:26,896
because it's just such incredible inexpensive,

286
00:24:26,896 --> 00:24:29,228
convenient, energy-dense stuff.

287
00:24:29,532 --> 00:24:37,098
I spoke with Richard Heinberg, a core
faculty member of New College of Callfornla
and author of three books on Peak Oil.

288
00:24:37,574 --> 00:24:46,583
The problem, of course, is that oil is a
non-renewable resource. So even
when we first started using the stuff
we knew that eventually we'd run out.

289
00:24:46,583 --> 00:24:51,543
I met with the journalist Paul Roberts,
who wrote a book about oil depletion in 2004.

290
00:24:52,522 --> 00:24:54,891
At some point, since oil is a finite resource,

291
00:24:54,891 --> 00:24:57,594
you can't keep raising production.

292
00:24:57,594 --> 00:24:59,162
Usually this is about the halfway point.

293
00:24:59,162 --> 00:25:01,297
When you've depleted half of the resource

294
00:25:01,297 --> 00:25:03,967
it becomes harder and harder to raise
production. Doesn't mean you run out.

295
00:25:03,967 --> 00:25:06,369
And a great deal of oil is still
coming out of the ground.

296
00:25:06,369 --> 00:25:11,374
If we were to peak tomorrow we'd still have
eighty-two and a half million barrels
coming out of the ground every day.

297
00:25:11,374 --> 00:25:14,537
But it would be really hard to get
eighty-three and a half million barrels.

298
00:25:14,978 --> 00:25:25,288
Gerald Cecil, a professor of Astrophysics at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has
been so taken by the oil situation that he's now
writing a book about it.

299
00:25:25,288 --> 00:25:29,258
The rate with which oil has been
coming out of the ground has stagnated.

300
00:25:29,258 --> 00:25:33,062
It's stagnated at eighty four
million barrels of oil a day,

301
00:25:33,062 --> 00:25:39,535
which sounds like an incredible number.
But that's what we use to power
ourselves at today's rate of use.

302
00:25:39,535 --> 00:25:46,843
And as the world population continues to grow,
and as prosperity presumably continues to grow
and people power up in their energy use,

303
00:25:46,843 --> 00:25:51,514
we get to a situation where there isn't any
excess capacity to keep that powering going.

304
00:25:51,514 --> 00:25:58,187
And at some point you end up with a
flat supply and a growing demand
and you have serious problems.

305
00:25:58,187 --> 00:26:00,314
And that's the nature of peak oil.

306
00:26:01,858 --> 00:26:06,818
Are we at or near the peak of oil extraction?
There are many signs that we are.

307
00:26:07,997 --> 00:26:13,002
Discoveries of new oil peaked
right around 1963, '64.

308
00:26:13,002 --> 00:26:15,004
That was a long time ago.

309
00:26:15,004 --> 00:26:19,275
So we're not talking about a couple
years of bad luck in exploration.

310
00:26:19,275 --> 00:26:21,077
This is a long-established trend.

311
00:26:21,077 --> 00:26:30,850
We've been discovering less oil with every
passing year, to the point now where we're
extracting and using about four or five barrels of
oil for everyone that we discover.

312
00:26:31,154 --> 00:26:39,357
Now the oil industry responded in a number of
ways. But one of the things it did was begin
developing some amazing new technologies to
help it find more oil faster.

313
00:26:39,729 --> 00:26:46,157
And despite this huge investment in technology,
and these great leaps forward, the rates of
discovery are still declining.

314
00:26:46,569 --> 00:26:51,441
Country after country is reaching its own
national all-time oil production peak

315
00:26:51,441 --> 00:26:52,942
and going into decline.

316
00:26:52,942 --> 00:27:01,250
The US was one of the first to do it back
in 1970. And now something like
30 or 33 countries are past their peak.

317
00:27:01,250 --> 00:27:07,623
And so it's inevitable that within the
very next few years we'll see the
global peak in oil production.

318
00:27:07,623 --> 00:27:09,181
Nobody's ready for that.

319
00:27:10,059 --> 00:27:14,723
Not ready for what, exactly? What will
the end of cheap oil mean for the world?

320
00:27:14,997 --> 00:27:17,625
I went to speak with the writer
and activist Jerry Mander.

321
00:27:17,967 --> 00:27:24,463
I'd let myself believe that the real problems
were decades away. Turns out they're
probably right around the corner.

322
00:27:25,308 --> 00:27:27,503
All the structures that now exist -

323
00:27:28,211 --> 00:27:30,702
our urban formations,

324
00:27:31,547 --> 00:27:34,539
our transportation systems,

325
00:27:35,451 --> 00:27:37,282
our means of getting food,

326
00:27:37,954 --> 00:27:40,787
globalization as an economic model,

327
00:27:42,125 --> 00:27:44,116
capitalism as an economic model,

328
00:27:44,360 --> 00:27:48,820
which depends on constant expansion and
growth and ever-more resources -

329
00:27:49,332 --> 00:27:53,302
cannot possibly continue to exist.

330
00:27:53,302 --> 00:28:02,335
Because they're all based on - the root base of
all of it - is the existence of cheap energy.

331
00:28:02,779 --> 00:28:08,718
In order to avoid a deflationary
depression we have to have continual
growth in the money supply,

332
00:28:08,718 --> 00:28:13,723
which has to be based on continual
growth in economic activity,

333
00:28:13,723 --> 00:28:19,662
which must be based on the continual
growth in available energy and raw materials.

334
00:28:19,662 --> 00:28:27,034
We've built an economy based on the idea that
It has to grow every year or else collapse.

335
00:28:27,570 --> 00:28:30,273
So, soon, the economy won't be able to grow.

336
00:28:30,273 --> 00:28:37,304
And all signs are that we may be facing a kind of
global economic collapse because of peak oil.

337
00:28:38,548 --> 00:28:44,316
It seems that, if our economy is poised for
meltdown, our agricultural system is doubly so.

338
00:28:44,787 --> 00:28:52,717
I spoke with local sustainable designer
Harvey Harman and with writer Richard
Manning about what he calls "the oil we eat".

339
00:28:52,962 --> 00:28:58,491
The average piece of food in your supermarket
has traveled 3,000 miles or more to get there.

340
00:28:59,202 --> 00:29:04,140
So not only is it based on petroleum to grow it,

341
00:29:04,140 --> 00:29:07,076
but then it's transported, and refrigerated.

342
00:29:07,076 --> 00:29:08,744
And, you know, it's a system

343
00:29:08,744 --> 00:29:15,484
that's very dependent on cheap energy,
and it's very energy-intensive.

344
00:29:15,484 --> 00:29:21,858
If we take a look at about 1940, and an
American farmer, that farmer was using roughly

345
00:29:21,858 --> 00:29:27,125
a calorie of fossil fuel to make a calorie of food.

346
00:29:27,663 --> 00:29:29,899
Today that same farmer

347
00:29:29,899 --> 00:29:35,201
uses something like 10 calories of
fossil fuel to make a calorie of food.

348
00:29:36,239 --> 00:29:42,645
That means that petrochemicals, fossil fuel,
have become embedded in our food supply.

349
00:29:42,645 --> 00:29:48,811
if we run out of fossil fuel that strategy
will collapse in a heartbeat.

350
00:29:49,518 --> 00:29:54,323
Sadly, with so much at stake, oil
grows increasingly worth fighting for.

351
00:29:54,323 --> 00:29:56,587
My friend Ray said it best.

352
00:29:57,026 --> 00:29:59,262
Prices will naturally begin to rise

353
00:29:59,262 --> 00:30:01,364
and people will probably fight over it more.

354
00:30:01,364 --> 00:30:07,603
And the US will, almost certainly, with
whatever means are necessary, make
sure that we get everything we need.

355
00:30:07,603 --> 00:30:11,664
And so that will probably make
for an unhappy rest of the planet.

356
00:30:13,109 --> 00:30:15,711
It's a permanent state of affairs. You know?

357
00:30:15,711 --> 00:30:19,977
The fuel crisis will be over in a
couple of hundred million years.

358
00:30:20,316 --> 00:30:30,459
When everything has settled down and there's a
lot more having been made from all of us
having, you know, been squished back under.

359
00:30:30,459 --> 00:30:32,528
(laughs)

360
00:30:32,528 --> 00:30:34,257
It takes a long time.

361
00:30:36,265 --> 00:30:40,436
Peak oil got my attention.
The ramifications are enormous.

362
00:30:40,436 --> 00:30:45,805
And if the oil situation is bleak, some say
that the natural gas situation is even worse.

363
00:30:46,142 --> 00:30:48,633
As writer and professor Otis Graham said.:

364
00:30:48,944 --> 00:30:50,645
We've had three or four hundred years of

365
00:30:50,645 --> 00:30:53,082
fossil fuel - it's coming to an end.

366
00:30:53,082 --> 00:30:54,850
is that an historic turning point?

367
00:30:54,850 --> 00:30:56,317
it's breathtaking!

368
00:30:57,920 --> 00:31:01,657
Even more breathtaking is what
happens when we burn the stuff.

369
00:31:01,657 --> 00:31:07,595
Scientists used to talk about climate
change in terms of centuries. Now
they're talking about decades.

370
00:31:07,595 --> 00:31:12,969
Now they're talking about next year.
Now they're talking about now.

371
00:31:12,969 --> 00:31:16,005
My friends and neighbors
are talking about it too.

372
00:31:16,005 --> 00:31:19,308
We've increased the levels of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere.

373
00:31:19,308 --> 00:31:24,880
Which traps heat in the earth's atmosphere.
Which raises the temperature.

374
00:31:24,880 --> 00:31:27,750
The glaciers are melting. The sea ice is melting.

375
00:31:27,750 --> 00:31:30,453
The polar ice caps are basically melting.

376
00:31:30,453 --> 00:31:36,692
And I hate it. I hate feeling like
we've done this to nature.

377
00:31:36,692 --> 00:31:41,697
Not to mention all of the animals,
all of the wildlife, that are going to die.

378
00:31:41,697 --> 00:31:44,166
it'll begin to happen.
it's already beginning to happen.

379
00:31:44,166 --> 00:31:47,236
it's happening everywhere.
You know. it's happening!

380
00:31:47,236 --> 00:31:48,497
it's terrifying.

381
00:31:49,071 --> 00:31:50,868
it's a drag.

382
00:31:51,640 --> 00:31:53,475
That's putting it mildly.

383
00:31:53,475 --> 00:32:00,814
The only good thing I can think to say
about climate change is that when I
understood the climate situation, I
spent less time worrying about oil.

384
00:32:01,617 --> 00:32:03,986
some people have said, and I
think they're right about this,

385
00:32:03,986 --> 00:32:08,189
we're gonna run out of air to burn
before we run out of fossil fuels to burn.

386
00:32:08,189 --> 00:32:13,595
in other words, the fossil fuels are
creating the global warming problem,

387
00:32:13,595 --> 00:32:16,298
the CO2, and the pollution problems.

388
00:32:16,298 --> 00:32:20,301
And, if we keep using those, it's not really a
matter of when we run out of fossil fuels.

389
00:32:20,301 --> 00:32:28,004
It's when we befoul the atmosphere so much,
and create so much global warming, it's
irrelevant how much gas we've got left.

390
00:32:28,744 --> 00:32:32,373
There. See what I mean? You feel
better already, don't you?

391
00:32:33,382 --> 00:32:38,342
So, whom else could I speak with about the
climate? Turns out I didn't have to go very far.

392
00:32:38,654 --> 00:32:45,628
William Schlesinger, Dean of the Nicholas
School of the Environment and Earth Sciences
at Duke University had this to say.

393
00:32:45,628 --> 00:32:49,632
We have raised, globally in our atmosphere,

394
00:32:49,632 --> 00:32:51,967
the concentration of carbon dioxide

395
00:32:51,967 --> 00:33:00,242
from about 280 parts-per-million in the late
1800's to close to 380 parts-per-million today.

396
00:33:00,242 --> 00:33:08,317
That's roughly a 30% increase.
And the projection is that it will
be 550, 560, in the year 2050.

397
00:33:08,317 --> 00:33:14,323
Schlesinger's colleague at Duke, Professor of
Conservation Ecology Stuart Pimm, added this.:

398
00:33:14,323 --> 00:33:17,293
There is now a strong scientific consensus that

399
00:33:17,293 --> 00:33:19,728
that has caused warming over the last

400
00:33:19,728 --> 00:33:26,224
several decades, maybe centuries, and there's a
strong expectation that it will continue to do so.

401
00:33:26,569 --> 00:33:33,642
So. . .greenhouse gases on the rise.
Temperature on the rise. More floods.
More droughts. Rising sea level.

402
00:33:33,642 --> 00:33:38,647
It's been in the news for some time now.
How does this impact the community of life?

403
00:33:38,647 --> 00:33:48,557
Birds are arriving earlier in the springtime.
Plants are flowering earlier. Species'
ranges are moving northward.

404
00:33:48,557 --> 00:33:55,831
We are seeing an extraordinary,
strong signal, biological signal,

405
00:33:55,831 --> 00:33:58,267
of what global warming is doing for us.

406
00:33:58,267 --> 00:34:02,238
Crops and trees will grow in
places they don't grow today.

407
00:34:02,238 --> 00:34:06,075
We have a lot of suspicion that
they may not grow as well.

408
00:34:06,075 --> 00:34:14,915
And we're beginning to see extinctions of
species that have literally no place
else to go as the climate gets warmer.

409
00:34:15,284 --> 00:34:18,420
There's one impact I found particularly sobering.

410
00:34:18,420 --> 00:34:22,690
The carbon in the atmosphere. The carbon in
the atmosphere goes into the ocean,

411
00:34:22,690 --> 00:34:25,460
it gets absorbed in the ocean as,
I want to say, carbonic acid. . .

412
00:34:25,460 --> 00:34:27,263
Changes in the atmosphere, for example,

413
00:34:27,263 --> 00:34:30,299
of carbon dioxide can be buffered by absorption

414
00:34:30,299 --> 00:34:32,434
of the carbon dioxide into the oceans.

415
00:34:32,434 --> 00:34:40,476
That as you do that, you do change the acidity of
the oceans. And we are finding that there's a
measurable change in the acidity of the oceans.

416
00:34:40,476 --> 00:34:48,645
And that is making it harder for the plankton to
form their shells. And if there's a plankton die-
off. . . that's the bottom of the food chain.

417
00:34:49,784 --> 00:34:56,525
Plankton, as well as corals, are threatened not
only by rising acidity, but by rising temperatures.

418
00:34:56,525 --> 00:35:00,963
Phytoplankton levels have declined by as much
as a third in some northern oceans.

419
00:35:00,963 --> 00:35:06,569
And this has resulted in significant
impacts to fish and krill and bird populations.

420
00:35:06,569 --> 00:35:11,574
But the reported dangers go far beyond a
breaking of food chains, which is bad enough.

421
00:35:11,574 --> 00:35:16,011
Phytoplanktons produce half of
the oxygen we breathe. Half.

422
00:35:16,979 --> 00:35:19,072
And they are a major carbon sink.

423
00:35:19,481 --> 00:35:25,181
When plankton dies, more carbon remains
in the air. Which means more warming.

424
00:35:26,522 --> 00:35:31,160
On top of this, new evidence shows
that climate can shift very rapidly.

425
00:35:31,160 --> 00:35:37,827
Slow changes can build. . . to a
tipping point. . .and the system can
then shift abruptly to a new state.

426
00:35:38,634 --> 00:35:47,576
this is happening in the oceans, where a global
current known as the grand conveyor belt is now
being impacted, with possibly disastrous results.

427
00:35:47,576 --> 00:35:56,118
As Douglas Crawford-Brown, Director
of the Carolina Environmental
Program at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill told me.:

428
00:35:56,118 --> 00:36:01,690
The amount of carbon dioxide that we're putting
out into the atmosphere is rising to a point now

429
00:36:01,690 --> 00:36:06,462
where most scientists would agree
that we may be at a sort of tipping point.

430
00:36:06,462 --> 00:36:13,302
We may be at a point where we're going to
start to get so much carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere that feedback mechanisms

431
00:36:13,302 --> 00:36:18,307
that control the temperature of the earth will
start to be stretched a little bit too far.

432
00:36:18,307 --> 00:36:25,447
The classic one is you get too much
melting of ice, it flows into the ocean,
and you shut off the conveyor belt.

433
00:36:25,447 --> 00:36:30,219
And if that happens, this will cause dramatic
changes in the climate in England.

434
00:36:30,219 --> 00:36:37,426
I mean, England would literally become Norway
or Sweden, if you look at them on the globe, if
the conveyor belt were to be slowed down.

435
00:36:37,426 --> 00:36:40,327
And we're starting to see
changes of those magnitudes.

436
00:36:41,163 --> 00:36:45,200
this is why I tend to use the term climate
change, rather than global warming.

437
00:36:45,200 --> 00:36:54,131
A warming planet can have heating and drought
in some areas, and freezing in others, such as
Europe and North America would experience if
the Gulf Steam shut down.

438
00:36:54,777 --> 00:36:56,938
The impact of that would be huge.

439
00:36:57,379 --> 00:37:05,788
those portions, much of which supply the
agricultural bounty for Europe and the US,

440
00:37:05,788 --> 00:37:10,748
would have dramatic changes in climate,
particularly affecting agriculture.

441
00:37:11,894 --> 00:37:18,561
There are a number of self-reinforcing
feedback loops now in operation.
Here are two such processes.

442
00:37:19,168 --> 00:37:27,303
You know the polar ice melting, which is opening
huge areas of sea in the polar regions.

443
00:37:28,644 --> 00:37:32,444
Without that ice, which normally reflects sunlight,

444
00:37:33,515 --> 00:37:40,148
that polar sea is now going to be absorbing
a lot more sunlight and, therefore, heat.

445
00:37:40,789 --> 00:37:47,196
We have a lot of carbon stored in the
permafrost. And those permafrosts
are starting to defrost.

446
00:37:47,196 --> 00:37:50,899
And when they defrost that carbon dioxide - that
carbon - is going to be oxidized

447
00:37:50,899 --> 00:37:54,069
to carbon dioxide, or brought out
as methane and so on.

448
00:37:54,069 --> 00:37:57,673
And that will be a dramatic
increase in greenhouse gases.

449
00:37:57,673 --> 00:38:05,045
This may get out of hand and we'll suddenly
be looking at a very rapid warming of the planet.

450
00:38:05,514 --> 00:38:07,414
This may get out of hand.

451
00:38:07,716 --> 00:38:13,422
given that there seems to be a
consensus that we need to reduce carbon
emissions by 70 percent or more,

452
00:38:13,422 --> 00:38:17,426
and given that we live in a world where
economies must grow or die,

453
00:38:17,426 --> 00:38:21,296
and given that our carbon emissions grow
along with our economies,

454
00:38:21,296 --> 00:38:26,301
and given that many countries are working
feverishly to emulate the American way of life,

455
00:38:26,301 --> 00:38:30,005
it's difficult to see a way to STOP
it from getting out of hand.

456
00:38:30,005 --> 00:38:35,841
I've yet to see a proposed solution
that even comes close to realistically
addressing the situation.

457
00:38:37,045 --> 00:38:39,741
Talk about a snowball's chance in hell.

458
00:38:40,315 --> 00:38:44,520
I used to take this martial arts class. And a lot of
these guys, it was kind of a kung-fu thing,

459
00:38:44,520 --> 00:38:46,989
a lot of the guys in class would be saying,
'well, what if i meet a guy that's really good

460
00:38:46,989 --> 00:38:49,892
in tae-kwon-do?',
or "what if i meet a really good boxer?"

461
00:38:49,892 --> 00:38:52,494
And the teacher would say, "well, you're
going to get your butt kicked". You know?

462
00:38:52,494 --> 00:38:58,033
You say, "what if we run into a tipping point
where we have this kind of accelerated
scenario of climate change?"

463
00:38:58,033 --> 00:38:59,301
We're going to get our butts kicked.

464
00:38:59,301 --> 00:39:05,941
It's very possible that global climate
change is out of our control at this
point no matter what we do.

465
00:39:05,941 --> 00:39:11,380
Whether we implement Kyoto, or
Kyoto on steroids, or whatever it is.

466
00:39:11,380 --> 00:39:18,320
I don't know how it will be manageable.
If they can't manage the fallout from
the New Orleans catastrophe

467
00:39:18,320 --> 00:39:23,622
what's going to happen when they try to
manage a society-wide catastrophic situation?

468
00:39:24,927 --> 00:39:31,266
We can take a lot of punches.
Nature takes punches pretty readily.

469
00:39:31,266 --> 00:39:34,292
Global warming is a really severe punch.

470
00:39:35,270 --> 00:39:41,510
And all that we depend on for
natural systems and agricultural systems

471
00:39:41,510 --> 00:39:43,774
is about to be wiped out pretty drastically.

472
00:39:45,314 --> 00:39:51,487
About to be? What is he saying? Do we
dare speak of such disasters as inevitable?

473
00:39:51,487 --> 00:39:55,123
If we speak of inevitability,
will that overwhelm people?

474
00:39:55,123 --> 00:39:58,460
Will they slide into apathy and diversion?

475
00:39:58,460 --> 00:40:01,396
Isn't that where people already are?

476
00:40:01,396 --> 00:40:04,900
I don't feel like I can afford to look
at anything less than the truth.

477
00:40:04,900 --> 00:40:08,570
And then I must ask.: what are we made of?

478
00:40:08,570 --> 00:40:11,471
Who will we be in the face of such truths?

479
00:40:11,874 --> 00:40:15,537
If we don't look at these
things, one thing seems certain.

480
00:40:15,944 --> 00:40:23,719
Generations to come are not going to be very
happy with us for refusing to get serious

481
00:40:23,719 --> 00:40:26,745
about these hugely important issues.

482
00:40:28,423 --> 00:40:35,664
What really gets me is it's not just our human
descendents. Millions of species and more are
now threatened by our behavior.

483
00:40:35,664 --> 00:40:40,569
And for many of them, there will
be no "generations to come".

484
00:40:40,569 --> 00:40:45,741
We're killing off all the life forms that give us life.

485
00:40:45,741 --> 00:40:49,978
We have black holes in the ocean.
There are no fish in places in the ocean.

486
00:40:49,978 --> 00:40:54,677
What's happened to the fish?
What's happened?

487
00:40:55,250 --> 00:41:01,246
That's my friend Barbara, who spent
her life as a teacher and activist,
working for the life of this planet.

488
00:41:01,723 --> 00:41:07,992
The thing is, we know what's happened. My son
Jack knows. He's known since he was a kid.

489
00:41:08,363 --> 00:41:12,568
I mean, everyone knows the problems -
the deforestation, the pollution of rivers,
the garbage, overpopulation.

490
00:41:12,568 --> 00:41:19,308
All of these things the planet
isn't built for us to do that.

491
00:41:19,308 --> 00:41:22,044
It's not built in such a way that it can take that.

492
00:41:22,044 --> 00:41:27,607
I mean, we have to live on the planet, so
if we're going to destroy where we're
living then that's going to be a problem.

493
00:41:30,352 --> 00:41:36,985
Hmm. Destroy where you're living. A problem?
What are the analysts and scientists saying?

494
00:41:39,061 --> 00:41:42,297
Geologists mark geological time by catastrophe.

495
00:41:42,297 --> 00:41:46,768
When did the comet hit and wipe out all those
species? When did the fossil record change?

496
00:41:46,768 --> 00:41:53,909
so what was there yesterday was not
there the next day? And we're in one of those
periods right now. But it's human-caused.

497
00:41:53,909 --> 00:41:59,779
And we're seeing an order of extinctions
now that ranks with the great
catastrophes on the planet.

498
00:41:59,915 --> 00:42:09,187
Currently we are driving species to
extinction probably a thousand
times faster than they should be.

499
00:42:09,458 --> 00:42:14,794
We will lose somewhere between a
quarter, maybe as many as a half,

500
00:42:15,263 --> 00:42:19,468
of all the species on earth
within the next century.

501
00:42:19,468 --> 00:42:22,801
I think what he's saying is.:
that would be bad.

502
00:42:23,305 --> 00:42:26,241
When I spoke with Daniel Quinn,
he seemed to agree.

503
00:42:26,241 --> 00:42:34,916
if this goes on, and on and on and on,
there's going to come a point

504
00:42:34,916 --> 00:42:37,111
when the system is going to collapse.

505
00:42:38,220 --> 00:42:45,888
What is it that's going on and on? Nothing
less than the people of Empire devouring
the world. As my friend Kevin put it.:

506
00:42:48,263 --> 00:42:50,766
Humans are taking over the whole planet.

507
00:42:50,766 --> 00:42:53,168
And everything else is being crowded out.

508
00:42:53,168 --> 00:43:02,844
Crowded out. Felled and milled. Caught,
cleaned and canned. The numbers show
that the culture of civilization is eating
itself out of house and home.

509
00:43:02,844 --> 00:43:08,717
On land, we consume forty percent of what's
known as the primary productivity of the planet.

510
00:43:08,717 --> 00:43:15,290
If you look at how much green
"stuff" the planet produces every year,

511
00:43:15,290 --> 00:43:17,693
we use about two-fifths of that.

512
00:43:17,693 --> 00:43:24,933
We consume it, our domestic animals consume
it, and we use wood, and fibers like cotton.

513
00:43:24,933 --> 00:43:30,839
I drive through the country and see it. Forests
are now fields and parking lots and box stores.

514
00:43:30,839 --> 00:43:37,938
We grow crops and livestock and billboards
and cell phone towers, bulldozing and bush-
hogging our way around the globe.

515
00:43:38,714 --> 00:43:46,985
And it's the destruction of the places
where species live that's the principal
cause of species becoming extinct.

516
00:43:48,824 --> 00:43:51,359
It's the same story in the oceans.

517
00:43:51,359 --> 00:44:02,904
Many people think that the oceans are vast and
untouched. And in actual fact we take about a
third of the production from the oceans, too.

518
00:44:02,904 --> 00:44:07,008
Our fish stocks, all over the coast of the
United States and certainly around the world,

519
00:44:07,008 --> 00:44:10,412
are getting perilously close to collapsing.

520
00:44:10,412 --> 00:44:19,254
Most of the desirable, large, predatory
fish - snapper, swordfish, and the like -
have been reduced

521
00:44:19,254 --> 00:44:23,020
down to ten percent of their previous population.

522
00:44:23,592 --> 00:44:28,962
Down to ten percent? Maybe that's why
we're now eating tilapia instead of cod.

523
00:44:29,598 --> 00:44:31,964
The cod is almost gone.

524
00:44:33,068 --> 00:44:37,300
And with your tilapia may I suggest a
big tall glass of drinkable water?

525
00:44:37,572 --> 00:44:44,679
When it comes to fresh water we probably
take about half of the available fresh water.

526
00:44:44,679 --> 00:44:50,519
Part of the way we've fed the planet over
the last thirty years, as we've doubled
population, is to use a whole lot of water.

527
00:44:50,519 --> 00:44:54,489
Our agriculture's now the leading
user of water in the world.

528
00:44:54,489 --> 00:44:56,091
And in this nation as well.

529
00:44:56,091 --> 00:45:04,633
Our watersheds in the United States have
been so highly developed that even small
changes in the amount of water that falls

530
00:45:04,633 --> 00:45:10,071
are beginning to cause large implications
for society's availability of water.

531
00:45:11,106 --> 00:45:16,011
Multiplying the impact of consumption
and habitat destruction is the fact that,

532
00:45:16,011 --> 00:45:20,248
with fuels, with pesticides and
herbicides and industrial chemicals,

533
00:45:20,248 --> 00:45:22,851
with noise and with electromagnetic waves

534
00:45:22,851 --> 00:45:26,855
and with human activity and with
structures of control and domination,

535
00:45:26,855 --> 00:45:32,694
Empire is literally and metaphorically
poisoning every square inch of the planet.

536
00:45:32,694 --> 00:45:36,998
Yes, life will recover from
what we are doing to the planet.

537
00:45:36,998 --> 00:45:38,400
But don't hold your breath.

538
00:45:38,400 --> 00:45:40,335
It's going to take millions of years.

539
00:45:40,335 --> 00:45:45,540
It's going to take an incredible
number of human generations.

540
00:45:45,540 --> 00:45:50,879
Trillions of people will live in a
biologically impoverished world

541
00:45:50,879 --> 00:45:56,078
if we don't stop our human impacts now.

542
00:45:57,552 --> 00:46:00,822
I spoke with Daniel Quinn
about this mass extinction.

543
00:46:00,822 --> 00:46:03,518
He gave me a metaphor
that has haunted me since.

544
00:46:04,759 --> 00:46:10,823
We are like people who live in a
very tall building. . . brick building.
We live on the top floor.

545
00:46:11,399 --> 00:46:21,775
And every day we go out, go down to the lower
floors and at random we knock bricks out, take
them upstairs to the top, and build higher.

546
00:46:23,578 --> 00:46:28,709
Every day. Downstairs, 200 bricks.
Take them upstairs.

547
00:46:30,018 --> 00:46:36,992
And the building is perfectly stable.
But it's not going to be stable forever.

548
00:46:36,992 --> 00:46:42,464
Because we are attacking the
structural integrity of the building.

549
00:46:42,464 --> 00:46:46,601
Two hundred species a day, day after
day after day, year after year. . .

550
00:46:46,601 --> 00:46:49,069
And as our population increases

551
00:46:50,305 --> 00:46:55,043
it's going to turn into 400 species
a day, a thousand species a day.

552
00:46:55,043 --> 00:46:59,343
And there's going to come a day
when the system is going to collapse.

553
00:46:59,814 --> 00:47:02,374
Two hundred species a day!?

554
00:47:04,152 --> 00:47:06,950
This is calamitous.

555
00:47:07,689 --> 00:47:14,496
We may already be well above 200 bricks
each day. And it looks to me like the
building is not far from collapse.

556
00:47:14,496 --> 00:47:19,593
Everything in me wants to run out of the building
before it comes crashing down around my ears.

557
00:47:19,968 --> 00:47:23,571
But where would I run?
Empire now covers the planet.

558
00:47:23,571 --> 00:47:28,304
The building is everywhere.
And almost all of us are inside of it.

559
00:47:28,810 --> 00:47:29,902
All of us.

560
00:47:30,478 --> 00:47:33,106
All six and a half billion of us.

561
00:47:34,082 --> 00:47:38,086
One of the hardest things to talk about
is the human population explosion.

562
00:47:38,086 --> 00:47:45,583
The friends and neighbors I spoke with all
seemed to agree that the enormous
increase in human population would
soon have to be reckoned with.

563
00:47:45,860 --> 00:47:48,196
We're approaching full tilt, I think,

564
00:47:48,196 --> 00:47:54,226
in terms of what the planet can sustain.

565
00:47:54,869 --> 00:48:00,308
Any species that has outgrown its environment

566
00:48:00,308 --> 00:48:02,544
is pressed for resources.

567
00:48:02,544 --> 00:48:04,346
is it just all going to end,

568
00:48:04,346 --> 00:48:06,414
and is that going to be the solution?

569
00:48:06,414 --> 00:48:10,285
You know, are we gonna become extinct

570
00:48:10,285 --> 00:48:11,653
like the dinosaurs?

571
00:48:11,653 --> 00:48:18,217
Equilibrium will be re-achieved.

572
00:48:18,960 --> 00:48:22,597
Unfortunately, nature is a harsh taskmaster.

573
00:48:22,597 --> 00:48:24,299
Because we're so intelligent,

574
00:48:24,299 --> 00:48:27,369
because we're such a different class of animal,

575
00:48:27,369 --> 00:48:35,477
with such a big brain, we have the ability
to understand and foresee and prepare
and stuff for these things,

576
00:48:35,477 --> 00:48:37,206
doesn't mean we will.

577
00:48:37,846 --> 00:48:40,982
How will we face into the
issue of human population?

578
00:48:40,982 --> 00:48:47,522
I went to speak with William Catton, a
professor of Sociology & Human Ecology
at Washington State University,

579
00:48:47,522 --> 00:48:53,290
now retired, and author of an amazing
book on ecology and human
population called Overshoot.

580
00:48:53,728 --> 00:48:57,459
According to Catton's assessment
of the carrying capacity of the planet.:

581
00:48:57,832 --> 00:49:00,402
I think the way we're living now,

582
00:49:00,402 --> 00:49:03,705
the world was overpopulated already

583
00:49:03,705 --> 00:49:05,536
by the time of our civil war.

584
00:49:06,474 --> 00:49:10,712
The population at the time of the US
Civil War was just over one billion.

585
00:49:10,712 --> 00:49:15,672
So we've now overshot that number by
more than 5 billion. As Catton told me.:

586
00:49:16,484 --> 00:49:20,388
It is possible to exceed carrying
capacity. But only temporarily.

587
00:49:20,388 --> 00:49:26,020
if you exceed carrying capacity
you then damage the environment
upon which you're depending.

588
00:49:26,461 --> 00:49:33,367
Looking closely, I've come to see that
population numbers for humans, in and of
themselves, are only part of the story.

589
00:49:33,902 --> 00:49:37,839
As Catton points out, it's the damage
those numbers do that counts.

590
00:49:37,839 --> 00:49:41,331
And that damage is intimately
connected to our way of life.

591
00:49:41,843 --> 00:49:45,914
The Earth supports as great a collective
mass of ants as it does people.

592
00:49:45,914 --> 00:49:52,787
It can do so because ants aren't
building 6000-square-foot homes,
driving two hours to their jobs,

593
00:49:52,787 --> 00:49:57,747
buying plasma TV sets, and killing each
other with depleted uranium munitions.

594
00:49:58,393 --> 00:50:03,731
We in the developed world have
32 times the footprint on the planet,

595
00:50:03,731 --> 00:50:07,792
on resources... depletion...
32 times a person in india.

596
00:50:10,705 --> 00:50:13,606
I think we all know that
though the figure is stunning.

597
00:50:13,942 --> 00:50:19,903
And it ought to make us really think,
and start to talk with each other about this.

598
00:50:20,548 --> 00:50:25,508
You talk about how many "energy
slaves", per capita, do we have?

599
00:50:27,088 --> 00:50:29,991
In this country we've got something like 70 times

600
00:50:29,991 --> 00:50:34,996
as many energy slaves per capita
as people in Bangladesh.

601
00:50:34,996 --> 00:50:39,067
instead of thinking of Bangladesh
as the overpopulated country,

602
00:50:39,067 --> 00:50:41,503
if you multiply each of us by seventy

603
00:50:41,503 --> 00:50:47,242
- take that 290 million, or whatever number of
us there are now, multiple it be seventy - wow.

604
00:50:47,242 --> 00:50:49,938
We are an overpopulated country.

605
00:50:50,245 --> 00:50:58,050
In those terms, the US is a nation of
21 billion people. And my own three
children add 210 to that number.

606
00:50:58,386 --> 00:51:03,691
To speak of population, then, as the root
cause of our problem makes little sense to me.

607
00:51:03,691 --> 00:51:13,657
It conjures images of crowded third-world
cities and teeming masses of human flesh,
while the global impacts of rich first-world
lifestyles go unexamined.

608
00:51:15,970 --> 00:51:21,306
Big feet. More and more feet. And more
and more feet getting bigger and bigger.

609
00:51:21,709 --> 00:51:26,908
And if these feet just keep on walking, one of
these days they're gonna walk right into oblivion.

610
00:51:28,416 --> 00:51:31,351
It cannot be sustained for much longer.

611
00:51:33,755 --> 00:51:37,158
There are any number of catastrophic
forces that could lower our numbers,

612
00:51:37,158 --> 00:51:41,424
as oil depletion, climate change and
environmental collapses play out.

613
00:51:41,863 --> 00:51:45,799
One thing large populations are
especially prone to is disease.

614
00:51:46,668 --> 00:51:51,628
Microbes are gonna have a lot more to do with it
than humans have to do with it in the end.

615
00:51:52,407 --> 00:51:57,071
Nature - we're still governed by natural rules,
we like to think we're not, but we are -

616
00:51:57,512 --> 00:52:02,074
when you put together the kind of biomass
that humans represent on this planet,

617
00:52:02,951 --> 00:52:05,818
we're an asset to somebody. We're a resource.

618
00:52:07,288 --> 00:52:11,725
But it may be possible to meet the
situation with consciousness and intention.

619
00:52:11,960 --> 00:52:16,590
Once we get to the peak human
population, wherever that is -

620
00:52:16,864 --> 00:52:22,564
I hope it is 8 1/2 billion rather than
12 billion but it's gonna be high -

621
00:52:22,904 --> 00:52:26,774
whenever we get there, what -
do we have a vision of what we should do?

622
00:52:26,774 --> 00:52:31,246
I mean, we got to the peak,
and there's trouble all around us!

623
00:52:31,246 --> 00:52:33,077
What should we do?

624
00:52:33,648 --> 00:52:43,683
Somehow we've got to devise a way
for obtaining a soft landing as we
reduce the population from six-plus
billion down toward one billion.

625
00:52:43,992 --> 00:52:48,763
If we decide we want to reduce it we can
see to it that the reduction occurs

626
00:52:48,763 --> 00:52:54,998
in a more humane way than it will occur if we
just try to keep on business as usual.

627
00:52:55,470 --> 00:53:03,036
Humanity has never been in this. This is
new. This is new. And this is big.
And this is not being talked about.

628
00:53:03,578 --> 00:53:09,574
And because it is not being talked about,
we have no clear idea how we might
device that softer landing.

629
00:53:10,018 --> 00:53:14,478
Talking about it, then, clearly
and honestly, is the first step.

630
00:53:14,989 --> 00:53:19,050
Without that, catastrophe
is inevitable. But either way,

631
00:53:19,460 --> 00:53:22,554
Our global population is going to be reduced.

632
00:53:24,365 --> 00:53:29,928
this is what I had to face.: the population
of my species is going to be reduced.

633
00:53:30,004 --> 00:53:35,610
I had to face it just like the grizzly
bears have had to face it, and the
wild salmon have had to face it,

634
00:53:35,610 --> 00:53:40,348
just like the right whales and the piping plovers
and the mountain gorillas have had to face it,

635
00:53:40,348 --> 00:53:46,912
just like the great auks and the golden
toads and the blackfin cisco had to
face it before they went extinct.

636
00:53:47,422 --> 00:53:51,722
And I had to face something else.:
I have a choice about how I meet it.

637
00:53:52,160 --> 00:53:54,529
My friend Lyle gave it some perspective.

638
00:53:54,529 --> 00:54:01,569
The fact is that there have been die-offs
of civilizations. There have been
collapses of great, mighty civilizations.

639
00:54:01,569 --> 00:54:06,802
Sophisticated, powerful, unbelievable
civilizations have collapsed.

640
00:54:07,008 --> 00:54:10,239
And it's a choice.

641
00:54:10,978 --> 00:54:18,453
it's a choice that we can decide to succeed
or fail. And i'm going to go ahead and
decide to succeed, thank you

642
00:54:18,453 --> 00:54:21,217
And i'd really like it if you'd come with me.

643
00:54:23,424 --> 00:54:28,384
What choices do we now have? What would
that success Lyle speaks of look like?

644
00:54:28,963 --> 00:54:34,924
What is inevitable at this point? And
what remains to be created, if only we
awaken to our power?

645
00:54:36,270 --> 00:54:41,230
Most importantly, why have we
not already awakened?

646
00:54:42,610 --> 00:54:48,883
And you know something? The more
you talk about your problems the
easier they are to solve.

647
00:54:48,883 --> 00:54:52,720
This bottling things up inside is bad!

648
00:54:52,720 --> 00:54:56,087
We can't survive apart from the earth.

649
00:54:56,691 --> 00:54:58,818
And so. . . we're killing it!

650
00:54:59,427 --> 00:55:08,236
i think part of looking at things exactly
the way they are is feeling how isolated

651
00:55:08,236 --> 00:55:13,341
and alienated we have become from ourselves,

652
00:55:13,341 --> 00:55:16,878
from the people around us,
and from the natural world.

653
00:55:16,878 --> 00:55:25,479
And when you look at that, and experience
that, the natural response is deep grief.

654
00:55:26,254 --> 00:55:29,052
Deep grief at the loss of connection.

655
00:55:39,467 --> 00:55:42,231
There are other issues we could have looked at.

656
00:55:45,072 --> 00:55:47,700
How do we face into all of this information?

657
00:55:48,543 --> 00:55:52,673
It looks as though our very survival
as a species is now in question.

658
00:55:54,315 --> 00:55:59,878
As I gaze unflinchingly at the world situation,
the information goes right into my body.

659
00:56:00,221 --> 00:56:01,916
I feel shaken to the core.

660
00:56:02,457 --> 00:56:04,118
I feel like running away.

661
00:56:04,559 --> 00:56:08,120
I feel, at times, like I've been hit head on.

662
00:56:09,063 --> 00:56:10,963
I know I'm not alone.

663
00:56:11,399 --> 00:56:15,733
I wish I had some magic potion.
I wish I had some easy fix.

664
00:56:16,103 --> 00:56:19,334
I wish I could just tell you that
everything is going to be OK.

665
00:56:20,274 --> 00:56:22,743
But of course I can't tell you that.

666
00:56:22,743 --> 00:56:26,770
And probably, deep down,
you already know that.

667
00:56:28,382 --> 00:56:30,680
What chance do I really have, doctor?

668
00:56:32,086 --> 00:56:37,758
Mr. Marshall, I have no desire to mislead you.

669
00:56:37,758 --> 00:56:41,489
I'm sure you realize that
recovery is not a sure thing.

670
00:56:43,798 --> 00:56:48,803
Thirty-six years after the first Earth Day,
forty-four years after Silent Spring,

671
00:56:48,803 --> 00:56:53,604
the planet is closer now to ecological
meltdown than it has ever been.

672
00:56:54,942 --> 00:57:01,782
If what we want is to stop the destruction
of the life of this planet, then what
we have been doing has not been working.

673
00:57:01,782 --> 00:57:04,182
We will have to do something else.

674
00:57:05,853 --> 00:57:08,879
When we stay focused on
the question, "what do we do?"

675
00:57:10,091 --> 00:57:15,586
we don't ask the more basic
questions about "how did we get here?"

676
00:57:17,765 --> 00:57:28,075
And if we don't ask those questions i don't
think we've got much chance of effecting

677
00:57:28,075 --> 00:57:33,035
the kind of radical change that we're going to
have to effect if we're going to make it.

678
00:57:33,347 --> 00:57:38,046
Well, i appreciate your being so
frank with me, Dr Swenson.

679
00:57:39,353 --> 00:57:42,447
I guess I don't have to tell you how i feel.

680
00:57:43,591 --> 00:57:48,462
From my experience, talking about how
we feel is exactly what we need to be doing.

681
00:57:48,462 --> 00:57:51,363
And we'll also need to
question some assumptions.

682
00:57:52,066 --> 00:57:58,472
One assumption I question is the one
that tells us that, since scientists can
help us understand the situation,

683
00:57:58,472 --> 00:58:02,135
they are automatically equipped
to tell us how to "solve" it.

684
00:58:02,677 --> 00:58:07,637
But there are forces at work in the world that
cannot be understood through a microscope.

685
00:58:09,450 --> 00:58:15,150
What are the forces that brought us
to this point? And what are the
forces that keep us stuck here?

686
00:58:16,090 --> 00:58:19,582
I went to speak with the people who are
trying to answer these questions.

687
00:58:21,162 --> 00:58:27,226
I realized that I would have to step
outside of the culture, so that I could
see it from a new perspective.

688
00:58:28,302 --> 00:58:35,042
Deep inside the tangle of problems that
threatens the entire world there rages a
boundless blaze of cultural fire,

689
00:58:35,042 --> 00:58:38,910
the locomotive power for the
cultural train we're all now riding.:

690
00:58:39,580 --> 00:58:44,950
an engine not of steam or diesel, but of
story, and myth, habit and belief.

691
00:58:45,319 --> 00:58:47,412
An engine racing out of control.

692
00:58:47,922 --> 00:58:51,085
It's time to look more closely
at the culture of Empire.

693
00:58:51,492 --> 00:58:53,585
So, how did we get into this mess?

694
00:58:54,061 --> 00:58:57,997
wow. That's a cosmic question.

695
00:58:58,499 --> 00:59:07,897
Many analysts think it started about ten
thousand years ago when humans began to
engage in a new and fundamentally
unsustainable style of food production.

696
00:59:08,342 --> 00:59:12,278
What we invented was something
that I call totalitarian agriculture,

697
00:59:12,546 --> 00:59:19,787
which is predicated on the
notion that it all belongs to us.

698
00:59:19,787 --> 00:59:24,792
We can kill off anything we don't want on
the land, put a fence around the land.

699
00:59:24,792 --> 00:59:29,497
We can grow the food we want on
the land and Nobody else can touch it.

700
00:59:29,497 --> 00:59:35,834
That slippery slope that we're on right now. . . we
started walking on that ten thousand years ago.

701
00:59:37,471 --> 00:59:44,111
And it is because of an inherent
problem in "agriculture". "Agriculture"
really depends on disturbance.

702
00:59:44,111 --> 00:59:49,116
There's no way you can do "agriculture"
without doing that catastrophic damage.

703
00:59:49,116 --> 00:59:53,246
So it makes "agriculture"
fundamentally unsustainable.

704
00:59:54,288 --> 00:59:58,392
The surplus from this new way
of getting food had immediate effects.

705
00:59:58,392 --> 01:00:04,098
It has fueled this tremendous
population growth of ours.

706
01:00:04,098 --> 01:00:07,966
Our growing population is always
catching up with our food production.

707
01:00:08,803 --> 01:00:11,567
We have a food race on our hands.

708
01:00:11,806 --> 01:00:17,144
We grow more food and the population
increases. So we grow more food.

709
01:00:17,144 --> 01:00:19,547
It's a race that can't be won.

710
01:00:19,547 --> 01:00:27,154
On top of that, totalitarian agriculture
also consigned its practitioners to
a life of hard work and poor health.

711
01:00:27,154 --> 01:00:33,527
As a species, we had food before us for
all of our history, which is two hundred. . .
three hundred thousand years.

712
01:00:33,527 --> 01:00:38,487
When you look at ten thousand years
it's relatively minor in that space.

713
01:00:38,999 --> 01:00:40,668
But we were hunter-gatherers.

714
01:00:40,668 --> 01:00:46,300
So nature grew our food in its way. As
opposed to our way, which is "agriculture".

715
01:00:47,508 --> 01:00:49,840
We didn't grow food. Food grew.

716
01:00:51,345 --> 01:00:55,281
it's hard for people to accept the fact that

717
01:00:57,918 --> 01:01:05,326
the more you base your society
on agriculture, the harder you work.

718
01:01:05,326 --> 01:01:09,230
if we look at archaeological sites around
the world - and people have done this -

719
01:01:09,230 --> 01:01:11,665
in all the locations - this is not a cultural issue -

720
01:01:11,665 --> 01:01:17,404
in all the locations where agriculture
began, in Asia, the Mid-East, South
America, and Central America,

721
01:01:17,404 --> 01:01:20,207
we will find people who are stunted, short,

722
01:01:20,207 --> 01:01:24,345
their teeth are invariable gone because of the
carbohydrates they're eating turn into sugars

723
01:01:24,345 --> 01:01:25,946
and rot their teeth out,

724
01:01:25,946 --> 01:01:32,351
they're misshapen, they're asymmetrical,
they show every evidence of suffering
all sorts of disease.

725
01:01:33,320 --> 01:01:40,895
this new type of agriculture both required and
allowed more settlement, and with that came the
beginnings of wealth and inequality.

726
01:01:40,895 --> 01:01:47,868
if you go to pre-agricultural towns you'll see a
series of houses, all about the same size.

727
01:01:47,868 --> 01:01:56,076
And almost instantly, when agriculture occurred,
you can go to any town, in any agricultural site in
the world, not just in Western culture,

728
01:01:56,076 --> 01:02:01,749
and see a few very large houses with
granaries connected to them, and a
whole series of smaller houses.

729
01:02:01,749 --> 01:02:06,709
That kind of social inequity began
almost immediately with agriculture.

730
01:02:07,888 --> 01:02:15,090
As Quinn and Manning point out, early
agricultural peoples were not better off
than their hunter-gatherer predecessors.

731
01:02:15,329 --> 01:02:16,990
this was news to me.

732
01:02:17,264 --> 01:02:23,760
The psychologist and cultural analyst
Chellis Glendinning points to other
consequences of settlement and agriculture.

733
01:02:24,205 --> 01:02:28,869
Before, when women were moving around,
and very athletic, and carrying their babies,

734
01:02:29,977 --> 01:02:34,114
and having a diet that
wasn't so high in carbohydrates,

735
01:02:34,114 --> 01:02:37,084
and nursing their babies for long periods of time,

736
01:02:37,084 --> 01:02:39,687
then women didn't ovulate very often.

737
01:02:39,687 --> 01:02:44,692
But when women became sedentary,
women began to have regular cycles.

738
01:02:44,692 --> 01:02:47,561
And so, more babies were born.
And so guess what?

739
01:02:47,561 --> 01:02:52,794
Then you have to make more farms. And then
you have to expand the area that's fenced off.

740
01:02:53,434 --> 01:02:57,972
And then, ooh, maybe you're going to
meet up with someone else who's
coming that way, another group.

741
01:02:57,972 --> 01:02:59,963
And so then you have to have a war.

742
01:03:00,875 --> 01:03:05,938
We're taught to regard agriculture and
settlement as the normal and
natural way for humans to live.

743
01:03:06,447 --> 01:03:15,480
So it was a bit of a shock, to learn how these
basic cultural changes were the fundamental
cause of so many of the problems that have
dogged us through the centuries.

744
01:03:16,156 --> 01:03:19,990
Derrick Jensen speaks to the
end result of all of this cultural change.

745
01:03:20,527 --> 01:03:26,300
I think one of the best lines i ever wrote was that
"forests precede us and deserts dog our heels."

746
01:03:26,300 --> 01:03:32,106
When I think of - or when you think of -
the plains and hillsides of Iraq,

747
01:03:32,106 --> 01:03:37,169
is the first thing that you normally
think of cedar forests so thick the sunlight
never touches the ground?

748
01:03:37,978 --> 01:03:39,613
I think for most of us that's not the case.

749
01:03:39,613 --> 01:03:47,247
But the first written myth of this
culture is Gilgamesh cutting down
those forests to make cities.

750
01:03:48,789 --> 01:03:53,749
Cities. Settlements begat villages
which begat towns which begat cities.

751
01:03:54,295 --> 01:03:59,300
Totalitarian and catastrophic agriculture,
the accumulation of wealth and power,

752
01:03:59,300 --> 01:04:05,139
and increases in population all came together to
give rise to a new form of human culture.:

753
01:04:05,139 --> 01:04:08,575
the culture of cities, the culture of civilization,

754
01:04:08,575 --> 01:04:10,270
the culture of Empire.

755
01:04:10,778 --> 01:04:21,722
I realized, as I was writing the newest book,
Endgame, that i'd been bashing
civilization for probably, eh, ten years now.

756
01:04:21,722 --> 01:04:24,825
And i'd never defined it.
I didn't know what i was talking about.

757
01:04:24,825 --> 01:04:33,324
And so I define it in that book as a way of life
characterized by the growth of cities.

758
01:04:34,368 --> 01:04:41,241
I've defined a city as a collection of people
living in numbers large enough to require
the importation of resources.

759
01:04:41,241 --> 01:04:45,846
A city could be defined, almost, as a
human ecosystem that grossly exceeds

760
01:04:45,846 --> 01:04:48,747
the carrying capacity of its local environment.

761
01:04:49,817 --> 01:04:59,426
As Jensen and Catton point out, because
cities exceed the carrying capacity of their
local environment, and because they require
the importation of resources,

762
01:04:59,426 --> 01:05:06,133
then those who live in cities are locked
into the inevitability of getting those
resources from somewhere else,

763
01:05:06,133 --> 01:05:11,093
from somebody else,
by whatever means is necessary.

764
01:05:12,206 --> 01:05:14,575
Often that means is trade.

765
01:05:14,575 --> 01:05:22,349
But trade requires transport, and transport
requires energy, and energy has to come from
somewhere, and it eventually runs out.

766
01:05:22,349 --> 01:05:27,286
And trade requires willing partners.
But people do not always want to trade.

767
01:05:27,654 --> 01:05:32,682
When trade breaks down, and you need
those resources, what remains is war.

768
01:05:34,028 --> 01:05:36,826
We now need oil to keep our cities going.

769
01:05:37,097 --> 01:05:40,968
Watch the bidding war rage from
trade floors to battlefields.

770
01:05:40,968 --> 01:05:44,529
Watch the Pentagon plan and the patriots act.

771
01:05:45,906 --> 01:05:50,911
Let's stop for a second and regroup. I told you
I've had to challenge some assumptions.

772
01:05:50,911 --> 01:05:57,684
We've been doing agriculture and expanding
and growing and building cities and
accumulating material wealth for so long now

773
01:05:57,684 --> 01:06:01,288
that it just feels like this is how
things are supposed to be.

774
01:06:01,288 --> 01:06:08,387
But how can a way of life that is destroying
its own support systems be considered
"how things are supposed to be"?

775
01:06:09,596 --> 01:06:19,471
"...they did eat every herb of the land,
and all the fruit of the trees, and there
remained not any green thing... "
Exodus 10.:1 5

776
01:06:23,343 --> 01:06:24,469
Let's move on.

777
01:06:25,579 --> 01:06:33,687
Once our native human intelligence and
creativity was combined with the defining
impulses of empire, things began to snowball.

778
01:06:33,687 --> 01:06:40,127
We kept using more and more sophisticated
technology so we could put off the inevitable.

779
01:06:40,127 --> 01:06:42,721
Which is.: we've got physical limits.

780
01:06:43,063 --> 01:06:47,768
Using the power of technology, we could break
through the limits and laws and rules

781
01:06:47,768 --> 01:06:52,728
that kept the community of life in balance
for millions of years . . . temporarily. . .

782
01:06:53,140 --> 01:06:58,378
Rules! All the time rules! i'm sick of 'em.

783
01:06:58,378 --> 01:07:01,081
Offscreen Narrator.: Excuse me for
interrupting, boys and girls,

784
01:07:01,081 --> 01:07:05,185
but maybe you would like to find out just
what it would be like if there were no rules.

785
01:07:05,185 --> 01:07:07,087
But how could we do that?

786
01:07:07,087 --> 01:07:09,715
By going someplace where there are no rules.

787
01:07:09,957 --> 01:07:12,126
There's no such place.

788
01:07:12,126 --> 01:07:16,230
But maybe there is a way we
could go to a place without rules.

789
01:07:16,230 --> 01:07:17,397
how?

790
01:07:17,397 --> 01:07:23,461
By using our imagination.
Now let's all pretend real hard. . .

791
01:07:25,506 --> 01:07:28,041
And pretend we did.

792
01:07:28,041 --> 01:07:32,279
thinking we had no limits, our power
to control went right to our heads.

793
01:07:32,279 --> 01:07:35,442
As historian and "geologian"
Thomas Berry put it.:

794
01:07:57,504 --> 01:08:02,464
What i say goes, see? i'm the law around here!

795
01:08:02,809 --> 01:08:05,369
(laughs)

796
01:08:06,580 --> 01:08:12,815
But the belief in the power to control has
proceeded on some faulty assumptions
about the limits of science.

797
01:08:40,981 --> 01:08:43,450
I've been confused about technology.

798
01:08:43,450 --> 01:08:49,122
I've heard all my life that technologies
themselves are neutral, that it all
depends on how we use them,

799
01:08:49,122 --> 01:08:54,354
that they can be used for good or ill, depending
on the wisdom and intelligence of the user.

800
01:08:54,828 --> 01:08:57,296
But, as Jerry Mander explains.:

801
01:08:57,296 --> 01:09:02,301
That's completely wrong. You can
do an analysis of every technology

802
01:09:02,301 --> 01:09:09,376
and find its beneficial aspects
and its negative aspects.

803
01:09:09,376 --> 01:09:17,647
The idea that it's just about the way we use it is
absurd. Because these are built-in factors.

804
01:09:18,185 --> 01:09:23,145
As an example, the difference between nuclear
and solar is more than in how we use them.

805
01:09:23,657 --> 01:09:28,528
Each technology has built-in characteristics
that determine how they end up being used,

806
01:09:28,528 --> 01:09:29,962
and who uses them,

807
01:09:29,962 --> 01:09:31,231
and for what.

808
01:09:31,231 --> 01:09:35,402
Military scientists are not now
working on a solar powered warhead.

809
01:09:35,402 --> 01:09:39,236
And neither am I looking to put a
nuclear water heater on my roof.

810
01:09:40,907 --> 01:09:45,867
Because of this misunderstanding, it's easy to
get trapped in the myth of the technofix. . .

811
01:09:46,446 --> 01:09:52,886
Ever since that division of humans and
human space away from the rest of the world,

812
01:09:52,886 --> 01:09:57,846
there's been one problem arising from
that situation after another, you know.

813
01:09:58,458 --> 01:10:02,292
"Oh dear, we have to pipe in more
water for the more farms", you know.

814
01:10:03,130 --> 01:10:05,499
"Oh dear, now we have to
travel great distances".

815
01:10:05,499 --> 01:10:08,559
"Oh dear, now we need more
resources, we need more land".

816
01:10:09,102 --> 01:10:13,507
Whatever. It's been one
technological fix after another.

817
01:10:13,507 --> 01:10:19,146
And then as soon as you try to answer
something with some kind of a technological fix
that doesn't really go to the root of the problem

818
01:10:19,146 --> 01:10:20,480
then there's going to be new problems.

819
01:10:20,480 --> 01:10:22,749
And then it just rolls along.

820
01:10:22,749 --> 01:10:28,922
And so now, I mean, you look at the state
of the world now and half the people in the
world are living in urban areas.

821
01:10:28,922 --> 01:10:31,458
so how do you answer that?

822
01:10:31,458 --> 01:10:35,128
And the population explosion
has gone to such an extreme.

823
01:10:35,128 --> 01:10:39,326
How do you answer that, but
with another technological fix?

824
01:10:39,700 --> 01:10:42,169
Half the people in the world live in cities.

825
01:10:42,169 --> 01:10:47,174
And cities, by definition, exceed the
carrying capacity of their local environments.

826
01:10:47,174 --> 01:10:49,267
I don't think most people know this.

827
01:10:49,609 --> 01:10:53,705
But you'll agree that to make up your
mind fairly you have to know all the facts.

828
01:10:54,214 --> 01:10:56,444
See, I don't think you know all the facts.

829
01:10:57,617 --> 01:11:02,577
If we knew all the facts we'd have discarded
the myth of the technofix a long time ago.

830
01:11:02,889 --> 01:11:10,864
To my eye our crisis, at its deepest
levels, is a crisis not of technology
but of meaning and purpose.

831
01:11:10,864 --> 01:11:17,738
We keep acting like all we need do is
throw more technology at it while we
fall to understand, or even see,

832
01:11:17,738 --> 01:11:25,702
the clearly cultural issues that doom to
fantastic failure these ever more desperate
attempts to keep the present system going.

833
01:11:26,346 --> 01:11:30,784
We've been pretending for so long
we've forgotten what we once knew.:

834
01:11:30,784 --> 01:11:34,982
you can't survive in the long run
if you don't follow the laws of life.

835
01:11:36,156 --> 01:11:42,396
As we settled into agriculture and civilization,
agriculture and civilization settled into us.

836
01:11:42,396 --> 01:11:45,098
We fenced ourselves off from the world. . .

837
01:11:45,098 --> 01:11:48,969
And everything inside the fence
became what we needed to survive.

838
01:11:48,969 --> 01:11:55,135
And everything outside the fence
became threatening, wild, you know,
uncontrollable, keep it out!

839
01:11:55,842 --> 01:11:59,379
And our technologies cut us
off from our own experience. . .

840
01:11:59,379 --> 01:12:06,420
We can build a culture that sits
between us and the world.

841
01:12:06,420 --> 01:12:11,491
And it mediates our behavior toward the world.

842
01:12:11,491 --> 01:12:14,227
And it mediates what we do
and what we perceive.

843
01:12:14,227 --> 01:12:19,499
If you have a spear, it becomes a lot easier. You
don't have to kill somebody right in front of you.

844
01:12:19,499 --> 01:12:24,204
You can kill somebody thirty feet away.
And that distance makes it easier to kill.

845
01:12:24,204 --> 01:12:31,445
And if you've been sent into war with a B2
bomber strapped to your back and an array
of high-tech sensors at your fingertips,

846
01:12:31,445 --> 01:12:38,214
you can kill Iraqis with no more thought
or feeling than you might have wasting
the Covenant on your X-Box at home.

847
01:12:40,787 --> 01:12:44,858
this disconnection from the world,
from other people and other creatures,

848
01:12:44,858 --> 01:12:48,624
altered our relationships,
and left us confused and wounded.

849
01:13:16,456 --> 01:13:22,229
At what point do we stop and listen? And if we
stop and listen, what will we be able to hear?

850
01:13:22,229 --> 01:13:30,500
Disconnection has stopped our ears.
The planet's voice barely registers.
Our minds are clogged with stories.

851
01:13:30,871 --> 01:13:36,309
Central to my understanding of the world is
this.: all cultures are based on stories.

852
01:13:36,309 --> 01:13:42,215
The culture of civilization and empire comes
with its own unique set of beliefs and impulses.

853
01:13:42,215 --> 01:13:46,515
Listen to some of the stories that have
brought us to our present predicament.

854
01:13:46,586 --> 01:13:49,256
"There's never quite enough"

855
01:13:49,256 --> 01:13:50,624
"We're innately flawed"

856
01:13:50,624 --> 01:13:53,493
"it's heresy today to say, 'let's stop growing"'

857
01:13:53,493 --> 01:13:55,161
"Hard work is morally virtuous"

858
01:13:55,161 --> 01:13:56,463
"More is better"

859
01:13:56,463 --> 01:13:59,766
"The physical world as i see it is everything"

860
01:13:59,766 --> 01:14:02,235
"We can solve any problem"

861
01:14:02,235 --> 01:14:06,740
"I mean... they actually say that the
way to be happy is to own more stuff"

862
01:14:06,740 --> 01:14:11,478
"We are to subdue the earth
and have dominion over it"

863
01:14:11,478 --> 01:14:16,783
"We own. . . we own the planet. We own
everything here. We own these resources"

864
01:14:16,783 --> 01:14:21,354
"Humans have rights. Nothing else has rights"

865
01:14:21,354 --> 01:14:27,224
"There are many times in which people just
don't want to be told that such-and-such
a place is off-limits to them"

866
01:14:27,894 --> 01:14:32,194
Living with stories like this, is it any
wonder we're devouring the planet?

867
01:14:33,033 --> 01:14:37,026
In some ways we're kind of -
we're in a culture of two-year-olds.

868
01:14:37,704 --> 01:14:41,708
Where we just won't look at the limits.

869
01:14:41,708 --> 01:14:49,740
Dominion over the Earth, in Genesis, didn't
mean to leave this pillaged and smoking.

870
01:14:50,684 --> 01:14:54,211
Daniel Quinn has named some
of the basic stories of Empire.

871
01:14:54,588 --> 01:14:58,391
The ambient voice of our
culture tells us that

872
01:14:58,391 --> 01:15:03,997
this is the best that
humans could ever hope for.

873
01:15:03,997 --> 01:15:06,666
What we've got right now,
where we're going.

874
01:15:06,666 --> 01:15:08,827
It's just unsurpassable.

875
01:15:09,402 --> 01:15:13,640
Ergo, any alternative
has got to be worse.

876
01:15:13,640 --> 01:15:17,310
There were other
civilizations besides ours;

877
01:15:17,310 --> 01:15:20,580
they did not think that they
had the one right way to live,

878
01:15:20,580 --> 01:15:24,017
and that everyone in the world
should be made to live that way.

879
01:15:24,017 --> 01:15:27,020
We're taught to think
that we are Humanity.

880
01:15:27,020 --> 01:15:33,526
if there are other people out
there that are different from us,
well they're degenerates,

881
01:15:33,526 --> 01:15:36,296
or they're just not as
far advanced as we are.

882
01:15:36,296 --> 01:15:40,700
We came along,
and began doing things,

883
01:15:40,700 --> 01:15:42,463
and building civilization,

884
01:15:42,802 --> 01:15:46,397
and this is the way humans
were meant to live from the beginning.

885
01:15:47,240 --> 01:15:50,141
Which is one reason why we can't give it up.

886
01:15:51,911 --> 01:15:55,904
Here, perhaps, is the most
dangerous story of them all. . .

887
01:15:57,384 --> 01:16:06,526
We are superior to all other creatures
and our lives are independent of theirs.

888
01:16:06,526 --> 01:16:15,491
Narrator.: Through his intellect man
has developed a superiority over
every other form of animal life.

889
01:16:17,537 --> 01:16:22,909
with the stories of Empire in place, civilization
was ready to spread around the planet.

890
01:16:22,909 --> 01:16:27,013
Ran Prieur explains the core idea of
"The Parable of the Tribes",

891
01:16:27,013 --> 01:16:33,316
which reveals how the culture
of Empire prevailed in a process of
cultural evolution that selects for power.

892
01:16:33,687 --> 01:16:36,456
imagine there's a bunch of tribes
that are living together peacefully.

893
01:16:36,456 --> 01:16:42,929
And one of the tribes, for some reason,
instead of living in balance and in peace,

894
01:16:42,929 --> 01:16:48,697
they decide that they're going to make
a bunch of weapons and conquer
the next tribe and turn them into slaves.

895
01:16:49,736 --> 01:16:51,966
The next tribe has three choices.

896
01:16:53,239 --> 01:16:59,701
if they run away the paradigm of the
violent tribe expands into their territory.

897
01:17:00,080 --> 01:17:05,985
if they submit into slavery the paradigm
of the violent tribe expands into their territory.

898
01:17:05,985 --> 01:17:11,825
if they build weapons to fight back the paradigm
of the violent tribe expands into their territory.

899
01:17:11,825 --> 01:17:20,028
And that just goes on until the whole
world is made up of people who make
weapons and fight and enslave other people.

900
01:17:21,468 --> 01:17:25,438
After ten thousand years of this,
we've forgotten who we are. . .

901
01:17:25,438 --> 01:17:30,398
How could three million years of
human life be meaningless?

902
01:17:30,710 --> 01:17:36,282
The way people were living at
that time, during that vast period,:

903
01:17:36,282 --> 01:17:43,882
they were living in a way in which
humans could live for millions of years.

904
01:17:44,557 --> 01:17:49,517
Tens of millions of years. And that's something!

905
01:17:50,096 --> 01:17:56,035
Man, now we're saying "how
many decades can we have?"

906
01:17:56,035 --> 01:18:00,267
And if we go on living this way, it's not many.

907
01:18:04,144 --> 01:18:07,881
It strikes me as critical that we
remember who we really are.

908
01:18:07,881 --> 01:18:12,719
We have these huge brains and a great
capacity for innovation and adaptation.

909
01:18:12,719 --> 01:18:17,679
But we can get trapped inside of stories and
fantasies that block us from our own greatness.

910
01:18:18,324 --> 01:18:26,065
Well, human beings can act either
as members of climax ecosystems,

911
01:18:26,065 --> 01:18:30,136
where we integrate ourselves into
everything else that's going on,

912
01:18:30,136 --> 01:18:33,206
or we can act as invasive
species, like the cane toad.

913
01:18:33,206 --> 01:18:41,170
The classic example of human beings acting as
an invasive species, of course, is Europeans
over the last five hundred years or so.

914
01:18:42,215 --> 01:18:47,220
It doesn't have to be this way.
Not all human cultures have followed this path.

915
01:18:47,220 --> 01:18:54,854
When I look closely, what I see is that human
capacities and characteristics have always been
medlated by the larger society.

916
01:18:55,929 --> 01:18:57,294
Always.

917
01:18:58,832 --> 01:19:05,795
One person I spoke with who discussed our
present predicament in terms of inherent human
characteristics was Richard Manning.

918
01:19:06,272 --> 01:19:11,110
to survive in our hunter-gatherer
days. . . a very narrow field of vision.

919
01:19:11,110 --> 01:19:16,082
You had to be concerned with what
was happening around you in the
immediate hundred yards.

920
01:19:16,082 --> 01:19:21,454
You had to be worried about what was going to
happen in the next ten seconds or five minutes.

921
01:19:21,454 --> 01:19:25,258
Where was that tiger going to come from that
was going to bite your neck and kill you?

922
01:19:25,258 --> 01:19:28,795
So our strongest instincts are
geared to the immediate.

923
01:19:28,795 --> 01:19:32,832
Our adrenaline doesn't start to flow
when we read about global warming.

924
01:19:32,832 --> 01:19:35,665
It starts to flow when somebody
put a fist in our face.

925
01:19:36,636 --> 01:19:42,008
And yet the Haudenosaunee evolved a
culture that balanced those strong instincts.

926
01:19:42,008 --> 01:19:46,179
They make decisions based on their
impact on the seventh generation.

927
01:19:46,179 --> 01:19:49,315
Contrast that with the culture of Empire.

928
01:19:49,315 --> 01:19:54,020
What we've never been able to do is recognize
a limit coming from thirty or forty years out

929
01:19:54,020 --> 01:19:55,455
and behave accordingly.

930
01:19:55,455 --> 01:20:01,121
And so we haven't seen climate change coming.
And most people don't see oil depletion coming.

931
01:20:01,961 --> 01:20:06,165
And there are other forces in the universe
that play out over the long term.

932
01:20:06,165 --> 01:20:12,005
Exponential growth and population dynamics
can both unfold over generations making them,

933
01:20:12,005 --> 01:20:16,509
for humans blinded by their
own culture, difficult to see.

934
01:20:16,509 --> 01:20:19,879
William Catton explains
another long-term process.

935
01:20:19,879 --> 01:20:27,253
C. Wright Mills of Columbia University -
kind of a maverick - gave a nice
physiological definition of fate.

936
01:20:27,253 --> 01:20:38,965
Fate is what happens when innumerable
people make innumerable small decisions
about other matters that have a collective,
cumulative effect that Nobody intended.

937
01:20:38,965 --> 01:20:42,302
Ok. That's what's happened
when we overpopulated the world.

938
01:20:42,302 --> 01:20:50,437
Nobody intended to overpopulate the world.
Nobody intended to pollute the oceans. Nobody
intended to start the greenhouse effect.

939
01:20:52,111 --> 01:20:55,648
So this is part of what I've come
to about how we got here.:

940
01:20:55,648 --> 01:20:59,419
a snarl of assumptions and
behaviors and beliefs and stories

941
01:20:59,419 --> 01:21:02,288
that form the backbone of the culture of Empire,

942
01:21:02,288 --> 01:21:06,122
a fusion of forces that severed
us from the laws of life.

943
01:21:06,559 --> 01:21:09,796
this culture tells us that we can
live apart from those laws.

944
01:21:09,796 --> 01:21:12,332
Without limits. Without rules.

945
01:21:12,332 --> 01:21:16,936
But doing so has left us,
and the planet, battered and beaten.

946
01:21:16,936 --> 01:21:20,770
It isn't working out the way
we've been taught to think it will.

947
01:21:22,108 --> 01:21:25,545
Offscreen Narrator.: Well boys and girls,
how do you like living without rules?

948
01:21:25,545 --> 01:21:27,246
I hate it!

949
01:21:27,246 --> 01:21:30,016
This is no fun.

950
01:21:30,016 --> 01:21:32,450
It stinks.

951
01:21:34,220 --> 01:21:43,390
Over and over I've had to ask.: why do we keep
destroying the planet, even now, when the
evidence that we are doing so is overwhelming?

952
01:21:43,930 --> 01:21:48,735
The first thing to note is that all of
these historical forces are still in play.

953
01:21:48,735 --> 01:21:52,238
And some new forces have arisen in our time.

954
01:21:52,238 --> 01:21:57,198
It's sobering to consider that we're
trapped in an economy that must grow or die.

955
01:21:57,543 --> 01:22:01,914
The economy will, can and
must continue to grow.

956
01:22:01,914 --> 01:22:06,078
Now of course this is an absurdity.
Because we live on a finite spherical planet.

957
01:22:07,153 --> 01:22:10,748
so there's only so much stuff
to chew up and spit out.

958
01:22:11,824 --> 01:22:16,022
We're assaulted by corporately
controlled media that keep us delusional.

959
01:22:16,496 --> 01:22:23,459
People tend to think that they have a choice
about what information they take from television.

960
01:22:24,404 --> 01:22:32,011
And we are sitting and receiving a
form of information, which is very very
powerful. It comes in the form of images.

961
01:22:32,011 --> 01:22:34,002
And once the images go in, they don't come out.

962
01:22:34,414 --> 01:22:37,717
it's almost science fiction in its implications.

963
01:22:37,717 --> 01:22:42,155
It's Big Brother.
And yet we think it's perfectly normal.

964
01:22:42,155 --> 01:22:47,160
As people's real lives become more
and more degraded and unsatisfying

965
01:22:47,160 --> 01:22:54,328
and petty and vulgar and irritating and sterile,

966
01:22:55,501 --> 01:23:01,841
then the appeals of those glorified
images became all the more powerful.

967
01:23:01,841 --> 01:23:05,211
There's a great line be Zygmunt Bauman that -

968
01:23:05,211 --> 01:23:10,583
he says that rational people will go
quietly and meekly into a gas chamber

969
01:23:10,583 --> 01:23:13,074
if only you allow them to believe it's a bathroom.

970
01:23:15,755 --> 01:23:21,091
And I've lost all hope that my government is
capable of looking clearly at the situation.

971
01:23:25,565 --> 01:23:32,872
Sadly, it looks as though much of our
educational system leaves us totally unprepared
to question the dominant culture.

972
01:23:32,872 --> 01:23:37,877
It numbs our critical thinking
skills, instead of developing them.

973
01:23:37,877 --> 01:23:48,185
And it goes along with technical, industrialized
society because you need to turn people into
interchangeable machine parts

974
01:23:48,554 --> 01:23:52,820
where you can pull one person out,
stick another person in the same spot.

975
01:23:53,359 --> 01:23:58,194
Narrator.: These children are being taught
to accept uncritically whatever they're told.

976
01:23:58,731 --> 01:24:01,199
Questions are not encouraged.

977
01:24:02,201 --> 01:24:07,006
I've certainly never been encouraged to question
how our culture creates disconnection.

978
01:24:07,006 --> 01:24:12,745
Every one of us is living in this little comfortable
bubble that's completely disconnected

979
01:24:12,745 --> 01:24:18,584
from the real world of animals and plants
and soil and water and natural forces

980
01:24:18,584 --> 01:24:23,289
that produces everything that's of
any meaning whatsoever on this planet.

981
01:24:23,289 --> 01:24:28,728
If your experience is that your food
comes from the grocery store,

982
01:24:28,728 --> 01:24:30,930
and that your water comes from a tap,

983
01:24:30,930 --> 01:24:34,467
you will defend to the death the
system that brings those to you.

984
01:24:34,467 --> 01:24:36,102
Because your life depends on it.

985
01:24:36,102 --> 01:24:38,871
If your experience is that
your water comes from a stream

986
01:24:38,871 --> 01:24:41,507
and that your food comes from a land base,

987
01:24:41,507 --> 01:24:45,967
you will defend to the death that stream and that
land base because your life depends on it.

988
01:24:47,480 --> 01:24:55,855
Systems of manipulation and exploitation.
Structures of disconnection and delusion.
Institutions of domination and deceit.

989
01:24:55,855 --> 01:24:59,689
I had to ask.: who would create such things?

990
01:25:00,393 --> 01:25:04,730
Only people who have become almost
wholly disconnected from their world.

991
01:25:04,730 --> 01:25:07,733
People who have forgotten who they once were.

992
01:25:07,733 --> 01:25:10,395
People who have been deeply wounded.

993
01:25:11,971 --> 01:25:14,540
We've gotten lost in a hall of mirrors.

994
01:25:14,540 --> 01:25:24,083
Everything that we receive - everything
we see, hear, smell, taste, feel - originates in,
or is mediated by, humans and machines.

995
01:25:24,083 --> 01:25:28,621
That affects our consciousness.
It gives us an inflated sense

996
01:25:28,621 --> 01:25:32,358
of our own importance and of what reality is.

997
01:25:32,358 --> 01:25:37,096
As if, because we've made it,
It makes it most real.

998
01:25:37,096 --> 01:25:44,937
As any narcissist knows, it's endless.
We can never get enough of that:
enough of that reflection of ourselves.

999
01:25:44,937 --> 01:25:47,667
What we're really aching for is real relationship.

1000
01:25:49,575 --> 01:25:57,216
Our animal bodies, I think, formed by
the Earth itself, want and require a
real relationship to the world.

1001
01:25:57,216 --> 01:25:59,252
To the water, wind and soil.

1002
01:25:59,252 --> 01:26:04,212
To the animals, plants and fellow
humans that comprise the
community into which we were born.

1003
01:26:05,124 --> 01:26:10,084
But we're stuck in the hall of mirrors.
And we've begun to lose our sanity.

1004
01:26:10,730 --> 01:26:16,335
So that you see the beginning of something like
dissociation, like post-traumatic stress disorder,

1005
01:26:16,335 --> 01:26:19,905
like schizophrenia, like multiple
personalities, you know.

1006
01:26:19,905 --> 01:26:28,938
You see that the fragmentation in the world
today is being mirrored in all of these kind of
very severe psychological disorders.

1007
01:26:29,615 --> 01:26:35,187
if you're in that sort of solitary confinement
you're going to start hallucinating.

1008
01:26:35,187 --> 01:26:40,192
And you may end up believing strange things.

1009
01:26:40,192 --> 01:26:42,820
Like the idea that humans are superior.

1010
01:26:44,096 --> 01:26:51,604
Acting out of that belief of superiority,
of entitlement, of invincibility,
Empire has conquered the world.

1011
01:26:51,604 --> 01:26:56,375
But that conquering has bounced back on
the conquerors, leaving everyone wounded.

1012
01:26:56,375 --> 01:27:03,716
if the world, the system that we're
living in, is harming other people,

1013
01:27:03,716 --> 01:27:06,619
then that's something that, you
know, you can't live with that.

1014
01:27:06,619 --> 01:27:12,825
So if you look at the people who have
been assimilated into Empire,

1015
01:27:12,825 --> 01:27:15,461
and if you look at the Imperialists themselves,

1016
01:27:15,461 --> 01:27:21,764
you find an incredible dissociation from reality.

1017
01:27:22,735 --> 01:27:27,239
Dissociated from the reality of the
planet, we don't act on its behalf.

1018
01:27:27,239 --> 01:27:35,581
Feeling for nature is diminishing to the
degree that people are less desiring

1019
01:27:35,581 --> 01:27:39,352
and less able to influence policy about nature,

1020
01:27:39,352 --> 01:27:42,515
to do anything to protect nature,
to have any feeling for nature.

1021
01:27:42,988 --> 01:27:46,719
it's hard to have feeling for it if you
never have any contact with it.

1022
01:27:47,360 --> 01:27:50,429
And it's hard to have any contact
with the rest of the world

1023
01:27:50,429 --> 01:27:53,432
because we're living like an animal in a cage.

1024
01:27:53,432 --> 01:27:55,798
Just think about an animal in a zoo.

1025
01:27:56,902 --> 01:28:04,775
An animal's deprived of the very things that keep
that animal going.: the smells, the sights, the
sounds, the instincts, the hunting.

1026
01:28:05,544 --> 01:28:09,480
And they become psychotic. Literally psychotic.

1027
01:28:10,216 --> 01:28:14,587
I think that we've done something to
ourselves that is exactly analogous to that.

1028
01:28:14,587 --> 01:28:19,125
We've put ourselves in a cage -
this cage of civilization, of cities.

1029
01:28:19,125 --> 01:28:21,560
And it's made us, in a way, psychotic.

1030
01:28:21,560 --> 01:28:26,932
That - if you would have a group of hunter-
gatherers - and this has happened a lot -

1031
01:28:26,932 --> 01:28:34,673
hunter-gatherers watch behavior of people
in our society, they would think we
were crazy for the way we behave.

1032
01:28:34,673 --> 01:28:36,004
Because we are.

1033
01:28:37,510 --> 01:28:43,749
I stop. I listen. I watch the world.
The disconnection is everywhere.

1034
01:28:43,749 --> 01:28:54,455
You learn it as a child. You learn to not
feel the kind of pain that is inflicted
upon you by the lack of connection.

1035
01:28:55,194 --> 01:28:58,595
By being in a crib by yourself in a dark room.

1036
01:28:59,031 --> 01:29:05,438
By not having the breastfeeding. By not having
the constant contact with other people's bodies.

1037
01:29:05,438 --> 01:29:11,877
Television viewing for children, and
I think to some degree for adults,

1038
01:29:11,877 --> 01:29:23,022
is a training for more hyperactive lifestyles
and hyperactive informational systems.

1039
01:29:23,022 --> 01:29:33,466
And that is putting people into a kind of
emotional psychological state, which
makes it impossible to relate to nature.

1040
01:29:33,466 --> 01:29:36,335
So, I mean, it's concrete alienation again.

1041
01:29:36,335 --> 01:29:46,579
most of us don't have a human community
where we can rest and feel safe and feel like
"i'm going to be taken care of".

1042
01:29:46,579 --> 01:29:54,887
in our culture there's so many things that are
set up to stop us from connecting directly.

1043
01:29:54,887 --> 01:29:58,691
If you go to a bar- we take this for granted -
if you go to a bar it's dark.

1044
01:29:58,691 --> 01:30:00,522
There's really loud music playing.

1045
01:30:01,861 --> 01:30:08,289
Because if it were quiet and there were good
light people would get freaked out to have to
deal with each other so directly.

1046
01:30:11,604 --> 01:30:14,340
Our economy thrives on this.

1047
01:30:14,340 --> 01:30:20,040
It's pretty easy to sell stuff to people
who are so disconnected from the
things that they most need.

1048
01:30:20,713 --> 01:30:24,513
The stores are filled with bandages
for the wounds of Empire.

1049
01:30:26,018 --> 01:30:28,621
There are other ways to look at this wounding.

1050
01:30:28,621 --> 01:30:36,795
Derrick Jensen sees the dominant culture as an
abusive system, leaving its members suffering
from Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

1051
01:30:36,795 --> 01:30:42,968
What happens if you're not traumatized once
or twice, but if you're actually in captivity
for a long time? if you're held as prisoner?

1052
01:30:42,968 --> 01:30:47,973
One of the things that happens is you
become afraid of all relationships and you
have to control everything around you.

1053
01:30:47,973 --> 01:30:53,946
You forget that mutual relationships are
possible and you begin to believe that all
relationships are based upon hierarchy.

1054
01:30:53,946 --> 01:30:56,482
Because that was your experience.

1055
01:30:56,482 --> 01:31:03,455
And you come to believe that all relationships
are based on power. And, of course, when we
look around that's what we see.

1056
01:31:03,455 --> 01:31:12,765
So we are too frightened to enter
into a relationship with these trees,
with all of our neighbors.

1057
01:31:12,765 --> 01:31:16,098
And so we call them resources:
those to be exploited.

1058
01:31:17,303 --> 01:31:22,575
Everything within an abusive family structure is
set up to protect the abuser. Everything.

1059
01:31:22,575 --> 01:31:30,141
And by the same token, everything
within this culture is setup to protect the rich.
That's what this culture is about.

1060
01:31:31,784 --> 01:31:38,424
Why do so many victims of abuse
stay with their abusers?

1061
01:31:38,424 --> 01:31:45,965
Because they're identified with the system.
And they've been taught since they were
very - since early on - that everything
is about protecting that system.

1062
01:31:45,965 --> 01:31:52,071
with civilization, we've been taught to identify
with this larger whole that isn't us.

1063
01:31:52,071 --> 01:32:00,171
We identify more strongly as "civilized"
than we do as living beings.

1064
01:32:02,047 --> 01:32:06,352
Over the years I've begun to break my own
identification with the dominant culture,

1065
01:32:06,352 --> 01:32:10,356
to reconnect with myself as a
living creature walking the Earth.

1066
01:32:10,356 --> 01:32:14,493
I'm still not finished with the task.
A daunting challenge.

1067
01:32:14,493 --> 01:32:18,452
And yet one of the most
rewarding things I've ever done.

1068
01:32:20,065 --> 01:32:23,694
I've also learned to view this culture
through the lens of addiction.

1069
01:32:24,536 --> 01:32:34,468
Addiction is based on continually seeking
more of what it is we don't really want.

1070
01:32:35,214 --> 01:32:38,775
And therefore, never being fully satisfied.

1071
01:32:39,151 --> 01:32:44,156
There's a deep need. There's
a deep hole, a deep longing,

1072
01:32:44,156 --> 01:32:50,129
a deep fear, a deep grief, a deep rage.

1073
01:32:50,129 --> 01:32:55,134
And so there's food, there's cigarettes, there's
alcohol, there's drugs, there's computers,

1074
01:32:55,134 --> 01:33:00,606
there's TV, there's movies, there's
shopping, there's music. . .it's endless.

1075
01:33:00,606 --> 01:33:10,249
Chellis Glendinning.: All of that, that
we've now determined people can be
addicted to, it's like a technological fix.

1076
01:33:10,249 --> 01:33:18,123
So as long as that's working, why would I stop?
I won't stop. An alcoholic doesn't stop.

1077
01:33:18,123 --> 01:33:22,753
A drug addict doesn't stop as long
as it's working. But you reach a point
where it doesn't work any more.

1078
01:33:23,829 --> 01:33:30,636
After centuries of abuse, disconnection,
delusion and addiction, it looks as though
we're desperate to hit bottom.

1079
01:33:30,636 --> 01:33:39,144
it's almost as if we're wanting to hit
bottom so hard that we either shift or die.

1080
01:33:39,144 --> 01:33:41,772
Cause it's not worth continuing like this.

1081
01:33:42,514 --> 01:33:47,886
so many people are so very, very unhappy.
And they want this nightmare to end.

1082
01:33:47,886 --> 01:33:58,194
And they don't recognize that the death that
they want is a cultural death, and is a
spiritual and metaphorical death.

1083
01:33:59,531 --> 01:34:02,868
That would explain why we
continue to foul our nest.

1084
01:34:02,868 --> 01:34:07,237
If what we want is to hit bottom, we've
found the perfect means to get us there.

1085
01:34:07,639 --> 01:34:08,128
Denial.

1086
01:34:08,240 --> 01:34:08,831
Denial.

1087
01:34:08,941 --> 01:34:09,464
Denial.

1088
01:34:09,575 --> 01:34:10,200
Denial.

1089
01:34:10,309 --> 01:34:11,139
Denial.

1090
01:34:11,243 --> 01:34:12,232
Denial.

1091
01:34:12,344 --> 01:34:17,082
Denial in huge neon letters that blink on and off

1092
01:34:17,082 --> 01:34:20,574
like the old Rocky and Bullwinkle
credits at the end of the show!

1093
01:34:22,287 --> 01:34:27,960
Again I stop. And listen. And watch
as I move through the landscape of Empire.

1094
01:34:27,960 --> 01:34:31,263
The denial is so thick that you
could cut it with a paper knife.

1095
01:34:31,263 --> 01:34:34,600
If only you weren't still using it to frost that cake.

1096
01:34:34,600 --> 01:34:39,605
Denial takes tremendous energy.
And if you have to work really, really hard

1097
01:34:39,605 --> 01:34:47,137
to not acknowledge the fact that
this culture's killing everything,

1098
01:34:47,679 --> 01:34:49,840
you're not going to have much energy left over.

1099
01:34:50,582 --> 01:34:56,155
It's the energy I freed up when I stepped
out of my own denial that has made this
documentary possible.

1100
01:34:56,155 --> 01:35:01,115
The more I let down my defenses, the more I
find the power to look more deeply at the world.

1101
01:35:01,994 --> 01:35:09,301
And when I look I find the story of
"somehow", a fantasy that keeps us
passive in the face of the world situation.

1102
01:35:09,301 --> 01:35:13,772
"We've muddled through things before. And
somehow we'll muddle through this one."

1103
01:35:13,772 --> 01:35:15,507
"somehow, everything's ok."

1104
01:35:15,507 --> 01:35:18,076
somehow? How do we get there? You know?

1105
01:35:18,076 --> 01:35:23,173
It's like - it doesn't do any good to fantasize if
there's no way to get from here to there.

1106
01:35:24,616 --> 01:35:30,680
Is there a way to get from here to there?
And where is there, exactly?
Where do go from here?

1107
01:35:31,557 --> 01:35:37,928
As world events break through our
walls of denial, voices of helplessness
and resignation fill the air.

1108
01:35:38,530 --> 01:35:42,296
Voice 1 : If we knew some way to
get out of it we would. But we don't.

1109
01:35:42,701 --> 01:35:44,498
Voice 2: Whatever's gonna
happen is gonna happen.

1110
01:35:44,870 --> 01:35:47,498
Voice 3: There's gonna have to be
some sort of catastrophic event.

1111
01:35:47,873 --> 01:35:51,844
Voice 4: A meltdown of all of these
systems that we've been depending on.

1112
01:35:51,844 --> 01:35:58,750
Voice 5: We figure there's no way to stop the
train from heading off the end of the bridge, you
know. We're just gonna go down screaming.

1113
01:35:58,750 --> 01:36:04,656
Voice 6: And finally you just say, "Aww fuck it.
this is. . . you know. . . let's just fuck it.
Who cares?"

1114
01:36:04,656 --> 01:36:11,289
Voice 7: You know, we might as well go out and
party and have a good time. Because
the world's not going anywhere good.

1115
01:36:14,299 --> 01:36:18,292
this system feels like a trap,
a madhouse, a prison.

1116
01:36:18,971 --> 01:36:23,308
With resignation this profound,
It seems as though there is little left to do

1117
01:36:23,308 --> 01:36:24,309
but to make the prison

1118
01:36:24,309 --> 01:36:26,709
as comfortable as is possible.

1119
01:36:31,083 --> 01:36:36,355
Narrator.: Personalized. And with accessories
engineered to our personalized taste.

1120
01:36:36,355 --> 01:36:39,153
For convenience. For comfort.

1121
01:36:40,626 --> 01:36:42,958
For convenience and safety.

1122
01:36:43,795 --> 01:36:45,786
With protection from rain.

1123
01:36:48,800 --> 01:36:53,430
Blocking out the wintry gale
with comforting warmth.

1124
01:36:56,308 --> 01:37:00,301
To hold out the searing heat
with cooling comfort.

1125
01:37:02,281 --> 01:37:08,987
Capitalist culture is telling us to buy.
And we will feel better if we buy more...

1126
01:37:08,987 --> 01:37:17,262
. . .that we are incomplete and that we need to fill
this emptiness within us by consuming.

1127
01:37:17,262 --> 01:37:19,753
Consume, consume, consume.

1128
01:37:21,066 --> 01:37:24,369
We've looked now at the train
that is hurtling us to destruction,

1129
01:37:24,369 --> 01:37:26,171
at the tracks that constrain us,

1130
01:37:26,171 --> 01:37:29,107
at the locomotive power
that drives us to oblivion.

1131
01:37:29,107 --> 01:37:32,838
And we see more clearly now
exactly where we are headed.

1132
01:37:33,312 --> 01:37:35,047
It all adds up to this.:

1133
01:37:35,047 --> 01:37:40,417
this culture is not only killing the planet,
It is destroying us as human beings.

1134
01:37:43,155 --> 01:37:46,454
The train plunges forward at blinding speed.

1135
01:37:47,559 --> 01:37:49,459
"Charlie stole the handle. "

1136
01:37:50,729 --> 01:37:52,629
So who are we going to be?

1137
01:37:57,035 --> 01:38:02,268
First Psychologist.:
In the film I see a man standing on the ledge.
Do you think he really wants to live?

1138
01:38:02,941 --> 01:38:04,966
Second Psychologist.:
The answer, of course, is yes.

1139
01:38:08,280 --> 01:38:12,239
I don't think humans are going to
go extinct. We can't kill ourselves off.

1140
01:38:13,185 --> 01:38:17,622
I just don't see any plausible
way it could happen. . .

1141
01:38:19,057 --> 01:38:20,993
well. . . I guess. . . yeah. . .

1142
01:38:20,993 --> 01:38:27,265
What we could - what might happen is
the earth could get into a serious
runaway greenhouse effect

1143
01:38:27,265 --> 01:38:30,369
that could turn the whole
planet like the planet Venus.

1144
01:38:30,369 --> 01:38:33,202
Where it's like a thousand
degrees and full of methane.

1145
01:38:43,815 --> 01:38:49,054
A powerful creative tension arises when
we hold two things at the same time.:

1146
01:38:49,054 --> 01:38:54,014
a clear assessment of where we are,
and a clear vision of where we want to go.

1147
01:38:54,993 --> 01:38:58,087
I don't see that the culture of Empire has either.

1148
01:38:58,630 --> 01:39:03,434
Trapped in a fantasy of domination and
control, any clear assessment of the world

1149
01:39:03,434 --> 01:39:07,871
gets trampled underfoot in the mad
march toward the scam of progress.

1150
01:39:08,540 --> 01:39:15,878
Traumatized by disconnection and
abuse, the people of Empire now hold
visions that are unhinged and insane.

1151
01:39:17,215 --> 01:39:24,245
Born and raised in captivity, we're
now so institutionalized that few
of us can even see the prison bars.

1152
01:39:25,057 --> 01:39:27,183
But we all know our cell numbers.

1153
01:39:28,760 --> 01:39:32,531
Waking on the train, we find that
we don't know where we are.

1154
01:39:32,531 --> 01:39:34,829
And we don't know where we're going.

1155
01:39:35,433 --> 01:39:39,894
We hear the whistle blowing.
And we can see the world speeding by.

1156
01:39:40,739 --> 01:39:43,138
Some of us want to stop the train.

1157
01:39:43,941 --> 01:39:47,308
We want to get off before it
reaches the end of the line.

1158
01:39:48,180 --> 01:39:52,138
But we have no clear idea
how to get from here to there.

1159
01:39:57,556 --> 01:40:07,955
The secret plan is that we're going to go on this
way, no matter what, for as long as we can.

1160
01:40:08,532 --> 01:40:16,871
I likened it to the secret plan in Nazi
Germany. It was an open secret.

1161
01:40:17,909 --> 01:40:27,307
Everyone knew that those Jews weren't going
off to resorts or to have picnics in the woods.

1162
01:40:27,886 --> 01:40:31,456
But no one talked about it.
And no one talks about this either.

1163
01:40:31,456 --> 01:40:33,358
This is scary! We're in a democracy!

1164
01:40:33,358 --> 01:40:36,995
We're in the biggest democracy on the
planet and we're not getting informed.

1165
01:40:36,995 --> 01:40:40,799
And we're not looking, either. We're not asking.

1166
01:40:40,799 --> 01:40:49,832
As civilization has provided more and more for
us, it's made us more and more infantile.

1167
01:40:50,108 --> 01:40:58,450
So that we are less and less able to
think for ourselves, less and less
able to provide for ourselves.

1168
01:40:58,450 --> 01:41:04,656
And this makes us more of a herd. . .
where you develop more of a herd mentality. . .

1169
01:41:04,656 --> 01:41:10,686
where we take our cues from the people
around us, from the authority figures around us.

1170
01:41:27,312 --> 01:41:29,246
The situation is desperate.

1171
01:41:29,246 --> 01:41:38,022
It's the World-Wide Eco-Slam, where climate
Crash goes head-to-head with The Peak oil kid
and Overshoot tears into Mass Extinction.

1172
01:41:38,022 --> 01:41:42,983
It's the Smackdown at the End of the
Universe and tickets go on sale this Friday.

1173
01:41:44,262 --> 01:41:47,299
The American lifestyle is unsustainable.

1174
01:41:47,299 --> 01:41:50,701
That means that it can't be sustained.

1175
01:41:50,701 --> 01:41:52,532
It's coming to an end.

1176
01:41:53,438 --> 01:42:00,606
Remember how thirty years ago we looked to
the future and said "thirty years from now, if we
don't act, we're going to be in trouble"?

1177
01:42:01,478 --> 01:42:05,279
Well it's now and we are because we didn't.

1178
01:42:06,183 --> 01:42:09,087
The fundamental laws of life have been broken.

1179
01:42:09,087 --> 01:42:12,147
The consequences of that are now apparent.

1180
01:42:13,625 --> 01:42:19,757
Remember the Secret Plan.:
the dominant culture is not going to
stop until it destroys everything.

1181
01:42:20,432 --> 01:42:21,421
It can't.

1182
01:42:21,866 --> 01:42:27,498
It's built on a foundation of faulty assumptions.
I see no way that it can be reformed.

1183
01:42:28,106 --> 01:42:32,975
It can only be discarded, so that
something new can grow in its place.

1184
01:42:34,512 --> 01:42:36,639
We have to look at this.

1185
01:43:05,710 --> 01:43:10,482
We've got to understand that we
are part of a living community.

1186
01:43:10,482 --> 01:43:14,786
We're not the masters of the living community.
We're not the guardians of the living community.

1187
01:43:14,786 --> 01:43:24,262
We are just another species. And we
have the power to destroy that community.

1188
01:43:24,262 --> 01:43:27,425
And when we do that we destroy ourselves.

1189
01:43:27,899 --> 01:43:33,905
if we don't figure out what
our place in the universe is

1190
01:43:33,905 --> 01:43:36,931
we're not going to have a place in the universe.

1191
01:43:46,751 --> 01:43:51,656
I have read many books about the world
situation. And I have noticed a curious thing.:

1192
01:43:51,656 --> 01:43:53,556
the Happy Chapter".

1193
01:43:54,959 --> 01:44:00,765
After an entire book of dire prognostications and
appalling facts comes the chapter at the end

1194
01:44:00,765 --> 01:44:05,837
that says that if we only do this and
this and that we'll find the solution,

1195
01:44:05,837 --> 01:44:11,469
that while there is much to give us
concern, there is also much about
which we can be hopeful.

1196
01:44:13,011 --> 01:44:15,280
I don't like happy chapters.

1197
01:44:15,280 --> 01:44:17,248
They've lulled me back to sleep.

1198
01:44:17,248 --> 01:44:21,116
They suggest that somebody
somewhere somehow is handling it.

1199
01:44:21,786 --> 01:44:23,617
I can just go on with my life.

1200
01:44:24,122 --> 01:44:28,821
And hey, we've got thirty years
or so, right? That's lots of time.

1201
01:44:30,228 --> 01:44:33,026
I'm sorry, folks, but I think time's up.

1202
01:44:34,032 --> 01:44:36,660
I have no happy chapter to offer you.

1203
01:44:37,268 --> 01:44:39,668
No list of quick and painless fixes.

1204
01:44:40,872 --> 01:44:44,672
No plan that will keep the train
rolling forever on this track.

1205
01:44:45,310 --> 01:44:47,801
I see no way for that to happen.

1206
01:44:48,847 --> 01:44:54,342
If there is going to be a happy chapter,
we shall have to write it together,

1207
01:44:55,487 --> 01:45:01,949
with the rest of the community of life,
on the pages of the living world.

1208
01:45:02,894 --> 01:45:06,131
I sometimes have dreams about
my grandchildren coming also.

1209
01:45:06,131 --> 01:45:08,466
And these dreams sometimes turn unpleasant.

1210
01:45:08,466 --> 01:45:12,771
Because the grandchildren come and they come
from a North Carolina and from a California

1211
01:45:12,771 --> 01:45:15,573
that is polluted, the air they can't breathe.

1212
01:45:15,573 --> 01:45:18,843
And they say, "Granddad,
did you let that happen?"

1213
01:45:18,843 --> 01:45:20,712
And they're angry when they get there.

1214
01:45:20,712 --> 01:45:24,204
I think they're going to look back
and shake their heads and say,

1215
01:45:26,151 --> 01:45:28,381
'what happened to those people?

1216
01:45:28,887 --> 01:45:33,290
How did they lose sight of such basic things?"

1217
01:45:44,769 --> 01:45:50,608
There is a new story arising in the world.:
the story of the Great Turning,

1218
01:45:50,608 --> 01:45:58,982
the turning away from a culture of domination
and death, and the turning toward a culture
that is life-sustaining and life-renewing.

1219
01:45:59,651 --> 01:46:03,382
All over the planet, people
are now telling this story.

1220
01:46:03,988 --> 01:46:08,948
The Buddhist scholar and deep ecologist
Joanna Macy tells this story in her workshops.

1221
01:46:09,727 --> 01:46:14,130
The writer and activist David Korten
tells it in his book by the same name.

1222
01:46:14,599 --> 01:46:19,559
It's a story to be told by our descendents,
looking back on this present time.

1223
01:46:20,805 --> 01:46:24,609
Will we be the monsters of our great-
grandchildren's nightmares?

1224
01:46:24,609 --> 01:46:33,677
Or will we walk, as the story of the Great
Turning says, as heroes and healers
in the epic poetry of those still-unborn voices?

1225
01:46:34,385 --> 01:46:38,323
Will we be reviled for our
entitled, destructive ways?

1226
01:46:38,323 --> 01:46:42,160
Or will we be lovingly remembered
in the songs of our descendents

1227
01:46:42,160 --> 01:46:48,066
as they recount the story of this lost and very
wounded tribe that stepped back from the abyss

1228
01:46:48,066 --> 01:46:51,365
and found its way home to the
community of living souls?

1229
01:46:53,204 --> 01:46:54,466
We get to choose.

1230
01:46:56,174 --> 01:46:58,165
Who are we going to be?

1231
01:47:00,011 --> 01:47:03,982
Part of me still wishes that someone
would just take care of it, you know.

1232
01:47:03,982 --> 01:47:08,753
That it's their job. That's what we pay them for.

1233
01:47:08,753 --> 01:47:11,313
They're supposed to be the wise parents of us.

1234
01:47:12,090 --> 01:47:18,654
it's going to come as a really rude
awakening when people realize that
a) they can't and b) they won't.

1235
01:47:19,364 --> 01:47:29,103
I don't think life for most Americans, despite our
affluence, is all that it's been cracked up to be.

1236
01:47:29,507 --> 01:47:32,374
And people are afraid to talk about that.

1237
01:47:33,845 --> 01:47:39,083
they're afraid they're the only ones that
are experiencing deep dissatisfaction.

1238
01:47:39,083 --> 01:47:41,419
it's really so sad, you know.

1239
01:47:41,419 --> 01:47:46,291
You look at - and particularly American
culture is emblematic of this -

1240
01:47:46,291 --> 01:47:51,829
go to a typical shopping mall and
look at the people around you
and the environment around you.

1241
01:47:51,829 --> 01:48:01,170
And the utter shallowness and
hopelessness of it all is profoundly depressing.

1242
01:48:07,779 --> 01:48:08,643
Look.

1243
01:48:09,414 --> 01:48:10,779
Is this who are we?

1244
01:48:11,316 --> 01:48:15,685
Consumers? Shoppers? Workers? Voters?

1245
01:48:16,321 --> 01:48:21,782
Does our identity lie in Nielsen numbers and box
office receipts and the Gross Domestic Product?

1246
01:48:22,193 --> 01:48:26,664
Are we on this Earth to sell cheeseburgers
to each other and yell at our children

1247
01:48:26,664 --> 01:48:30,600
and drive around in clown cars
and fall asleep in front of the tube?

1248
01:48:31,035 --> 01:48:37,838
Are we destroying the planet, as
Dmitry Orlov asks, just "to be somewhat
more comfortable for a little while"?

1249
01:48:38,943 --> 01:48:43,903
I keep having to remind myself.:
this culture is not humanity.

1250
01:48:44,616 --> 01:48:49,520
It is only one culture out of the tens of
thousands that used to exist on this planet.

1251
01:48:49,520 --> 01:48:53,012
Only one culture out of the
many that are still hanging on.

1252
01:48:53,558 --> 01:48:59,530
That it has overrun the world means nothing
about its rightness, its greatness, or its destiny.

1253
01:48:59,530 --> 01:49:04,535
It means only that we live in a system of social
evolution that selects for short-term power

1254
01:49:04,535 --> 01:49:10,303
rather than for compassion, or for
sanity, or for long-term survival.

1255
01:49:12,143 --> 01:49:15,510
I think we are much more than
we've ever been allowed to believe.

1256
01:49:16,948 --> 01:49:24,150
Denied the connection and meaning that
nourishes us, we've grown small and
stunted in the shallow soil of this culture.

1257
01:49:24,989 --> 01:49:28,447
It's time to revitalize that ground of our being.

1258
01:49:30,695 --> 01:49:38,002
What really is important, and what
adds value and what adds... you know. . .

1259
01:49:38,002 --> 01:49:40,869
what does a life well-lived look like?

1260
01:49:41,572 --> 01:49:49,638
Humans have a history of living much more in
touch with the natural world, with the planet.

1261
01:49:50,148 --> 01:49:54,608
Much more sustainable.

1262
01:49:55,353 --> 01:49:56,843
Much more spiritual.

1263
01:49:57,555 --> 01:49:58,954
Much more communal.

1264
01:49:59,624 --> 01:50:00,892
That's who we are.

1265
01:50:00,892 --> 01:50:05,386
As all of this starts to shift and
change and disintegrate and collapse,

1266
01:50:06,164 --> 01:50:10,435
there's the opportunity, in fact,
to come back to ourselves.

1267
01:50:10,435 --> 01:50:16,032
To grow up, fundamentally,
as people and as a culture.

1268
01:50:18,509 --> 01:50:20,909
We're in a time of initiation, folks.

1269
01:50:21,512 --> 01:50:27,747
A mass initiation at the level of culture itself.
A vision quest for the collective mind.

1270
01:50:28,653 --> 01:50:33,658
this culture's arrogance, its adolescent
sense of invincibility and entitlement,

1271
01:50:33,658 --> 01:50:42,691
must be sloughed off to make room for a
more mature sense of interdependence with,
and responsibility to, the community of life.

1272
01:50:43,201 --> 01:50:45,226
this is the work of initiation.

1273
01:50:46,604 --> 01:50:51,871
Stepping into this cultural maturity, we will
take our rightful place in the community of life.

1274
01:50:52,276 --> 01:50:55,040
And we will fall back in love with the world.

1275
01:50:55,913 --> 01:50:59,007
We can do this. But only if we choose to.

1276
01:51:00,084 --> 01:51:04,145
Only if we lay down our weapons
in this insane war against the world.

1277
01:51:04,789 --> 01:51:09,055
Only if we surrender control and
move back into relationship.

1278
01:51:21,672 --> 01:51:24,675
You want unlimited growth? You can have it.

1279
01:51:24,675 --> 01:51:26,643
All you've ever wished for and more.

1280
01:51:27,178 --> 01:51:33,378
Growth in relationship and experience.
In self-awareness and spirit and love
and community and connection.

1281
01:51:33,851 --> 01:51:37,343
Growth in purpose and meaning.
Growth in vision.

1282
01:51:38,389 --> 01:51:44,562
When we step back into the
community of life, we will find out
immediately what has always been true.:

1283
01:51:44,562 --> 01:51:46,792
all of life's on our side.

1284
01:51:47,532 --> 01:51:50,935
We'll have polar bears on
our team. And elm trees.

1285
01:51:50,935 --> 01:51:54,427
And condors and salmon and
dragonflies and plankton.

1286
01:51:55,006 --> 01:52:00,239
We'll walk with the wind and the water, with
mountains underfoot and stars overhead.

1287
01:52:00,778 --> 01:52:06,341
The tiger's blood will course through our veins.
The horse's breath will fill our lungs.

1288
01:52:06,884 --> 01:52:13,187
We'll be more connected to real power
than we've ever dreamt possible
in our sick fantasy of domination.

1289
01:52:13,958 --> 01:52:16,859
"Power with." Not "power over."

1290
01:52:17,428 --> 01:52:22,832
The power of a species that has passed
through initiation and into maturity.

1291
01:52:26,671 --> 01:52:30,038
I think we need to look at what is it we want

1292
01:52:30,908 --> 01:52:35,446
and see if civilization as we've
created it is giving us that.

1293
01:52:35,446 --> 01:52:38,549
And if it's not, what might give us that?

1294
01:52:38,549 --> 01:52:40,484
What does it mean to dismantle civilization?

1295
01:52:40,484 --> 01:52:45,615
What it means is depriving the rich of the ability
to steal from the poor and to destroy the world.

1296
01:52:46,224 --> 01:52:48,226
I can't give a better definition than that.

1297
01:52:48,226 --> 01:52:57,101
There's no real reason why the entire country
of the United States couldn't face reality.

1298
01:52:57,101 --> 01:53:00,571
You just have to drop the idea of capitalism.

1299
01:53:00,571 --> 01:53:06,110
You have to drop the idea of
corporations running things.

1300
01:53:06,110 --> 01:53:09,238
You have to drop the idea of economic growth.

1301
01:53:10,348 --> 01:53:12,373
It could be done. it could be done.

1302
01:53:15,553 --> 01:53:21,626
There was a great tradition
among the Cheyenne dog soldiers
called the picket pin and stake.

1303
01:53:21,626 --> 01:53:26,864
they would get a tanned rope,
called a dog rope, and a picket pin,

1304
01:53:26,864 --> 01:53:34,972
that's used to stake horses to the ground, and
they would attach the picket pin to the sash,

1305
01:53:34,972 --> 01:53:37,975
the dog rope that was attached to them.

1306
01:53:37,975 --> 01:53:41,913
And then in battle they would drive
the picket stake into the ground.

1307
01:53:41,913 --> 01:53:46,417
And that was done as a mark of resolve.
Because once it's driven, you can't leave

1308
01:53:46,417 --> 01:53:53,557
until either you're dead, or you're
relieved by another dog soldier, or
the battle's over and everyone is safe.

1309
01:53:53,557 --> 01:53:57,194
so the question i ask people is,
you know, at what point,

1310
01:53:57,194 --> 01:53:59,219
you know, where will you drive your picket pin?

1311
01:53:59,931 --> 01:54:03,264
Where will you stake yourself out and say
"i'm not going to retreat any more"?

1312
01:54:15,813 --> 01:54:18,077
Our descendents are watching us.

1313
01:54:18,916 --> 01:54:20,440
How will we be?

1314
01:54:22,019 --> 01:54:26,979
It's time to be thoughtful, coming together
to learn about the world as it really is.

1315
01:54:27,658 --> 01:54:31,062
Reading between the lies. Doing the math.

1316
01:54:31,062 --> 01:54:33,053
Studying the world situation.

1317
01:54:33,864 --> 01:54:35,593
There will be a quiz.

1318
01:54:36,634 --> 01:54:41,901
A paradigm shift will require that we question our
deepest and most fundamental assumptions.

1319
01:54:42,573 --> 01:54:49,877
And that will require that we take our
current worldview gently in our arms
and hold it while it breathes its last.

1320
01:54:51,882 --> 01:54:55,453
Step into a new story.
Walk away from the pyramids.

1321
01:54:55,453 --> 01:54:59,287
Get out of the crumbling building.
Break out of prison.

1322
01:55:00,024 --> 01:55:04,984
Choose your favorite metaphor. Choose
your own adventure. But choose.

1323
01:55:06,297 --> 01:55:08,632
It's time to be truthful.

1324
01:55:08,632 --> 01:55:16,741
Millions of sensual pulsing animal
bodies are now living trapped and used
and starved in cities and cubicles

1325
01:55:16,741 --> 01:55:22,805
and sweatshops and food courts and traffic jams
and suburbs and public school classrooms.

1326
01:55:23,614 --> 01:55:27,380
People who are not rich and
white already know this.

1327
01:55:28,119 --> 01:55:32,613
What would happen if we let ourselves
feel our feelings about all of this?

1328
01:55:33,457 --> 01:55:37,359
The entire community of life on
this planet is now being threatened.

1329
01:55:38,562 --> 01:55:43,329
Where do we stick our picket pins?
Where do we take a stand?

1330
01:55:44,035 --> 01:55:48,199
When do we find the courage to
let ourselves feel what's going on?

1331
01:55:49,373 --> 01:55:54,333
Our feelings are the swiftest
path back to our forgotten selves.

1332
01:55:55,880 --> 01:55:57,939
It's time to be open and humble.

1333
01:55:58,682 --> 01:56:05,087
There are huge forces at work in the world, both
seen and unseen. It's time to ask for help.

1334
01:56:06,023 --> 01:56:11,689
Ask the ancestors.
Ask the gods.
Ask your God.

1335
01:56:12,363 --> 01:56:18,165
Go outside and lie down on the Earth and ask
the land, and the sky, and the life of this place.

1336
01:56:19,537 --> 01:56:21,732
And then listen for a response.

1337
01:56:22,773 --> 01:56:28,746
Listen to the voices of soil and stone, wind
and water, the voices of cirrus clouds

1338
01:56:28,746 --> 01:56:33,884
and chickadees, of red squirrels and wood
beetles and Russian olives and hickories.

1339
01:56:33,884 --> 01:56:40,483
The world will tell us what it knows,
if only we will be still. And listen.

1340
01:56:41,525 --> 01:56:42,685
And then speak.

1341
01:56:43,494 --> 01:56:46,827
It's time to show up in our
own lives and tell the truth.

1342
01:56:47,431 --> 01:56:51,367
It's time to talk about the world
situation with everyone we see.

1343
01:56:52,002 --> 01:56:58,237
We're all in this together. What a relief
it'll be, to discover that we are not alone.

1344
01:56:59,977 --> 01:57:02,913
It's time to act with great intention.

1345
01:57:02,913 --> 01:57:08,486
There is work aplenty to do in this weary
world, and people engaged in that work.

1346
01:57:08,486 --> 01:57:11,080
Find those people. Join in.

1347
01:57:11,689 --> 01:57:16,786
Save rivers and stop bulldozers and stand
up at city council meetings to tell your truth.

1348
01:57:17,328 --> 01:57:20,431
Share skills. Evolve local communities.

1349
01:57:20,431 --> 01:57:26,836
Move from agriculture to permaculture and grow
your own food. Learn about medicinal herbs.

1350
01:57:27,505 --> 01:57:34,673
As Derrick Jensen says, "we need it all."
Find your work, and do it. It's time.

1351
01:57:35,813 --> 01:57:37,940
But what about that speeding train?

1352
01:57:38,949 --> 01:57:41,918
How will the Great Turning turn?

1353
01:57:43,053 --> 01:57:49,226
We can wait for the train to crash on its own and
hope that it doesn't kill us, and everything else.

1354
01:57:49,226 --> 01:57:54,598
But with the children grown, perhaps we can
come together and decide to dismantle,

1355
01:57:54,598 --> 01:57:57,101
joyfully and with conscious intent,

1356
01:57:57,101 --> 01:58:02,368
the rusty and dangerous old swing-set
of a culture that no longer serves us.

1357
01:58:03,207 --> 01:58:05,609
this may seem an impossible task.

1358
01:58:05,609 --> 01:58:10,103
But if the alternative is extinction,
then we have nothing to lose.

1359
01:58:11,282 --> 01:58:16,153
We humans once knew how to
live on this planet. A few still do.

1360
01:58:16,153 --> 01:58:20,487
And that's the good news. It can be done.

1361
01:58:21,258 --> 01:58:24,455
We can do way, way better than Empire.

1362
01:58:35,706 --> 01:58:38,402
Let's jump off the train and build a boat.

1363
01:58:38,876 --> 01:58:44,439
The train is constrained to rigid tracks and its
momentum makes it almost impossible to steer.

1364
01:58:44,915 --> 01:58:48,851
But the boat? Ah, the boat
is a very different thing.

1365
01:58:49,320 --> 01:58:54,121
Boats set sail into the unknown, subject
only to wind and wave and weather.

1366
01:58:54,892 --> 01:59:00,558
Boats can be lifeboats, preserving wisdom and
understanding while the storm rages overhead.

1367
01:59:01,098 --> 01:59:06,058
Boats can be arks, safeguarding the
life of the world as the floodwaters rise.

1368
01:59:06,837 --> 01:59:16,576
And boats can carry us into adventure, away
from the shores of the current paradigm and to
those unseen shores of a future not yet written.

1369
01:59:17,181 --> 01:59:19,917
find your people and build a boat.

1370
01:59:19,917 --> 01:59:24,980
Build a local community to serve the
world and preserve the life of a piece of land.

1371
01:59:25,522 --> 01:59:33,520
Or set sail in the wider world, interrupting
the destruction, healing the wounds,
crafting connections and changing minds.

1372
01:59:34,064 --> 01:59:37,835
Build a boat. A lifeboat. An ark.

1373
01:59:37,835 --> 01:59:42,670
A galleon of adventure and imagination
destined for unknown lands.

1374
01:59:43,607 --> 01:59:44,904
Build it now.

1375
01:59:45,709 --> 01:59:47,176
The ice is melting.

1376
01:59:48,145 --> 01:59:50,079
The waters are rising.

1377
01:59:51,582 --> 01:59:54,449
We're going to have to let go of the shore.

1378
01:59:55,653 --> 02:00:00,057
I do not know if I will survive the
crash of industrial civilization

1379
02:00:00,057 --> 02:00:04,255
or the impacts of the climate change
that that civilization has unleashed.

1380
02:00:05,062 --> 02:00:09,658
I do know this.: I have a choice
about how I meet it.

1381
02:00:10,167 --> 02:00:12,032
I have a choice.

1382
02:00:12,636 --> 02:00:14,194
We have a choice.

1383
02:00:15,205 --> 02:00:22,446
I can meet it with a burger in my hand,
a French fry in my mouth,
and a cold drink spilling onto my jeans.

1384
02:00:22,446 --> 02:00:28,316
Or I can meet it with consciousness, integrity,
and the sense of purpose that is my birthright.

1385
02:00:29,320 --> 02:00:36,026
I can meet it on the far side of
initiation, a mature and related
member of the community of life,

1386
02:00:36,026 --> 02:00:41,589
standing tall, doing my best to
protect and serve this Earth that I love.

1387
02:00:42,966 --> 02:00:44,866
this is the course I've chosen.

1388
02:00:45,235 --> 02:00:47,032
this is my picket pin.:

1389
02:00:47,638 --> 02:00:51,074
I will show up and I will tell my truth.

1390
02:00:52,242 --> 02:00:56,576
But it's hard to sail alone,
when the seas rage so fiercely.

1391
02:00:57,448 --> 02:01:01,509
If you sail with me, we shall
both be made stronger.

1392
02:01:01,885 --> 02:01:06,288
And when others join us, then our
crew will be made strong indeed.

1393
02:01:07,958 --> 02:01:11,860
Together, we will set forth, to find that new land.

1394
02:01:13,997 --> 02:01:16,363
What a way to go. . .

1395
02:01:17,000 --> 02:01:18,627
// Let's build a boat //

1396
02:01:20,404 --> 02:01:22,565
// In case the waters rise //

1397
02:01:23,474 --> 02:01:24,941
// Let's build a boat //

1398
02:01:27,344 --> 02:01:29,980
// Clouds they gather in the skies //

1399
02:01:29,980 --> 02:01:31,447
// Let's build a boat //

1400
02:01:33,350 --> 02:01:35,944
// For when the storm comes //

1401
02:01:36,320 --> 02:01:37,787
// Let's build a boat //

1402
02:01:39,390 --> 02:01:42,257
// For when the rain it beat like drums //

1403
02:01:42,593 --> 02:01:45,729
// Oh the levee will get pounded //

1404
02:01:45,729 --> 02:01:49,533
// Now the people are out having fun //

1405
02:01:49,533 --> 02:01:52,469
// Someday our work will pay off //

1406
02:01:52,469 --> 02:01:55,706
// We will float others will be overcome //

1407
02:01:55,706 --> 02:01:57,901
// But you can't outrun the water //

1408
02:01:58,709 --> 02:02:02,008
// Oh you can't outrun the water //

1409
02:02:02,379 --> 02:02:07,510
// You can't outrun the water //

1410
02:02:08,185 --> 02:02:09,652
// Let's build a boat //

1411
02:02:46,523 --> 02:02:47,990
// Let's build a boat //

1412
02:02:49,827 --> 02:02:52,762
// Take me to the other slde //

1413
02:02:53,130 --> 02:02:54,597
// Let's build a boat //

1414
02:02:55,466 --> 02:02:59,203
// Be forewarned this is no easy ride //

1415
02:02:59,203 --> 02:03:01,000
// Let's build a boat //

1416
02:03:02,706 --> 02:03:05,809
// Big enough for all of us //

1417
02:03:05,809 --> 02:03:07,276
// Let's build a boat //

1418
02:03:09,012 --> 02:03:10,614
// One that's good enough //

1419
02:03:10,614 --> 02:03:12,349
// One that we can trust //

1420
02:03:12,349 --> 02:03:15,419
// Oh the levee will get pounded //

1421
02:03:15,419 --> 02:03:18,445
// Oh the people are out having fun //

1422
02:03:19,089 --> 02:03:21,992
// Someday our work will pay off //

1423
02:03:21,992 --> 02:03:25,128
// We will float others will be overcome //

1424
02:03:25,128 --> 02:03:27,323
// But you can't outrun the water //

1425
02:03:28,265 --> 02:03:31,564
// Oh you can't outrun the water //

1426
02:03:31,902 --> 02:03:37,033
// You can't outrun the water //

1427
02:03:37,908 --> 02:03:39,375
// Let's build a boat //