In an unprecedented move, Chris Smith’s alarmist documentary, Collapse, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last month without distribution, but by mid-November it shall be made available simultaneously both theatrically and via video on demand. The rationale for such a quick two-pronged approach is clear: the time to see this film is now, both the critical hype from its premiere and the urgency of its message (i.e the end of the Petroleum Man era and the titular collapse of modern civilization) makes any conventional delay less viable of an option. Journalist and former Los Angeles Detective, Michael C Ruppert, has been making accurate economic predictions since the early part of this decade, due in large part to his so-called ‘map’ of how the world actually works, particularly in lieu of the realities of Peak Oil. His thesis is bluntly unloaded on the audience in Smith’s film, barely affording them an opportunity to breathe. In the tradition of Fog of War and An Inconvenient Truth, Collapse is a documentary which appears to pull back the veil of lies and give a rare glimpse into how things actually work.
It remains my favorite film of 2009, and you can read my TIFF review here
The trailer gives a taste of what you are in for:
Poster and Showtimes tucked under the seat:
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SHOWTIMES:
NOVEMBER 6th – NEW YORK – ANGELIKA FILM CENTER
NOVEMBER 13th – LOS ANGELES – LAEMMLE SUNSET 5
– TORONTO (T.B.A.)
– VANCOUVER (T.B.A.)
– MONTREAL (T.B.A.)
DECEMBER 4th – SAN FRANCISCO – LUMIERE THEATRE
DECEMBER 4th – BERKELEY – SHATTUCK CINEMA
DECEMBER 11th – WASHINGTON DC – E STREET CINEMA
DECEMBER 11th – MUSIC BOX THEATER – CHICAGO
DECEMBER 11th – THE SCREEN – SANTA FE
DECEMBER 15-17TH – WATERLOO, ON – PRINCESS CINEMA
DECEMBER 18th – PHILADELPHIA
DECEMBER 18th – DENVER
DECEMBER – SAN DIEGO – KEN CINEMA
***UPDATE*** Collapse will be available on the Movies on Demand channel 11/15 – Verizon Fios, Cox, Charter. 12/6 – Comcast & Time Warner
“An intelligent look at the future of the Oil Based Economy – A
Trustee of the Oil Depletion Analysis Center, Dr. Colin Campbell whose long
career in the oil industry has taken him all over the world describes
in clear, concise and even-handed detail the real situation as it
relates to the amount of oil left to be extracted in the world today
and what it means to me and you.”
virtually everything this scientist says is exactly what Michael Ruppert has been saying, the only difference is that he is a scientist and though what he says is alarming, he never wavers from a calm unhysterical stance about
the facts of Peak Oil.
highly recommend you listen to this.
http://www.markswatson.com/audio/oil2.mp3
Also note, this interview is pre-Iraq War, so pre-2003, pay particular attention to the information that is left on the table regarding what is discovered in 2000, and then, before a war has even taken place in Iraq, what they talk about as to the importance of Iraq strategically as the last reserve to peak in the world.
First confirmed Canadian showing is in Vancouver:
NOVEMBER 17, 20-13 – VANCITY VANCOUVER CANADA – FESTIVAL THEATER
You rock. I took a look at the dates when you posted the releases but didn’t see a Canadian date. I’m booking my ticket this week!
And to confirm, the Vancity theater is AWESOME.
When are you coming to Cleveland. Cleveland Cinemas should be showing this.
Official Statement on 9-11
by
Michael C. Ruppert
November 2, 2009 – We have all seen the amazing progress of CoLLapse. The film has exceeded all of my expectations thanks to Chris Smith and Kate Noble of Bluemark Films. It is making people hungry for answers to all the right questions. And starting this Thursday CoLLapse opens for one-week runs in 12 cities in the US and Canada.
There is something important that needs to be addressed now and I am the only one to do it.
More than five years ago I completely and unequivocally divorced myself from the 9-11 Truth Movement. I did that because it had been co-opted and hijacked by people offering arguments and theories about 9-11 that were deeply flawed and absolutely inadmissible in a court of law. I addressed those flaws specifically in a 2003 essay about why physical evidence claims would go nowhere and would be used to discredit anyone who challenged the official Bush Administration version of events.
In many radio interviews and lectures throughout 2004-2006 I also said unequivocally that I was no longer affiliated with the 9-11 Truth movement because I saw that it would be publicly discredited as it has deservedly been. The current 9-11 Truth movement is indeed a circus. “Crossing the Rubicon” IS admissible in court and it has nothing to do with flawed, self-destructing and unnecessary arguments that are the tent poles of the 9-11 “movement”. I left that tent a long time ago.
I also divorced myself from the 9-11 as an issue because the window to achieve political and legal change had closed. The collapse of industrial civilization trumps 9-11. 9-11 is a dead issue. — I cannot say it more clearly than this. Our limited energy must be focused on the future. One of my trademark lines has always been, “Nothing matters to me except for change in the political landscape.” – We can achieve that with CoLLapse.
FOR THE RECORD, Although I have discussed it I have never endorsed or used the building demolition theory as an argument. I have put this in writing too many times. There was/is no physical evidence (however compelling) that would be admissible in a court of law; and what reported evidence exists is useless because a legal chain of custody is not provable. Chain of custody is one of the first tests of admissibility. Some of the work done on building collapse – especially as it pertains to WTC7 — is both compelling and well-founded. Some is not. But what is credible would never pass the admissibility test; and that’s on the assumption that a court with jurisdiction would ever try the case.
FOR THE RECORD Although at first I was very skeptical based on the energy around certain books that became popular in 2002-2003, I later found out that there were hundreds of independent eyewitnesses on I-395 who saw an airliner hit the Pentagon. In a court of law their testimony could never be overcome by videotapes or interpretations that have no proof of authenticity. That testimony could never be negated by speculation or expert opinion. And I have been convinced for a long time now that an airliner did, in fact, strike the building.
“Crossing the Rubicon” and its unanswered questions about 9-11 has never been remotely examined or discussed by mainstream media or the United States government. While the United States government has spent a lot of time and money easily debunking the claims of the so-called 9-11 Truth movement; and while the History Channel and Popular Mechanics went to great effort to debunk the 9-11 Truth movement; all that the press and the government have done with “Crossing the Rubicon” is to ignore it.
I stepped away from the Babel of 9-11 Truth more than five years ago. If the mainstream press wants to take me on over a book I wrote and which remains unchallenged after five years then I am and always have been prepared (and eager) for that. That book has sold around 100,000 copies and is in the Harvard Business School library. It has 1,000 footnotes; none of which have ever been challenged..
NOTE TO THE NY TIMES AND ALL MAINSTREAM PRESS: In a recent review of CoLLapse by the Times, the reviewer made reference to a negative article written about me by David Corn for “The Nation” magazine in 2003. In that article Corn maliciously libeled me by writing that I had been fired by LAPD as a mental case. That was untrue. At the time of my resignation in late 1978 I was both certified for promotion to Detective and earning the highest rating reports possible. I had no disciplinary actions (pending or prior) of any kind. That was only one of the lies that David Corn wrote and The Nation published.
The next question the press will ask is “Why didn’t you sue?” The record shows that from 2004 until the present day I have been constantly involved in legal battles on top of the work of book-writing and running From The Wilderness until its demise in 2006. I have never lost. The Oregon appeal is far from over. Does anyone ever consider the toll such legal battles take? The money, the time, the energy? I can only fight so many fights at a time and the reason why small and unethical people like David Corn get away with things like this is because they know that. But the great brutality of mainstream media is that it will dredge up inaccurate stories without checking and refer to them as truth in order to discredit anyone who opposes corporate-controlled press in this country.
Any journalist is required to do fact-checking before going to press. I left a record of between two and three million words. It is indexed, catalogued and out there for anyone to read. Sooner or later someone is going to have to read it.
And for all who cannot tell the difference between me and Alex Jones I heartily encourage you to stay with him and not associate yourself with me or my work in any way. That is where you belong.
Michael C. Ruppert
To follow up on his point about David Corn, here are the original documents showing that Ruppert’s claim of being smeared are true:
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/mcr_lapd.shtml
No Collapse in CPH:DOX. I’m pissed.
If I remember right Denmark is one of the best prepared countries for Peak Oil, probably no need to show it there.
I don’t really give a shit about Peak Oil, but I love Chris Smith and his portraitdocumentaries. This one sounded like another great one.
Although I would be lying to say I wasn’t at least interested in some of the conspiracy stuff. It’s usually good stuff, I even sat through Loose Change.
But Trash Humpers is in the main competition for Dox Award of the year. Now, I don’t know if anybody here has seen it, but I listened to the filmjunk review, and in no way did it sound like a documentary. WTF?
Henrik, it’s FOUND FOOTAGE, and it is pretty darn awful by all accounts (I know of very few that actual liked the film or found any real merit in it other than a odd curio):
http://www.filmjunk.com/2009/09/16/tiff-review-harmony-korines-trash-humpers/
http://filmfreakcentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/2009-tiff-bytes-2.html
http://www.notcoming.com/reviews/trashhumpers/
ah yes, conspiracy:
-U.S. Department of Energy published Hirsch Report (http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/others/pdf/Oil_Peaking_NETL.pdf)
-International Energy Agency press releases and statistics
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/oct/19/oil-prices-rise-supply-warning-report) (http://omrpublic.iea.org/)
-New York Times Nobel Prize winning Economist Paul Krugman (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/feeling-a-bit-peaked/)
You can ignore the eco-politics section of the bookstore altogether, reputed scientists including Colin Campbell of the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre (ODAC), “an independent, UK-registered educational charity” and hell ignore the plethora of news articles in the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, all these publications that have no obvious self-interest in perpetuating a theory that calls for the end of their own publication run, you can even ignore the very basic mathematics required to come to your own conclusions about the situation Peak Oil describes, but those top three sources are pretty significant endorsements of the Peak Oil Theory… its not a conspiracy, its careerism, its human nature, its shutting your eyes in the hope that the facts you see will go away.
International Energy Agency (a department of the United Nations) is the best source to go to for
statistics and data pertaining to energy…
check the sidebar graphs world supply, and world demand:
http://omrpublic.iea.org/
In the lecture by Mike Ruppert given at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco in 2004, he said world oil supply would peak in 2007. He may have been off by a single quarter of a year
Also, the Wikipedia Entry on Peak Oil is pretty darn exhaustive if you follow all the foot notes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil
Kurt, isn’t it Harmony Korine and friends in costumes and make-up, pretending it is found footage? The way I understand it, it is no more found footage than the Blair With Project, it’s just more dedicated to the idea.
Conspiracy, theory, I did not mean to discredit it, I probably used the wrong word.
What I said was, I don’t care about the statistics. If I did, I would not watch a movie about them.
Key footnote on the wiki Peak Oil page: “Other predictions: Malthusian Catastrophe”.
Woohoo!
Henrik -> Absolutely correct. It is not a documentary at all, but rather the old ‘found footage’ gag. Why this is at a Doc Film Fest is a bit baffling.
Indeed. I would hate to think that the people in charge of DOX were somehow fooled, but what other explanation is there?
I will take a closer read at the program tonight, hopefully it will be clear why it is in there.
@Henrik,
I’m not sure you will like Collapse then… its not a lot of statistics, not as bad as say An Inconvenient Truth, but, its a factual argument, and contrary to how Chris Smith is spinning this, the film is 90% Ruppert’s theory, 10% Ruppert as a person. I see this cropping up everywhere that Collapse is a character study, and its certainly how it was sold to me by TIFF, but that to me is cinephiles at all cost trying to divorce the film from its intellectual arguments, to look purely at the formal properties because they feel more comfortable dealing with that. I understand why that would be done, even by Chris Smith, who has a career to consider. Who really wants to look head-on at the factual argument that disenfranchises you of your future and your modern life? Even when you get beyond the knee-jerk resistance to anything catastrophic (because apparently catastrophes never happen in history) and take it as possible, who really wants to consider that? Horror is an aesthetic experience only when there is a safe perch for the viewer to observe from. Cinephiles are conditioned towards the aesthetic experience first, therefore those writing about this movie opt for the character study explanation, even though at most it consists of 10% of the running time.
Its a clever move though by Chris to have that pressure valve available.
The closest comparison for Collapse is Fog of War, and I will say right now, Fog of War is a better aesthetic experience, a better made film, an artsy film, but content wise, it has nothing on Collapse, and because I value content over form, Collapse to me is better than Fog of War.
I suspect many will disagree with me on this point.
I gotta get on this conspiracy thing, only to clear something up.
Is Peak Oil, or has it ever, been kept a secret from anybody? Why the sudden uproar over it when somebody makes a dubious movie? That’s the part that is fishy, you can not help but think that a movie would provide a pretty clear-cut picture, and that is why people scuff when you walk out of it convinced. I mean, all the sources you cite to prove the claims, are publicly available. Where is the controversy? Is the whole thing just about him saying that the United States have bad government, and is a shortsighted nation? I have been saying that for years
!
So rot, let me ask you a question. Which has you scared more shitless, peak oil or LHC? You should create a website consisting of big letters saying “WHO WILL DESTROY US FIRST”, and then a poll.
Chill out. We’ll make it through an oil crisis, even careerists are interested in avoiding disasters. It’s going to take more to finish off humans, even if it may limit our traveling.
“Why the sudden uproar over ”
because the peak was predicted for now (or on average predictions 2007-2020), and most people refuse to believe in anything until it is facing them straight on, makes it less a conspiracy and just naive skepticism, and careerism, but as of right now, its not a conspiracy, its lack of picking up a newspaper, a lack of searching out the news for yourself. or perhaps its only news if CNN deems it news, in between its Jacko updates?
This is a fantastic mp3 interview with Dr. Colin Campbell (Oxford PHD alumni) taken in 2002, so you have a chance to see if his predictions are right or not since then. Its very factual, dry even, but if you listen to what he has to say, it should hardly come as a surprise that Peak Oil is a reality.
http://www.markswatson.com/audio/oil2.mp3
Also, Collapse is hardly the first documentary on the subject of Peak Oil, although admittedly for me it was my first. but these came out before:
Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash (2006)
The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil (2006)
The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream (2004)
What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire (2007)
PetroApocalypse Now? (2008)
as for your clarification of ‘conspiracy’ Henrik, I would say there is a pretty big difference between forces working in tandem to keep something hidden, and a series of isolated natural responses by people ill-informed on the details of the theory, largely ignoring it out of ignorance. I believe it is the latter. That said, also isolated, there is a careerist element involved, a lot of people subsist off the faith in the market running smoothly, even if faced with the information about it otherwise, out of an interest in not shaking up the market, they would choose to ignore it.
In reality very few of us would actually stand up and risk our livelihoods to say things most people do not want to hear… add into that the blind, naive hope that someone else will fix the problem and everything will be ok, so ignore it.
I am the same way to be honest, I am not talking up everyone I meet about this, I am not advocating anymore than this film and what it can provide… I wouldn’t risk my job. I hope there is some 11th hour reprieve. its human nature… and such behavior is what lets something like this ‘come out of nowhere’
Update on Cable showings:
Collapse will be available on the Movies on Demand channel 11/15 – Verizon Fios, Cox, Charter. 12/6 – Comcast & Time Warner
not sure how that translates for Canadian viewers, is Rogers a subsidiary of these companies?
Honestly Rot. Have you just been sitting around for the past two weeks ALL day and dig up stuff on Chris Smith and Michael Ruppert?
outside of reading about sustainable energy and gardening, and being sick for a week, that about sums it up.
also having a twitter feed makes it pretty easy to sit back and get notices of what is happening.
but truly, I do actually find this subject a weeeee bit more important than most Hollywood news.
I wouldn’t look down on actually reading tons of stuff about something. It’s a bit more respectful than just seing the movie and making your mind up. Making fun of people spending time on things they like or find worthwhile is lame. I’m sure somebody spends more than 2 weeks organizing a zombie crawl.
I really want to see the movie, but I can’t really get worked up over the subject. It seems to me (like with Inconvenient Truth) that this is mainly an american problem, and that the problem is more the political powers that be, and less the oil itself.
I think capitalism had a decent run. I would be ready for something different.
and we should free polanski.
Like I said before, Denmark will probably not suffer nearly as much as us in North America, U.S. uses 25% of the world’s oil supply alone, thats a significant problem when there isn’t enough oil to go around. Denmark apparently has the largest wind power field in the world, not that will solve the problem, but its something.
“Making fun of people spending time on things they like or find worthwhile is lame.”
love,
Henrik
Do I need to point out the irony here?
I should add a caveat, that if the things people spend their time on are absolutely ridiculous, they should be expecting a certain amount of ridicule. This sort of checks and balances type communication is only healthy.
Ridiculous subjects inculde talking snakes, lightsabers and celebrity fetiches.
I happen to think that the use of green lightsabers over blue is quite the important topic.
Not to mention I think you’re confusing fun topics to chat about once in a while and all day research. Two completely different things.
I suspect reading the Hirsch report takes no longer time than reading How to survive the zombie apocolapyse.
Some people never go beyond their talking snakes and lightsabers. They are the majority online, and they *almost* look down on people interested in inherently more important things. I mean somebody can love Bergman and be labeled a snob, but say you love Ratatouille and people will love you.
Henrik, but what if you love both Bergman and Ratatouille?
I know it is being framed like work, like ‘all day research’ but essentially if it is something you enjoy doing, whether it be reading about zombies or reading about oil, it feels pretty effortless.
I told myself I would stop reading about oil and read about more practical things, like organic gardening, but then yesterday I found a crisp paperback version of Simmons’ Twilight in the Desert, and I had to get it, and can’t put it down. Admittedly part of it is engaging in an aesthetic experience, the ultimate horror narrative, but I am also fascinated by what I am discovering.
I am almost inspired to revisit There Will Be Blood. almost.
“Henrik, but what if you love both Bergman and Ratatouille?”
You’re allowed to attend, just don’t bring up Bergman.
UPDATE: Q&A with Michael Ruppert tonight at the Los Angeles showing of Collapse, I believe he is also attending Saturday night as well.
Also check local listings of your cable provider for Movies on Demand, as of Nov 15th Collapse ought to be available that way too.
Still waiting on Toronto show dates.
TORONTO dates finally announced:
- Royal Cinema, TORONTO, ON (Dec. 11-24)
Christmas Eve is an ideal time, bring the kids and celebrate the end of the world.
Also new Calgary showings added:
- Uptown Screen, CALGARY, AB (opening Nov. 20)
I was unexpectedly given a screener copy of Collapse today, and immediately watched it.
I don’t dislike Ruppert. He’s sincere, he means well, i don’t doubt any of his intentions. I do think he’s overly paranoid about a number of things.
The movie isn’t scary to me in the least, and not because of the distrust we’ve gone over in detail. in fact very little if any of that sort of thing made a difference whatsoever. It’s a combination of a lot of things – a lot if not most of the information was not new to me, Mike Ruppert is not as intense as reported, and I guess overall I always find the past and the present scarier than the future. We can’t even properly speculate on the summer box office champions, so… yeah.
sidebar:
I mean less than a year ago nobody heard of Sarah Palin, now she gets treated like she could be president even though she quit her job and doesn’t know anything. Things change on a dime, inventions slow down and speed up things, and that daily chaos and the fact we don’t seem to learn from our mistakes is more frightening to me.
I mean look, I’m seeing people complaining about Avatar making the US look bad referencing how they treat Iraq or the Natives… i guess these people don’t think the world needs reminders of what we’ve done, things to show how it could and will happen again, that we don’t learn.
back on track:
So yes, anyways, a lot of the movies points are so Reader’s Digest that they make me want to watch Food Inc or Maxed Out or a documentary on those issues specifically. I also thought peak oil would play a greater role here, and while its consistently there it’s not necessarily the driving force either. So I don’t think this movie is a primer on anything rather than an introduction where people could investigate whichever particularly piques their interest.
I don’t Ruppert really stood out as a talking head any more than a typical Errol Morris First Person candidate, and in fact was probably below that standard until around 2/3 into the movie where he gets a bit more challenged and less recitational (if thats a word).
I thought going in it required to acheive one of these two things to be any good – to scare, or to reveal Ruppert as a character study. I don’t think it delivered on either of these promises…
HOWEVER
As I said, there’s enough to get someone started, or to make them think, that it has some value and I’d give it a modest thumbs up. As far as alarmism goes, it wasn’t as well made as An Inconvenient Truth, but at least for telling-me-something-I’ve-already-heard movies go, its a hell of a lot better than No End In Sight, which is overrated as fuck and flat out boring.
I would recommend something i listened to recently that actually DID scare me, and that is the CBC radio series entitled “The Suspect Society”.
http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/features/suspect-society/index.html
I guess what I wrote will probably read as negative. I’m just trying to explain as best as I can why it didn’t have the same effect on me as its having on some others.
Collapse is a primer for peak oil, but is also a character study, and the two create something greater than an eco-political documentary (and I have just watched a bunch of the other peak oil docs and they are bad, missing the spark of Ruppert). Watching it the second time, far more informed on the ideas of Peak Oil I noticed how quickly the film goes over the big points, its not made for the choir (for once!), this is a film for people, who like myself, went into the film knowing nothing about peak oil, expecting a nice character piece, and ended up be confronted with ideas I had never considered before. The effect was scary but got a whole lot scarier the more I looked up the terrain of the debate. I have asked most people I know whether they have heard of Peak Oil (and no, I do not automatically go into a litany, I often just leave it at that, a survey) and not a single person I know has even heard the term. If you knew about it, Goon, you are a better person than I and everyone I know. I believe the film is made for the people who are still thinking things are Republican/Democrat issues, who sleep easy at night knowing that the exponential growth desired of their economy will find a way to sort out the contradiction with the laws of science, and basic commonsense. Someone tells you civilization is going to end, you think they are crazy, but when his argument is based on something as sound as Peak Oil, and the indications are EVERYWHERE, even if Ruppert touches the most obvious points, your heart should jump a beat.
Foregoing that the majority of geologists surveyed believe Peak OIl is a concern for us right now, and the list of investors, bankers, physicists, is pretty impressive as well…
some interesting dots to connect (not mentioned in Collapse):
1) Warren Buffet recently made a billion odd dollar investment in railroads, and has gone on record as saying he did so because he believes oil will be too expensive to transport goods by trucks, not to mention the rail system he bought into connects with many of the coal refineries across the U.S. The rail system at present is a losing investment, he bought it cheap… did he buy it expecting cheap oil to last for another 20 years, thus losing on his investment for that time?
2) China has been buying up oil all over the world, including setting up a pipeline to our tar sands, to get oil sent to B.C. and over to them. Why then would they agree to anything at Copenhagen? Because of the science of global warming spontaneously made aware to them days before? The same that made no difference in Kyoto? To cut emissions is inevitably going to diminish the returns on their oil investments, eventually making them useless in a non-peak oil scenario. They agreed to the cut in emissions and are stockpiling oil BECAUSE they know, like everyone else, that Peak Oil is happening. Emissions have to be cut not because of global warming, although it is a valid threat, but because we have reached peak and the only way to turn the ship around without causing panic is to use the familiar threat of global warming… with our politicians all of a sudden going green.
3) Dick Cheney and George Bush, two oil men, have had since as early as 2000, the most pimped out eco-friendly estates you can imagine, including geothermal heating and solar powered energy making their homes potentially off the grid. Nothing in their policy would suggest such an interest, geothermal and solar in 2000 must have been insanely expensive, its expensive now, so why do it unless you really don’t have much faith in oil, in the business you’ve worked in?
4) a biggie, the IEA a week or two ago changed their tune from November, this after a Guardian article about two IEA whistleblowers stating that their oil reserves numbers are cooked and done under the direct orders of the U.S. government. Prior to that they stated Peak Oil wasn’t a threat until around 2030… this month miraculously they have discovered it is actually more like 2020. Now if the IEA are saying 2020, and they are a watchdog for governments that wish not to cause market hysteria, you can guarantee that the actual year is even earlier than that. The number of independent bodies that say it is happening right now or within five years far outweigh the IEA and CERA (the biggest joke out there with their rosy predictions), its not a healthy debate, all arrows point to trouble. The IEA has firmly placed themselves in the Peak Oil camp… that is HUGE.
10 years is not enough time to overturn infrastructure for transportation, cutting demand will not be enough because the depletion rate only continues downward, not to mention the sheer cost of such a paradigm shift in fuel is not what this limping economy needs right now.
we are fucked. algae might be a solution, the Maine offshore wind project might be a solution, but things have to be done fast and on a mass scale. Where is that political will going to come from? How would the fragile stock market take the news?
I’ll agree its not made for the choir, but I still don’t know about it as a primer. I would imagine End of Suburbia is a more thorough film. I would also imagine its probably not as well made.
I also watched the Cove today, and thought it wasn’t really made for the choir either, even though it is definitely an activist documentary.
I haven’t seen End of Suburbia but I did see its sequel and it was awful.
I think they were both direct to DVD but I know the first one was more warmly received, at least as far as Direct To DVD goes.
‘Someone tells you civilization is going to end, you think they are crazy, but when his argument is based on something as sound as Peak Oil, and the indications are EVERYWHERE, even if Ruppert touches the most obvious points, your heart should jump a beat.”
I don’t think its as simple as that. I think people who have kids will get more scared about what they may face. I think there are many of us who grew up with a zillion fears about the world who now take things as they come. Some of us think its coming and that it will be gradual like a frog in boiling water rather than BOOM Armageddon. Some assume as mentioned in the film that human enginuity will pull off a miracle.
When I get upset about the world, I really get more upset about the people who are oppressed or suffering today, rather than future wars or hypothetical breeding laws, etc. I don’t want to pack up and move to the woods, I don’t have kids, I could die in the plane I take in 2 days for all I know instead. I agree things right now look pretty dire, but I don’t intend on living my life waiting for the sky to fall.
I am enjoying my life. If there was a depression phase, than I am over it. My mood doesn’t change what I perceive to be the facts of the situation. There is actually a lot of positive spin to be had of a Peak Oil reality, or potentially positive. Like you mention, the world is shit already, this de-globalizes the shit.
The Titanic example he gives is apt: sure human ingenuity could be a miracle, and waiting after the iceberg tears into the haul, great minds might think a way out of this, but why ever rely solely on miracles, on yet undiscovered solutions? Why head to the bar in full disclosure of the situation?
take things as they come is a dumb way to live, I’m sorry, but it is. I think we live in an autopilot culture, we don’t take responsibility for the bigger pictures problems our smaller short term solutions cause, and it is true about global warming as it is about oil depletion. I am not naive enough to think any one of us can change the way Copenhagen turned out, but you can potentially change your part in this world by taking up the critical analysis that Mainstream Media forgot it had a responsibility to do and find a way to curb disaster before it comes to your door. Thats basic survival, we are not dogs, we have minds for a reason, we can anticipate change and compensate favorably.
that said, I take your point that there is no point just waiting for the sky to fall. you have to live too, its a delicate balance.
“take things as they come is a dumb way to live, I’m sorry, but it is.”
I’m not saying be the Frog vs. the Princess (Kurt will get the reference at least), I’m saying there is so much unpredictability in the world that I’m not going to put my eggs in one assumed doomsday basket, especially when there is so much day to day shit to worry about.
Look, I work on contract jobs, and in between those jobs my job is finding another job. I’ve had actual jobs at actual places, both of which I got laid off from when budgets got slashed. One was at the Canadian Press which got cut after CTV killed all those jobs last year. When I say take things as they come, it means right now finding a stable job is worth worrying about. The price of gas in 5 – 10 years is not.
Around ten years ago when Y2K was happening I listened to Coast to Coast too often and was certain something bad was going to happen. It was worsened by my dad being on his works Y2K team at a major refinery, being told that something bad was guaranteed to happen. It fucked with my anxiety hard.
When nothing happened, it didn’t make me more cynical about doomsaying per se, but it made me learn that I need to keep my anxiety in check about such matters, or else I’m going to have a heart attack when something truly bad does happen.
Heh, my wife was on the Y2K team at her company, and we were totally unworried. Nary a bottle of water was purchased. To each their own on that one. The Y2K Hysteria was as bad as the Swine Flu or SARS.
Of course, one of the reasons nothing happened is that thousands of people were engaged in fixing the issues beforehand. I don’t think there would have been a massive collapse of society had they not, but there would have been a whole lot more issues – some immediately and some popping up days and weeks later.
If you listened to the calm people at the time, you could tell that enough focus was put on the problem to stop major issues and get many of the other problems fixed, but that there was still some concern about what had slipped through.
I was involved in Y2K work as well and didn’t prep anything either. There was some silliness in the prep work as well, but you take the bad with the good.
Yea, LJ was the lead on it for WorldVision at the time. I’m not saying the work did nothing, it’s just that some people believe that you have to preach hellfire and Worst Case Scenarios to get people in gear on fixing a problem.