The 11th hour dvd - a basic summary

The 11th Hour dvd

1) It is the nature of living organisms to use opportunism to get what they need to in order to survive.

.

2) Man is unique because he is aware of the future and adopt his actions today to affect the future.

.

3) Mankind is basically economy driven/focussed with the belief that he has the capacity for limitless growth and expansion.

.

4) With the advent of the industrial revolution in the 1800's there was a departure from living of products and food provided by current sunlight to using the energy ( coal and oil) provided by ancient sunlight.

.
5) Coal and oil, discovered app. 1930, is a finite fossil fuel which is fast running out and we will be unable to sustain more than about 1-2 billion people should we run out of fossil fuel.

.

.

6) World population:

(Phenomenal growth made possible by machines that provide resorces such as food and clothing produced through the energy provided by coal (electricity generation) and oil (fuel for transport using combustion engines)

.

7) Pre 1800 = below 1 billion (industrial revolution)
1930 = 2 billion (discovery of oil)
1960 = 3 billion (advent of computer mechanisation)
2007 = 6 billion

.

8) An ever growing population sees the rise of global corporate institutions that has profit as its main goal and ethics are very often ignored at the cost of the environment and the health of soceity.

.

9) The images below shows the factories dumping chemicals that kills all life in the rivers and cause a so called "dead zone" in the river it is dumped in as well as where the river flows out into the ocean.

.

.

.

10) Oil is big business and corporate companies go to extreme lengths to make sure soceity keeps using oil in their vehicles.

.

.

11) There is a common misperception that the profits from oil is raked in by the OPEC countries. The graph below shows that the governments below take a huge amount of profit from TAX added onto the oil price, in some case much more than the producing countries who have to mine and barrel the oil.

.

.

12) A further effect of a economy that gets its energy from fossil fuel power is a rise in global CO2 levels.

.

13) Coal fired power stations, as much as 600 coal power stations in the USA alone, and exhaust carbon emissions from fossil fuel driven vehicles pumps vast quantities of Carbon into the atmosphere which causes a greenhouse effect.

.

.

14) The greenhouse effect is caused by the Sun's rays entering the Earth's Atmosphere and heating up the Earth through long wave radiation. The Earth heats up and in turn gives off short wave radiation (heat) which is unable to escape out of the Earth's atmosphere.

.

15) The greenhouse effect causes the Earth to heat up and the poles to melt. This causes a problem because the ice caps reflect the Suns long wave radiation which keeps the Earth at a narrow ideal range of temperature.

.

16) There is the danger that if the Earth heats up too much that the process will become self pepetuating with cataclysmic effects for human beings on Earth.