If you haven’t already heard of the 11th Hour, it’s a documentary, narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, being released across the United States today concerning the rapid and unsustainable environmental degradation our planet is currently facing. The documentary is meant to shock viewers with powerful images and statistics of all the damage we have already done, but in the end it’s goal is to inspire hope and action to really take control of our situation, and “become the the generation that changes the world”! The following description comes from the 11th Hour’s promotion team:

“The 11th Hour examines the human relationship with Earth from its earliest glimmers of innovation, to the challenges humanity faces in the present, to the possibilities of the future”. – 11thHourFilm.com

I think films like as this one are fantastic. Sure, we hear about global warming everyday on the news, and people have been preaching environmental degradation for the past 50 years. But films like the 11th Hour seem to be far more effective in motivating the masses.

It seems that global warming and environmental degradation are topics that have really captured everyone’s attention. A recent Worldchanging article even goes so far as to say that we have seen a global rebirth of community civic action similar to that in the United States during the 1960’s and 1970’s. I think they are right, and that’s a big deal! People coming together around the world (on their own mind you, often with little to no pressure by governments) to fight for the preservation of our planet!

My Concern:

My only problem with all the attention the media and society now pay to environmental issues in general, is what happened to all the other World Crises we used to be concerned with. What happened to:

• Darfur
• HIV in Africa
• Political instability in Africa
• World healthcare
• Continuous human rights infractions in countries like China
• Sweatshop labor
• Global economic disparities
• Poverty in general
• Fresh water rights
• The drug trade
• Rogue states such as North Korea and now Burma
• Global immigration

Have we already solved these global problems? Have we already marked them off our list of global crises and are now ready to move on to environmental degradation in our march to save the world?

Or is environmental degradation just the current “flavor of the week” in world crises, one that we’ll happily move on from in a couple of years when the buzz is dead and we realize that making any kind of dent in global crises requires decades of unfaltering attention?

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