presents

Teaching Guideby

Tai Johnson, Department of History, University of Arizona&

Cody Ferguson, School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies, Arizona State University

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CONTENTS

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT...............................................................................................................................................3

FILM OVERVIEW...................................................................................................................................................................4

USING THE FILM & TEACHING GUIDE.......................................................................................................................5

ACT I: CONSERVATION

•Synopsis..................................................................................................................................................................7

•Pre-viewingQuestions.......................................................................................................................................8

•Post-viewingQuestions.....................................................................................................................................9

•BeyondtheClassroom.....................................................................................................................................9

ACTII:POLLUTION

•Synopsis.................................................................................................................................................................11

•Pre-viewingQuestions.....................................................................................................................................12

•Post-viewingQuestions....................................................................................................................................12

•BeyondtheClassroom....................................................................................................................................13

ACT III: ALTERNATIVES

•Synopsis................................................................................................................................................................14

•Pre-viewingQuestions.....................................................................................................................................15

•Post-viewingQuestions....................................................................................................................................16

•BeyondtheClassroom....................................................................................................................................16

ACTIV:GOINGGLOBAL

•Synopsis................................................................................................................................................................17

•Pre-viewingQuestions.....................................................................................................................................18

•Post-viewingQuestions....................................................................................................................................19

•BeyondtheClassroom....................................................................................................................................19

ACT V: CLIMATE CHANGE

•Synopsis...............................................................................................................................................................20

•Pre-viewingQuestions.....................................................................................................................................22

•Post-viewingQuestions..................................................................................................................................22

•BeyondtheClassroom...................................................................................................................................22

LEARNMORE......................................................................................................................................................................24

NATIONALSTANDARDSCORRELATIONS............................................................................................................27

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DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT Like Berkeley in the Sixties, my previous work which has become one of the defining films about the protest movements that shook America during the 1960s, A Fierce Green Fire start-ed with the idea that a big-picture synthesis of environmentalism was needed. It’s the biggest movement the world has ever seen, yet so broad and diffuse that we’ve lacked a larger sense of what it was about. This film is meant to take stock, explore the historical meaning of the envi-ronmental movement, and witness where we’ve come from and where we are heading.

The first iteration of this project was a six-hour series. Edward O. Wilson, the eminent biologist who was advisor to the film, told me we’d never get something so big funded -- and, if we did, no one would watch it. He urged us to focus on five of the most important and dramatic events and people, to build a shorter and more entertaining film around them. We selected:

•DavidBrowerandtheSierraClubhaltingdamsintheGrandCanyon •LoisGibbsandthepeopleofLoveCanalbattling20,000tonsoftoxicwaste •PaulWatsonandGreenpeacesavingwhalesandbabyharpseals •ChicoMendesandtherubbertapperssavingtheAmazonrainforest •(whatelsecouldweendon?)thetwenty-fiveyearbattletodealwithclimatechange

We discovered that each is emblematic of a part as well as an era of environmentalism, so we built those five main stories into broader acts that encapsulate whole strands of the movement. We shaped the acts like an hourglass. Each begins wide, looking at origins and context. Next we narrow in on the main story more fully told. Then the acts open up again to explore ramifica-tions and evolution of that strand and how it connects to the next phase of environmentalism.

The film went through two rounds of shooting interviews, gathering archival material, script-ing and editing a rough-cut. That’s how documentaries get made, an intense creative process of trialanderror.Somestorieslikewildlifeandbiodiversityfellout.Otherissueslikepopulationdidn’t have enough activism to fit. The act on climate change was put off until there was more funding.TheinterviewswereshotjustafterCOP15inCopenhagen,apregnantandconflictedtime. We worked on the acts in pieces and I wasn’t sure it would all connect to become the syn-thesisIhadinmind.ByMayof2010wehadacutofthefullfilm.Itshowedalotofpromise.The middle acts were working well but the first and last acts needed to be taken further.

The fine-cut phase turned into a third round of interviews, scripting and editing, which led to extensiveimprovements.Bythefallof2011wehada135-minutecut.Consensusfeedbacksaiditwastoolong.UponacceptancetoSundanceFilmFestival,twogreateditorsworkingwithmecut the film down to 110 minutes and shaped it as a whole. That cut got a great response. Even so,inthecompletionroundwecutanotherfourteenminutes–tookthefilmthefinal5%ofthe way, added five celebrity narrators, revised the opening and closing, licensed and mastered archival film, and polished A Fierce Green Fire into a work of beauty.

I think we succeeded in capturing that big-picture synthesis of the environmental movement, and I hope you find it useful. We made it for the generations who will live through the storm, and figured they would want to know how things began and that someone fought for their future.

--MarkKitchell

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Film Overview

Of the many challenges facing mankind in the 21st century, perhaps none are as crucial and pervasive as those posed by current environmental crises. The formu-lation of collective solutions to problems ranging from global resource depletion and biodiversity loss to industrial pol-lution, species extinction and climate change is at once urgent and necessary. Understanding the history of one of the most important developments of the 20th century, the environmental move-ment, is key to this process. Through the stories of ordinary men and women, A FierceGreenFire:TheBattleForALiving Planet explores fifty years of grassroots and global activism, tracing the history of environmentalism from the conservation movement to the crucial present-day controversy surrounding climate change.

The history of the environmental move-ment is complex. Its evolution is not necessarily linear, and its roots extend beyond lines of race, class, gender, and geography. AFierceGreenFire cap-tures this complexity by highlighting sto-ries and struggles that are reflective of larger trends within the movement, mak-ing sense of what sometimes seems like a series of random and chaotic events. The film accomplishes this through five acts, each of which addresses a particular

phase of the movement.

• Act1 examines conservation, from its nineteenth century roots through the 1960s.

• Act2 explores the new environmental movement that arose in the 1970s, with its emphasis on pollution, toxic wastes, and human health.

• Act3 covers the 1970s as well, but instead looks at alternatives, from the back to the land movement to renewable energy, and links them to ecology move-ments like Greenpeace.

• Act4 unfolds in the 1980s amid global-scale resource issues and crises, and explores environmental movements across the global South, including the struggle to save the Amazon. • Act5 spans from the 1990s to the present, focusing on climate change, the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced, and the evolution of a bottom-up global movement.

Featured in the film are thirty-one inter-views and historical figures including:

• Lois Gibbs, leader of the neighbor-hood resistance at Love Canal • Paul Watson, Greenpeace activist and

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later founder of the Sea Shepherd Con-servation Society

• Bill McKibben, author, activist and founder of 350.org

• Paul Hawken and Stewart Brand, ecology visionaries • Martin Litton, staunch opponent of the Glen Canyon dam and other Colorado River dams

• Brazilian rubbertapper and union lead-er, Chico Mendes

• Kenyan Green Belt Movement leader and Nobel laureate, Wangari Maathai • Carl Pope and John Adams, leaders of the Sierra Club and Natural Resourc-es Defense Council respectively

• Bob Bullard, environmental justice advocate, who closes the film on a uni-versal note, saying: “There’s no Hispanic air. There’s no African-American air. There’s air! And if you breathe air – and most people I know do breathe air – then I would consider you an environmentalist.”

Using the Film & Teaching Guide

This teaching guide is aimed at students in grades 9-12, and is also appropriate for use in college courses. AFierceGreenFire is modular by design, and meant to be viewed in segments as well as in its entirety. The total running time is 100 minutes, and the five acts each run approximately 20 minutes. The guide is designed for five 45-50 minute classes, with one or two acts constituting a class.

Synopses, pre-viewing and post-viewing questions are included for each act – as well as “Beyond the Classroom” activities. We propose that teachers familiarize themselves by reading the appropriate section before class. Prior to screening each act, teachers can pose the pre-viewing questions to the class. After viewing each act, instructors can

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use the post-viewing questions as a guide for discussion. The teacher may then assign “Beyond the Classroom” activities as homework.

In the “Learn More” section you will find books, articles, films, and internet re-sources recommended by the film’s director, Mark Kitchell. AFierceGreenFire highlights several important chapters of the environmental move-ment, and the recommended resources are a great way to further your under-standing of the history of environmental-ism. In the “National Standards Correla-tions” section there is a comprehensive list of the ways in which topics explored in the film meet national teaching stan-dards for many disciplines, including U.S. and world history, geography, sci-ence, civics, sociology, and economics.

As the first big-picture exploration of the environmental movement, AFierceGreenFire is the perfect supplement to existing history, civics, social stud-ies, geography, economics and science curricula. Finding a sustainable path to the future means reinventing not just the way we make and do everything, but reinventing the way we think about our place in the natural world. It is the great-est challenge of the coming century, and the central cause of generations now on the rise.

We hope this film and teaching guide will help raise consciousness by revealing the scientific, economic, political and social dimensions of environmental crisis and change.

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Act I: Conservation

“Every now and then, some issue arises that is elevated into a strato-spheric focus of public attention. It be-comes symbolic, and the rallying cry for a whole generation of activists.” ~Doug Scott

Concerns about protecting the environ-ment first arose from elite and middle class people in America’s growing cit-ies at the turn of the twentieth century. People like Teddy Roosevelt and groups like the Audubon Society worried about the squandering of the nation’s natural resources and the destruction of beauti-ful places and wildlife. Their prescription was “conservation,” described by Gif-ford Pinchot, the first chief of the Forest Service, as the efficient and scientific use of natural resources for the “greatest good to the greatest number of people for the longest time.” However, Pinchot’s view of nature in service to humans met increasing resistance from others who saw wild places as refuges from stifling industrial cities, where humans could reconnect with nature, the divine, and themselves. John Muir and the Sierra

Club wanted to preserve wild places in their natural state. The two sides — scientific conservation and preservation — came to blows when the City of San Francisco proposed to build a dam in the newly designated Yosemite National Park to provide water for the growing city. Ultimately, scientific conservation won out. Hetch Hetchy was dammed and flooded, and the controversy sur-rounding the dam sparked a new wilder-ness preservation movement. Fights over dams continued to shape conflicts between progress and nature throughout the twentieth century. A new conservation movement emerged from these struggles. During the 1950s, the Sierra Club successfully stopped the building of a dam in Dinosaur National Monument. In the process the Sierra Club was transformed into the largest and most powerful environmental organi-zation in the United States and its leader David Brower became one of the most influential environmental activists of his day. To win, however, the group agreed that it would not oppose another dam on the Colorado River in the lesser-known but magnificent Glen Canyon in South-

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ern Utah. When two dams were pro-posed in the Grand Canyon, Brower and the Sierra Club vowed that there would not be another Glen Canyon--it would be a “fight to the death.” Using aggressive media tactics including full-page ads in national newspapers, Brower and the Sierra Club mustered unprecedented public support to “Save Grand Canyon.” Timing was everything. Americans had lived through World War II and enjoyed the opportunities for outdoor recreation provided by the postwar economic boom. The Grand Canyon dam con-troversy forced many to reevaluate the costs of prosperity and progress. Unlike Hetch Hetchy, Americans rallied to stop the dams. The conservationists’ victory and Brower’s departure from the Sierra Club indicated an important shift in the envi-ronmental movement at the end of the 1960s. Brower went on to found Friends

of the Earth, the first international envi-ronmental organization, broadening his work beyond the preservation of wilder-ness. While the Wilderness Act of 1964 protected more than nine million acres as wilderness, by the end of the decade conservationists were moving beyond preservation toward a more holistic view of the earth that included the relationship between human health and environmen-tal wellbeing. The cultural ferment of the era, combined with the collective expe-rience of witnessing the first pictures of earth from the moon, the polluted Cuyahoga River catching fire, smog in the cities, the Santa Barbara oil spill, and other environmental catastrophes, sparked a new realization of the finite nature of the planet. When millions of Americans gathered in April of 1970 to celebrate the first Earth Day, it was clear that environmentalism had entered a new phase.

Pre-viewing Questions:

1. Should basic human needs for things like water and other resources be the most important considerations in thinking about nature? Is nature ever valuable for its own sake?

2. What is the effect of defining some places as “pristine” and “beautiful” and worthy of preservation and other places

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as suitable for industrial development?

Post-viewing Questions:

1. What is “progress?” What did it mean in the early 1900s? Can protecting wild places or not damming a river be part of “progress?”

2. Why do you think environmental-ists were successful in stopping the dams proposed for Dinosaur National Monument and the Grand Canyon in the 1950s and 1960s when John Muir and the Sierra Club failed to stop the Hetch Hetchy Dam in the early 1900s? 3. How did environmentalists use im-ages in their public relations campaigns to protect wild places —specifically, how did the Sierra Club use them in its fight to save Grand Canyon? Why were the images so powerful?

Beyond the Classroom:

1. Many environmentalists consider the building of Glen Canyon Dam on the Arizona-Utah border to be one of the greatest tragedies of the twentieth century. Yet, the dam provides electricity for towns and cities across the American Southwest and the lake that it creates, Lake Powell, provides recreational opportunities for thousands of people. Lake Powell also “wastes” an enormous

amount of water to evaporation every year - water that is increasingly precious to the growing populations of Arizona and California - and the dam is predicted

to “silt up” in the next few decades ren-dering it useless. Research these issues and answer the following questions: Given the challenges Glen Canyon Dam faces, what is the best course of action for the future? Can the electricity and the recreational opportunities it creates be provided by alternative sources? 2. The great American dams of the twentieth century were built to be like the pyramids of Egypt--permanent testa-ments to human ingenuity and progress. Yet, in the last decade, many dams have been removed. For example, the Milltown Dam in Montana (http://www.clarkfork.org/water-watch/milltown-dam-removal-and-cleanup-project.html),

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Glines Canyon Dam in Washington state (http://www.nps.gov/olym/naturescience/elwha-ecosystem-restoration.htm), and the Great Works Dam in Maine (http://www.americanrivers.org/newsroom/blog/akober-20120608-dam-removal-to-begin-on-maines-penobscot-river.html). Research one of these dam removal projects and answer the following ques-tions. Is the removal of dams a step backwards or is it a form of progress? Are there values associated with removing dams today that were not recognized by Americans when the dams were built?

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Act II: Pollution

“When Love Canal came, it was a new segment of the movement. It really was about people and peo-ples’ health. It wasn’t that we don’t care about the forest, but it was the people-focus that set us aside from other elements that had come be-fore us. If the fish are dying and the birds are dying, we’re gonna die!” ~Lois Gibbs

The publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 transformed how Americans viewed the relationship be-tween industrial progress and environ-mental and human health. Carson’s book sparked widespread public concern and controversy over the unregulated use of chemicals and the effects of toxic pol-lution on both humans and non-human life. By the end of the decade, Americans had become concerned with ecological crises plaguing the nation. This unrest culminated on April 22, 1970 when 20 million Americans from all walks of life took to the streets to voice their concern over the state of the environment.

Earth Day 1970 was the largest mass demonstration in American history and ushered in the second wave of envi-ronmentalism. This new social move-ment translated into political action at all levels, including the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the adoption or expansion of landmark environmental protection laws including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the creation of Superfund to control toxic waste. Lawyers working for environmental organizations became the enforcers of the new regulations, suing both polluters and government agencies for violations and lack of enforcement. Industry saw this as a fundamental threat to their busi-ness operations, and in response mounted a powerful counterattack that often pitted jobs against the environment.

Despite the pushback from industrial America, the issue of toxic waste and its impact on human health did not subside. It reached a boiling point in a place called Love Canal in New York, where 20,000 tons of buried poisonous chemicals caused astronomic rates of stillborn births, miscarriages, and birth

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defects in the town’s population. Led by a young housewife named Lois Gibbs, the residents of Love Canal engaged in a two-year battle with the state and fed-eral governments to be relocated away from the contaminated site. Love Canal launched a new phase of the environ-mental movement— one that centered on people and their health.

Across the United States, hundreds of grassroots groups sprung up to defend their families, homes, and health from toxic pollution in their own backyards. Many of these community activists were inspired by Love Canal, and even more reacted against the rollback of envi-ronmental protections by the Reagan administration. Men, women, and chil-dren rose up against toxic waste dumps, factories polluting their water resources, oil, coal, and factory farms. Many were African Americans, Hispanics, recent im-

migrants, and other minorities who real-ized their communities were bearing the brunt of environmental pollution. These activists began linking race, class, and a lack of political power to disproportionate industrial pollution in their communities, giving birth to the environmental justice movement. Their struggles for basic human rights, including clean air, clean water, and healthy communities continue today.

Pre-viewing Questions:

1. What is environmentalism and who is an environmentalist? 2. How is human health related to the health of the environment?

3. What is the purpose of environmen-tal regulation and legislation? What role should the government play in protecting people from environmental harm?

Post-viewing Questions:

1. How did the environmental movement that emerged after Earth Day 1970 differ from the first wave of environmentalism? What were the issues, who were the actors, and what tactics did they use?

2. The New York State Health Depart-ment referred to the community health

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study conducted by Love Canal resi-dents as “useless housewife data.” How does this compare to how government officials responded to the EPA’s study on chromosome damage among Love Ca-nal residents? What do the differences in these responses tell us about the values our society places on science compared to the lived experiences of people? Which data would you trust and why?

3. How did gender, race, and class figure into environmental struggles in the twentieth century? How did this differ from earlier struggles to preserve “nature”?

Beyond the Classroom:

1. Explore the University at Buffalo-SUNY’s online “Love Canal Collections” at http://library.buffalo.edu/libraries/specialcollections/lovecanal/index.html. Using at least one photograph and one newspaper article, analyze the ways in which the issues of Love Canal were portrayed by the media. What do these media representations tell us about public perceptions of pollution, science, the environment, and human health?

2. Using the U.S. Environmental Pro-tection Agency’s website, explore the environmental laws and executive orders that help to protect human health and the environment. Choose one to examine in detail. When was this law enacted?

How does it protect human health and/or the environment? What federal agen-cies are responsible for implementation and regulation? And lastly, think critically about how this particular law impacts your health and the places you live, go to school, and recreate. 3. Using the U.S. Environmental Pro-tection Agency’s website, explore three different toxics, chemicals, or pesticides regulated by the EPA. What laws are used to regulate these substances? What are their effects on human health and ecosystems?

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Act III: Alternatives

“We were asking the question, ‘Okay, the war in Vietnam’s over. What are we gonna do next?’ And the answer to that question was, ‘We’re gonna start an ecology movement. And the first thing we’re gonna do is we’re gonna go save the whales.’” ~Rex Weyler

While environmental consciousness prompted thousands of Americans to organize to protect their homes and com-munities from toxic pollution and envi-ronmental injustices in the 1970s and 1980s, it led others to take alternative paths. The first of these groups blended ecology with the anti-Vietnam War move-ment’s critique of the military-industrial complex. Disillusioned with mainstream American society, they fled to the country to create small-scale experiments in col-lective living in touch with each other and connected to nature. In imagining a new way of living, they looked for new ways to farm and build their houses. Stew-art Brand’s The Whole Earth Catalog provided them with information about, and access to, tools that were useful for

building passive solar-heated homes, rainwater collection systems, and farm-ing without chemicals. In its practical and applicable presenta-tion, the Catalog anticipated a larger shift in thinking occurring outside the com-munes. A new generation of architects, engineers, and scientists developed new technologies that met human needs with-out sacrificing the environment. Physi-cist Amory Lovins developed the “soft path” theory of energy use that empha-sized energy conservation and renew-able sources like wind and solar power. The release of Limits of Growth in 1972, which predicted ecological collapse in the early twenty first century, spurred further development of renewables and prompted millions of Americans to begin moving toward a greener way of living. Federal and state governments created tax incentives and subsidies for research in alternative energy, the auto industry produced more fuel-efficient cars and developed hybrid and electric vehicles, and President Jimmy Carter even put solar panels on the White House roof. But, fatigued by economic stagnation and sacrifice, voters rushed Carter out of

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office after just one term. Ronald Rea-gan promised Americans that they would no longer have to give up or apologize for their high standard of living. Under Reagan, subsidies for alternative energy ended and were replaced by renewed federal support for coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear energy. The United States missed an important opportunity to ad-dress looming issues of resource scar-city and pollution in a meaningful way. While some sought technological solu-tions to the environmental crisis and oth-ers were getting back to the land in the 1970s, a group of Canadian anti-war and anti-nuclear activists focused their en-ergy in another direction: saving whales from extermination. In the process, Greenpeace created an international movement. Committed to nonviolence, they used ships and small boats to put themselves between the whalers and whales, creating powerful images that rallied support for their cause. As their campaigns grew, their tactics became more radical. In 1979, Greenpeace co-founder Paul Watson was forced out of the group for violating its non-violence policy. He subsequently founded the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a group that redefined environmental activ-ism by destroying whaling ships around the world during the early 1980s. Their actions rallied global support to end whaling. In 1982, after 10 years of re-

lentless campaigning, a loose coalition of environmental groups and governments around the world persuaded the Inter-national Whaling Commission to pass a moratorium on whaling, which became a permanent ban in 1986. Though some whaling continues due to exceptions in the ban, the moratorium is considered to be one of environmentalism’s biggest successes. The fight against whaling spurred an international environmental movement. By the end of the 1980s, Greenpeace returned to its roots to fight toxic pollution and nuclear power, test-ing, and weapons alongside protecting sea life.

Pre-viewing Questions:

1. What role should the government play in protecting people, animals, and eco-systems from environmental harm?

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2. Is it ever permissible to break the law to save an animal or protect the environ-ment?

Post-viewing Questions: 1. What does it mean for activists to “go too far?” Is there a role for radicals and extremists in the mainstream environ-mental movement? How might radicals help the mainstream movement? 2. How important are the media and images in changing the way people think about issues? How do activists use the media and images to achieve their goals? What are “mind bombs” and how do they work? What are some examples of “mind bombs” that we see every day?

3. According to what you’ve seen in the news, what does an environmentalist look like? Do you think this depiction is accurate? How does it affect how you think about environmental issues?

4. Are alternatives all about stopping bad things from happening or are they also about developing new ideas and solutions to environmental problems? How do alternatives fit in the mainstream envi-ronmental movement?

Beyond the Classroom:

1. Using the personal ecological foot-

print calculator available at http://footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/calculators/, estimate your ecological footprint. Use the “explore scenarios” option to identify areas where you think you need to do better. Choose three areas you think you have the best chance of improving. Make a detailed plan to shrink those parts of your eco-logical footprint in your everyday actions for one year. 2. While Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd, and environmental activists around the world succeeded in getting the Interna-tional Whaling Commission to ban whal-ing, whaling continues. Why, what is the impact, and what’s next? Research the real effects of the ban (for instance, in-creases in whale populations after 1986). Who continues to hunt whales, and who is consuming whale meat? Where does saving the whales fit in twenty-first cen-tury priorities to protect the health of our oceans?

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Act IV: Going Global

“The theme that runs through all these movements is the loss of the commons. That’s what people are fighting for, is the right of subsis-tence and the right of access to clean water, to food, to forests. The right to live.” ~Vijaya Nagarajan

The world’s forests are home to nearly ninety percent of terrestrial biodiversity and hold over forty percent of global car-bon stores. Worldwide, 1.6 billion people depend on forests for fuel, medicinal plants, and subsistence. Struggles to protect these important ecosystems and the livelihoods of people who depend on them are key to understanding the his-tory of the environmental movement in the twentieth century. The ongoing fight to protect the Amazon rainforest from logging and industrial agriculture symbol-izes global struggles to preserve both biological and cultural diversity. By the 1980s, the Amazon faced threats from fossil fuel development, hydro-electric dams, logging, and industrial

agriculture. Efforts to save the Amazon turned on an unlikely environmental hero, a union organizer and rubber tapper, or seringueiro, named Chico Mendes. The seringueiros had lived in the Amazon for generations eking out a modest living harvesting rubber from the rubber trees. When ranchers arrived in the remote western Amazon and began clearing land for cattle grazing, Mendes organized his fellow seringueiros to defend their homeland. Through direct nonviolent resistance, the seringueiros halted the clear-cutting of their forests for several ranching operations. In 1986, Mendes allied with environmen-talists protesting development financed by the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank. The banks financed the paving of roads in the Amazon, facili-tating the development of ranching oper-ations the seringueiros were fighting. In Washington, D.C. Mendes and his U.S. allies lobbied members of Congress and met with the banks’ funders, which ulti-mately led to negotiations between the seringueiros and bank officials. Mendes continued building alliances at home and abroad, eventually forming a national

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council of rubber tappers in Brazil. Concluding that a lack of land use rights was preventing them from effectively defending the forest from loggers and ranchers, the council advocated the creation of rubber tapper reserves. In February 1988, Cachoeira was declared the first extractive reserve in the world. The work of the seringueiros sparked ha-tred amongst ranchers, and Mendes was assassinated later that year. Despite this tragic event, Mendes’ work was a turning point in the struggle to save the Amazon. The Brazilian government recognized the rights of forest peoples, setting aside 58 million acres in extractive reserves. The battle waged to save the Amazon was part of a larger movement through-out the Global South that tied together indigenous rights, social justice, and environmental issues during the last quarter of the twentieth century. From In-dia to Kenya, men and women organized to protect the natural resources upon which their livelihoods depend. Their struggles brought worldwide attention to questions of equity and sustainability in a global economic system dependent on the exploitation of natural resources and peoples.

Pre-viewing Questions:

1. What are common resources all humans depend on? Who controls these resourc-es and who profits from this control?

2. Why should people living in the United States be concerned with struggles over natural resources in the other parts of the world? 3. Is access to clean water, to food, and to forests a universal human right?

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Post-viewing Questions:

1. Compare and contrast the struggles of the seringueiros in Brazil, the Green Belt Movement in Kenya, and the Chipko movement in India. What resources sparked conflicts in each region? Who profited from control of these resources? What strategies did local people use to resist outside control of resources?

2. How did the movements in the Global South depicted in the film bring together social justice, indigenous rights, and environmental issues? Can these issues be separated when thinking about these movements? Why or why not?

3. Think about the major historical ac-tors (people and institutions) in Act 4. Compare them to the actors in Love Canal, Hetch-Hetchy, and in the Green-peace campaigns. What are some simi-larities and differences among environ-

mental activists, their causes, and the strategies they used? Were they fighting against similar forces?

Beyond the Classroom:

1. Many of the products we consume are made of materials extracted from and produced in the developing world. Choose one product you consume or use on a daily basis and research where the raw materials from which it is manu-factured originate. Possible examples in-clude paper products, soy, beef, or wood products. Think about the people and environments that are affected through the manufacture of this product. How is your consumption tied to the land, wa-ter, people, plants, and animals that live in the places from where this product comes?

2. Think about the common resources you depend upon on a daily basis. Who controls the water you drink, the quality of air you breathe, or the natural re-sources required to produce your food? Identify one local environmental threat to at least one of these resources. What are people in your area doing to protect this common resource? How can you get involved?

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Act V: Climate Change

“There’s no question in my mind that, as people who care deeply about the environment, we keep looking for love in all the wrong plac-es. And that’s from our political lead-ers. If we haven’t learned yet, then we should get it now. This is not going to be top-down. It goes right back to the hundreds of millions of people on Earth who are trying to find and craft and create solutions every single day.” ~Paul Hawken

Some have called global warming the “problem from hell.” Its sources are numerous, and it is impossible to hone in on one particular issue to solve the problem. Political and economic influ-ences further complicate the quest for a solution to what many agree is the great-est dilemma humankind has ever faced. Scientists have been aware of earth’s rising temperatures since 1900, but it was not until the late 1980s that global warming gained widespread international attention.

The summer of 1988 was the hottest

summer the continental United States had ever experienced. A congressional hearing was called that year to discuss the causes and long-term effects of climate change. The American public began learning about the “greenhouse effect” and how the growing rate of car-bon emissions was trapping sunlight in the Earth’s atmosphere, causing the planet to warm. In 1992 world leaders came together at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro to sign a landmark treaty known as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Yet, due to pressure from the United States — the largest producer of greenhouse gases and the world’s largest economy — limits on greenhouses gases were voluntary rather than mandatory. The political power of the oil and coal companies, along with labor unions and farm organizations, thwarted attempts at climate legislation in the United States. Deep resistance to any measure forcing industrial polluters to limit carbon emis-sions emerged in the public and political spheres. The energy industry countered climate scientists with its own science, launching a media campaign aimed at

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convincing Americans that humans were not changing the climate and that the economic cost of lowering greenhouse gas emissions was too high to justify changing their behavior. Climate change became a deeply divisive political is-sue. By 1997, there was a clear need for mandatory limits on carbon emissions on a global scale. The world’s leaders gathered in Kyoto to negotiate a tougher treaty. While Europeans pushed for ag-gressive controls on global carbon emis-sions, the United States resisted any mandatory measures. Vice President Al Gore arrived at the last minute and urged the U.S. delegation to be more flexible in their negotiations. The United States signed the Kyoto Protocol, agreeing to mandatory cutbacks. The treaty, how-ever, was dead on arrival. It was never submitted for ratification, and, upon tak-ing office in 2000, President George W. Bush rejected Kyoto.

Natural disasters brought the issue of climate change back to the forefront. Hurricane Katrina, a heat wave in Eu-rope that killed 70,000 people, and wide-spread drought and fires in Australia and the American Southwest illustrated the human implications of climate change, motivating citizens across the globe to demand their governments take action. The number 350, the parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere considered safe by scientists, became a rallying call for global action. In De-cember 2009, as world leaders gathered in Copenhagen for the United Nations’ fifteenth conference on climate change, millions of citizens around the world staged marches and demonstrations with the hope that at last the United States and China, the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, would join with the rest of the world’s leaders in signing a global treaty. Copenhagen was, however, another example of top-down

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political failure. The United States refused to significantly reduce emissions and China backed out of negotiations. Deadlock and failure loomed when U.S. President Barrack Obama forged a last minute accord. But once again, this was simply a pledge exercise and sub-sequent attempts at climate legislation in the U.S. Congress died. The United States’ unwillingness to take part in col-lective action to address climate change remains one of the biggest stumbling blocks in addressing the issue. Despite the lack of action on the part of our political leaders, people around the globe are demanding climate action. Worldwide, over 2 million organizations are linking social justice, environmental issues, industrial pollution, and economic corruption in their struggles for climate justice. This growing global movement illustrates how environmentalism has shifted from saving wild places to sav-ing humankind. If collective solutions to climate change are to be enacted, it is critical that each and every one of us do our part.

Pre-viewing Questions:

1. What is global warming? What are some of the causes of global warming?

2. Is climate change a global issue?

Does it require cooperative global solu-tions, or should individual countries and industries be permitted to address the problem on their own?

3. Is climate change simply an environ-mental issue, or does it also have social, cultural, and economic implications? Post-viewing Questions:

1. One scholar states that, “Climate change remains the impossible issue – impossible to deal with, yet impos-sible to ignore.” Do you agree with this statement? Why or why not? Identify the political and economic challenges world leaders have contended with in their quest to address climate change on a global scale.

2. In the film, Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, argues that global warming is too large an issue for the environmental movement to take on. Do you agree? If the environmental movement cannot fully take on this issue, who should?

3. Do you believe that addressing cli-mate change is a social and moral re-sponsibility? Why or why not?

Beyond the Classroom:

1. During the summer and fall of 2012, the climate change movement experi-

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enced a flowering of direct nonviolent ac-tion. Environmental activists around the country and world amped up their resis-tance to the development of fossil fuels, a significant contributor to global carbon emissions. Using Facebook as a re-source, look up one organization engag-ing in direct nonviolent action to resist energy development and/or bring atten-tion to the issue of climate change. What issues is the group addressing? What tactics and organizing strategies is the group employing? How is the group’s re-sistance to energy development linked to the global movement to address climate change? Possible groups to explore include: Tar Sands Action Blockade, Coal Export Action, RAMPS Campaign, Frack OFF, Marcellus Protest and 350.org.

2. Across the globe, ordinary men and women are working in their own com-munities to address climate change on both a local and global level. Using 350.

org as a resource, explore groups in your region. What issues are they working on? Are they collaborating with groups in other parts of the country or globe? If there is not a local organization in your area, consider working with neighbors, friends, and colleagues to start one. A global inventory of many groups can be found at http://local.350.org/groups/.

3. Addressing climate change requires a reevaluation of industrial society, global governance and cooperation, and the development and consumption of en-ergy and resources. Explore the ways in which society needs to change. What does a sustainable world look like? What changes must we make? And finally, what is your role in making the transition to a sustainable world characterized by both environmental and social justice?

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Books and Articles

Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962. Gibbs, Lois Marie. Love Canal and the Birth of the Environmental Health Movement. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2010.

Gottlieb, Robert. Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2005.

Guha, Ramachandra. Environmentalism: A Global History. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000.

Hays, Samuel P. Beauty, Health, and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United States, 1955-1985. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989.

Hawken, Paul. Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming. New York: Penguin, 2007.

Hawken, Paul, Amory B. Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins. Natural Capitalism: The Next Industrial Revolution. Washington, DC: Earthscan, 1999.

Hertsgaard, Mark. Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011.

Kirk, Andrew. Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2009.

Kolbert, Elizabeth. Field Notes from A Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2006.

Lovins, Amory B., et. al. Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for The New Energy Era. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Co., 2011.

McKibben, Bill, ed. American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008.

McKibben, Bill. Earth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. New York: Random House, 2011.

LEARN MORE

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McKibben, Bill. The End of Nature, New York: Random House, Inc., 2006.

Montrie, Chad. A People’s History of Environmentalism in the United States. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011.

Nash, Roderick. Wilderness and the American Mind. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967.

Quammen, David. The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions. New York: Random House, Inc., 2012.

Rodrigues, Gomercindo. Walking the Forest with Chico Mendes: Struggle for Justice in the Amazon. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007.

Shabecoff, Philip. A Fierce Green Fire: The American Environmental Movement. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2003

Shabecoff, Philip. Earth Rising: American Environmentalism in the 21st Century. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2001.

Shabecoff, Philip, and Alice Shabecoff. Poisoned for Profit: How Toxins Are Making Our Children Chronically Ill. New York: Random House, Inc., 2008.

Udall, Stewart. The Quiet Crisis. New York: Henry Hold & Co., Inc., 1963.

Weart, Spencer R. The Discovery of Global Warming. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004.

Weyler, Rex. Greenpeace: How a Group of Ecologists, Journalists, and Visionaries Changed the World. Emmaus, PA: Rodale, Inc., 2004.

Internet Resources

The Discovery of Global Warming: A Hypertext History of How Scientists Came to (Partly) Under-stand What People Are Doing to Cause Climate Change http://www.aip.org/history/climate

The Environmental History Timeline http://www.environmentalhistory.org

Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative http://www.ejcc.org/

Global Footprint Network http://footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/

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The Green Belt Movement http://www.greenbeltmovement.org/

Greenpeace http://www.greenpeace.org

Love Canal Collections: A University Archives Collection http://library.buffalo.edu/libraries/specialcollections/lovecanal/index.html

National Center for Appropriate Technology http://www.ncat.org/

Sierra Club http://www.sierraclub.org

United States Environmental Protection Agency http://www.epa.gov

Whole Earth Catalog http://www.wholeearth.com

350.org http://www.350.org

Films

An Inconvenient Truth. Directed by Davis Guggenhem. Produced by Lawrence Bender, Scott Z. Burns, and Laurie David. 2006.

Blue Vinyl. Directed and Produced by Judith Helfand and Daniel B. Gold. 2002. http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/bv.html

Cape Spin: An American Power Struggle. Directed by Robbie Gemmel and John Kirby. Produced by Robbie Gemmel, Daniel Coffin, Libby Handros, Josh Levin, Jim Butterworth, Daniel Chalfen, Marcel Quiroga, and Steven Latham. 2012.

Deep Down: A Story from the Heart of Coal Country. Directed by Jen Gilomen and Sally Rubin. Produced by David Sutherland and Nancy Golden. 2010.

Dirty Business: “Clean Coal” and the Battle for Our Energy Future. Directed and Produced by Peter Bull. 2011. http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/dbiz.html

Force of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie. Directed by Sturla Gunnarsson. Produced by Sturla Gunnarsson, Yves J. Ma, Janice Tufford. 2010. http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/fon.html

For Earth’s Sake. Directed by John de Graaf. Produced by KCTS. 1989. http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/dave.html

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Fuel: Uncovering America’s Dirty Secret. Directed and Produced by Josh Tickell, 2009.

Gasland. Directed by Josh Fox. Produced by Trish Adlesic, Molly Gandour, Josh Fox, and David Roma. 2010.

Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action. Directed and Produced by Roberta Grossman. 2005.http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/hland.html

In Our Own Backyards: The First Love Canal. Directed and Produced by Lynn Corcoran. 1982. http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/lc.html

Living the Good Life with Helen and Scott Nearing. Directed by John Hoskyns-Abrahall. Produced by Bullfrog Films. 1977. http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/lgl.html

Lovins on the Soft Path: An Energy Future with a Future. Directed by George C. Lynde, Jr. Produced by Nelson B. Robinson. 1982. http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/losp.html

Monumental: David Brower’s Fight For Wild America. Directed by Kelly Duane. Produced by Loteria Films. 2004. http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/mdave.html

Shattered Sky. Directed by Steve Dorst and Dan Evans. Produced by Dorst MediaWorks. 2012. http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/ssky.html

Oil on Ice. Directed and Produced by Dale Djerassi and Bo Boudart. 2005.http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/oil.html

Sun Come Up. Directed by Jennifer Redfearn. Produced by Jennifer Redfearn and Tim Metzger. 2010.

The Cove. Directed by Louie Psihoyos. Produced by Fisher Stevens and Paula DuPre Pesmen. 2009.

Who Killed the Electric Car? Directed by Chris Paine. Produced by Jessie Deeter. 2006.

The Four Corners: A National Sacrifice Area? Directed by Christopher McLeod. Produced by Christopher McLeod, Glenn Switkes, and Randy Hayes. 1984.http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/4c.html

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National Standards Correlations

Applicable McRel standards: Level IV [Grade 9-12]

Civics • Standard 1: Understands ideas about civic life, politics, and government o Benchmark 1: Understands how politics enables a group of people with opinions and/or interests to reach collective decisions, influence decisions, and accomplish goals that they could not reach as individuals o Benchmark 2: Knows formal institutions that have authority to make and implement binding decisions • Standard 2: Understands the essential characteristics of limited and unlimited goverments o Benchmark 1: Understands what “civil society” is and how it provides opportunities for individuals to associate for social, cultural, religious, economic, and political purposes o Benchmark 2: Understands how civil society allows for individual or groups to influence government in ways other than voting and elections • Standard 10: Understands the roles of voluntarism and organized groups in American social and political life o Benchmark 2: Knows how voluntary association and other organized groups have been involved in functions usually associated with government o Benchmark 6: Knows the historical and contemporary role of various organized groups in local, state, and national politics • Standard 14: Understands issues concerning the disparities between ideals and reality in American political and social life o Benchmark 2: Knows discrepancies between American ideals and the realities of American social and political life o Benchmark 3: Knows historical and contemporary efforts to reduce discrepancies between ideals and reality in American public life • Standard 19: Understand what is meant by “the public agenda,” how it is set, and how it is influenced by public opinion and the media o Benchmark 2: Understands why issues important to some groups and the nation do not become part of the public agenda o Benchmark 6: Understands the ways in which television, radio, the press, newsletters, and emerging means of communications influence American politics • Standard 21: Understands the formation and implementation of public policy o Benchmark 3: Knows the points at which citizens can monitor or influence the process of public policy formation

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• Standard 22: Understands how the world is organized politically into nation-states, how nation-states interact with one another, and issues surrounding U.S. foreign policy o Benchmark 6: Understands how and why domestic politics may impose constraints or obligations on the ways in which the United States acts in the world • Standard 23: Understands the impact of significant and nonpolitical developments on the United States and other nations o Benchmark 1: Understands the influence that American ideas about rights have abroad and how other peoples’ ideas about rights have influenced Americans o Benchmark 5: Understands historical and contemporary responses of the Ameri can government to demographic and environmental changes that affect the United States o Benchmark 6: Knows some of the principle economic, technological, and cultural effects the United States had on the world • Standard 28: Understands how participation in civic and political life can help citizens attain individual and public goals o Benchmark 2: Understands what distinguishes participation in government and political life from nonpolitical participation in civil society and private life, and understands the importance of both forms of participation to American constitutional democracy o Benchmark 3: Knows the many ways citizens can participate in the political processes at local, state, and national levels, and understands the usefulness of other forms of political participation in influencing public policy o Benchmark 4: Knows historical and contemporary examples of citizen movements seeking to expand liberty, to insure equal rights of all citizens, and/or to realize other values fundamental to American constitutional democracy o Benchmark 5: Understands the importance of voting as a form of political participation

Economics

• Standard 10: Understands basic concepts about international economics o Benchmark 6: Understands that public policies affecting foreign trade impose costs and benefits on different groups of people, and that decisions on these policies reflect economic and political interests and forces

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Geography

• Standard 4: Understands the physical and human characteristics of place o Benchmark 3: Knows the locational advantages and disadvantages of using places for different activities based on their physical characteristics • Standard 8: Understands the characteristics of ecosystems on Earth’s surface o Benchmark 1: Understands how relationships between soil, climate, and plant and animal life affect the distribution of ecosystems o Benchmark 2: Knows ecosystems in terms of their biodiversity and productivity and their potential value to all living things o Benchmark 3: Knows the effects of biological magnification in ecosystems o Benchmark 4: Knows the effects of both physical and human changes in ecosystems • Standard 14: Understands how human actions modify the physical environment o Benchmark 1: Understands how the concepts of synergy, feedback loops, carrying capacity, and thresholds relate to the limitations of the physical environment to absorb the impacts of human activity o Benchmark 2: Understands the role of humans in decreasing the diversity of flora and fauna in a region o Benchmark 3: Understands the global impacts of human changes in the physical environment o Benchmark 4: Knows how people’s changing attitudes toward the environment have led to landscape changes • Standard 16: Understands the changes that occur in the meaning, use, distribution, and importance of resources o Benchmark 3: Understands the impact of policy decisions regarding the use of resources in different regions of the world • Standard 18: Understands global development and environmental issues o Benchmark 1: Understands the concept of sustainable development and its effects in a variety of situations o Benchmark 2: Understands why policies should be designed to guide the use and management of Earth’s resources and to reflect multiple points of view o Benchmark 3: Understands contemporary issues in terms of Earth’s physical and human systems

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Health

• Standard 2: Knows environmental and external factors that affect individual community health o Benchmark 3: Understands how the environment influences the health of the community

Historical Understanding

• Standard 1: Understands and knows how to analyze chronological relationships and patterns o Benchmark 2: Understands historical continuity and change related to a particular development or theme • Standard 2: Understands the historical perspective o Benchmark 1: Analyzes the values held by specific people who influenced history and the role their values played in influencing history o Benchmark 2: Analyzes the influences specific ideas and beliefs had on a period of history and specifies how events might have been different in the absence of those ideas and beliefs o Benchmark 4: Analyzes the effects specific decisions had on history and studies how things might have been different in the absence of those decisions o Benchmark 10: Understands how the past affects our lives and society in general

History, United States

• Standard 16: Understands how the rise of corporations, heavy industry, and mechanized farming between 1870 and 1900 transformed American society o Benchmark 5: Understands how rapid increase in population and industrial growth in urban areas influenced the environment • Standard 20: Understands how Progressives and others addressed problems of industrial capitalism, urbanization, and political corruption between 1890 and 1930 o Benchmark 2: Understands major social and political issues of the Progressive era o Benchmark 3: Understands how the Progressive movement influenced different groups in American society • Standard 26: Understands the economic boom and social transformation of post-World

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War II United States o Benchmark 1: Understands scientific and technological developments in America after World War II o Benchmark 2: Understands influences on the American economy after World War II o Benchmark 3: Understands the socioeconomic factors of the post-World War II period in America o Benchmark 4: Understands social, religious, cultural, and economic changes at the onset of the Cold War era • Standard 27: Understands how the Cold War and conflicts in Korea and Vietnam influenced domestic and international policies o Benchmark 3: Understands the social issues that resulted from U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War • Standard 28: Understand the domestic politics in the post-World War II period o Benchmark 4: Understands characteristics of the Johnson presidency • Standard 30: Understands developments in foreign policy and domestic politics between the Nixon and the Clinton presidencies o Benchmark 1: Understands how the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations deal with major domestic issues o Benchmark 4: Understands the major economic issues from the Reagan through the Clinton presidencies

History, World

• Standard 44: Understands the search for community, stability, and peace in an interdependent world o Benchmark 2: Understands rates of economic development and the emergence of different economic systems around the globe o Benchmark 3: Understands major reasons for the great disparities between industrialized and developing nations o Benchmark 4: Understands the oil crisis and its aftermath in the 1970s o Benchmark 10: Understands the effectiveness of United Nations programs

• Standard 45: Understands major global trends since World War II o Benchmark 2: Understands causes of economic imbalances and social inequalities among the worlds’ peoples and efforts made to close these gaps

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PO BOX 149 OLEY PA 19547info@bullfrogfilms.com

http://www.bullfrogfilms.com

Language Arts

• Standard 2: Uses the stylistic and rhetorical aspects of writing • Standard 3: Uses grammatical and mechanical conventions in written compositions • Standard 9: Uses viewing skills and strategies to understand and interpret visual media Science • Standard 1: Understand atmospheric processes and the water cycle o Benchmark 2: Knows the processes involved in the water cycle and their effects on climatic patterns o Benchmark 3: Knows that the Sun is the principle energy source for phenomena on the Earth’s surface • Standard 6: Understands the relationship between organisms and their physical environment o Benchmark 5: Knows ways in which humans can alter the equilibrium of ecosystems, causing potentially irreversible effects

Technology

• Standard 3: Understands the relationships among science, technology, society, and the individual o Benchmark 3: Knows that alternatives, risks, costs, and benefits must be considered when deciding on proposals to introduce new technologies or to curtail existing ones o Benchmark 7: Knows that technology can benefit the environment by providing scientific information, providing new solutions to older problems, and reducing the negative consequences of existing technology

Thinking and Reasoning

• Standard 1: Understands and applies the basic principles of presenting an argument (all benchmarks)

presents

Viewers’ Discussion & Resource Guide

byMark Kitchell

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CONTENTS

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT...................................................................................................................3

OVERVIEW..................................................................................................................................................4

USING THE FILM & VIEWERS’ GUIDE.............................................................................................5

ACT I: CONSERVATION........................................................................................................................7

ACT II: POLLUTION.................................................................................................................................10

ACT III: ALTERNATIVES.........................................................................................................................13

ACT IV: GOING GLOBAL....................................................................................................................16

ACT V: CLIMATE CHANGE...............................................................................................................19

LEARN MORE.........................................................................................................................................22

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DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT Like Berkeley in the Sixties, my previous work which has become one of the defining films about the protest movements that shook America during the 1960s, A Fierce Green Fire start-ed with the idea that a big-picture synthesis of environmentalism was needed. It’s the biggest movement the world has ever seen, yet so broad and diffuse that we’ve lacked a larger sense of what it was about. This film is meant to take stock, explore the historical meaning of the envi-ronmental movement, and witness where we’ve come from and where we are heading.

The first iteration of this project was a six-hour series. Edward O. Wilson, the eminent biologist who was advisor to the film, told me we’d never get something so big funded -- and, if we did, no one would watch it. He urged us to focus on five of the most important and dramatic events and people, to build a shorter and more entertaining film around them. We selected:

•DavidBrowerandtheSierraClubhaltingdamsintheGrandCanyon •LoisGibbsandthepeopleofLoveCanalbattling20,000tonsoftoxicwaste •PaulWatsonandGreenpeacesavingwhalesandbabyharpseals •ChicoMendesandtherubbertapperssavingtheAmazonrainforest •(whatelsecouldweendon?)thetwenty-fiveyearbattletodealwithclimatechange

We discovered that each is emblematic of a part as well as an era of environmentalism, so we built those five main stories into broader acts that encapsulate whole strands of the movement. We shaped the acts like an hourglass. Each begins wide, looking at origins and context. Next we narrow in on the main story more fully told. Then the acts open up again to explore ramifica-tions and evolution of that strand and how it connects to the next phase of environmentalism.

The film went through two rounds of shooting interviews, gathering archival material, script-ing and editing a rough-cut. That’s how documentaries get made, an intense creative process of trialanderror.Somestorieslikewildlifeandbiodiversityfellout.Otherissueslikepopulationdidn’t have enough activism to fit. The act on climate change was put off until there was more funding.TheinterviewswereshotjustafterCOP15inCopenhagen,apregnantandconflictedtime. We worked on the acts in pieces and I wasn’t sure it would all connect to become the syn-thesisIhadinmind.ByMayof2010wehadacutofthefullfilm.Itshowedalotofpromise.The middle acts were working well but the first and last acts needed to be taken further.

The fine-cut phase turned into a third round of interviews, scripting and editing, which led to extensiveimprovements.Bythefallof2011wehada135-minutecut.Consensusfeedbacksaiditwastoolong.UponacceptancetoSundanceFilmFestival,twogreateditorsworkingwithmecut the film down to 110 minutes and shaped it as a whole. That cut got a great response. Even so,inthecompletionroundwecutanotherfourteenminutes–tookthefilmthefinal5%ofthe way, added five celebrity narrators, revised the opening and closing, licensed and mastered archival film, and polished A Fierce Green Fire into a work of beauty.

I think we succeeded in capturing that big-picture synthesis of the environmental movement, and I hope you find it useful. We made it for the generations who will live through the storm, and figured they would want to know how things began and that someone fought for their future.

--MarkKitchell

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Overview

The environmental movement is one of the most important developments of the 20th century – and one of the keys to the 21st century. Understanding the history of this movement, where it came from and where it is heading, is timely and necessary as we confront environmental crises from global resource depletion and biodiversity loss to industrial pollu-tion and altering the energy system of our entire planet. In the largest sense, environmentalism is about the struggle of humankind to regain a more realistic and healthier perspective of our role in the biosphere. It arose at a time when our industrial civilization grew so pow-erful that it threatens the natural world on which we depend for survival. It has become the battle for a living planet.

A FIERCE GREEN FIRE: The Battle for a Living Planet explores the en-vironmental movement, grassroots and global activism spanning fifty years from conservation to climate change. It differs from the usual environmental film in two ways: First is its focus on activism in-stead of issues. It’s a more impassioned approach that allows the audience to wit-ness ordinary people fighting against all odds – and succeeding more often than not. Second, the film brings together all the diverse strands of an extraordinarily broad and complex movement, and

connects the pieces into an overall arc. It shows how environmentalism evolved from our own backyard to the whole planet, from saving wild places to saving human society. At its heart is the eco-logical insight that, as John Muir put it, “everything is hitched.”

Our story unfolds in five acts. Each encapsulates a part of environmentalism and an era of the movement:

• Act 1 is about conservation, the first wave that began in the 1890s and be-came a mass movement in the 1960s, concerned with saving wild places and wildlife

• Act 2 explores the new environmental movement that arose in the 1970s, with its emphasis on pollution, toxic wastes, human health and more people–cen-tered issues.

• Act 3 covers the 1970s as well, but looks instead at alternatives, from going back to the land to renewable energy, and links them to “ecology” movements like Greenpeace.

• Act 4 unfolds in the 1980s amid glob-al-scale resource issues and crises, from saving the greatest rainforest on earth to movements across the global South. • Act 5 spans from the 1990s to the

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present, focusing on the greatest chal-lenge humanity has ever faced and how it is forcing a transition from top-down politics to bottom-up movements.

Featured in the film are thirty-one inter-views and historical figures including:

• The incomparable Lois Gibbs, still fight-ing for all the Loises thirty years after Love Canal

• Paul “I work for whales” Watson • Bill McKibben, author, activist and founder of 350.org

• Paul Hawken and Stewart Brand, ecol-ogy visionaries • Martin Litton, at 92 years of age still thundering about how you’ve got to have “hatred in your heart”

• Brazilian rubbertapper, union leader and environmental martyr Chico Mendes

• Green Belt Movement leader and No-bel laureate Wangari Maathai of Kenya

• Carl Pope and John Adams, longtime heads of the Sierra Club and NRDC

• Bob Bullard, environmental justice ad-vocate who closes the film on a universal note, saying, “There’s no Hispanic air. There’s no African-American air. There’s air! And if you breathe air – and most

people I know do breathe air – then I would consider you an environmentalist.”

Using the Film & Viewers’ Guide

A FIERCE GREEN FIRE is modular by design, meant to be used in pieces as well as shown whole. Total running time is 100 minutes and the five acts each run approximately 20 minutes. Activists, you can show just the parts that are relevant to your cause. We encourage you to hold discussions around the film, explore its subjects in more depth and extend its content to issues and events that are more local or current or relevant to your audience.

This viewers’ guide is appropriate for groups concerned with issues of social and environmental justice. Activists may find this guide included as part of the screening resources at

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Bullfrog Communities (fiercegreenfire.bullfrogcommunities.com), a valuable additional resource.

Finding a sustainable path to the future means reinventing not just the way we make and do everything, but reinventing the way we think about our place in the natural world. It is the greatest challenge of the coming century and the central cause of generations now on the rise.We hope this film and viewers’ guide will help raise consciousness -- reveal the scientific, economic, political and social dimensions of environmental crisis and change.

OVERVIEW QUESTIONS 1. What have you learned from the stories of the environmental struggles featured in this film?

2. Do you find them relevant to today’s struggles, or do you think that climate change, for example, is a problem of a different order of magnitude requiring dif-ferent strategies?

3. Do the featured stories inspire you to act in your community?

4. If you had been the filmmaker, would you have highlighted different stories and, if so, what and why?

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Act I: Conservation

“Every now and then, some issue arises that is elevated into a strato-spheric focus of public attention. It be-comes symbolic, and the rallying cry for a whole generation of activists.” ~Doug Scott

Saving nature was at first a concern of elites. Environmentalism did not grow into a mass social movement until after World War II. The first American environ-mentalists were hunters and socialites, people like Teddy Roosevelt and groups like the Audubon Society, who worried about squandering the nation’s natural resources and destruction of beautiful places and wildlife. Their prescription was conservation – but there arose an argument about what that meant. Gif-ford Pinchot, first chief of the U.S. Forest Service, saw it as the efficient use of natural resources for the “greatest good to the greatest number of people for the longest time.” Pinchot’s view of nature in service to humans contrasted with others who saw wild places as refuges where humans could reconnect with nature, the divine, and themselves. John

Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, wanted to preserve wilderness for its own sake. The two sides came to blows when the City of San Francisco proposed to dam in Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park. The Sierra Club battled for ten long years, but in the end Hetch Hetchy was dammed. Still, the contro-versy fueled the rise of the Sierra Club and its idea of conservation until it was the dominant view. Three further fights over dams turned the tide. During the 1950s the Sierra Club waged a seven-year campaign to stop a dam in Dinosaur National Monu-ment. They won – but there was a ter-rible price. They agreed not to oppose another dam down the Colorado River at Glen Canyon. Too late did David Brower, executive director of the Sierra Club, realize what a terrible mistake had been made. Glen Canyon was lost and Brower never forgave himself. But his chance at redemption would come soon. In 1965 federal dam-builders proposed two power dams in the Grand Canyon, and a tunnel to connect them that would have taken almost all of the water out of the Colorado River. Brower was a man

8

on fire. But halting the dams looked like a lost cause until he placed ads de-nouncing the dams. They aroused not only a wave of support, but retaliation by the I.R.S. Public sympathy rallied to the Sierra Club and Congress was forced to halt the dams. It was a complete victory for the Sierra Club and a pivotal point in the conserva-tion movement. Public opinion turned toward saving the last wild places, stop-ping the onslaught of development that threatened to “pave paradise and put up a parking lot.”

Just as the conservation movement flow-ered, the man who had done more than any other to advance the cause, David Brower, was forced out of the Sierra Club. He was pushing against the limits of conservation and wanted to speak about the whole earth as an ecological unit and talk about the role of humans

on the planet. Brower soon re-emerged as Friends of the Earth, the first interna-tional environmental organization -- at the very moment that a new wave was emerging.

It was propelled by many things: air and water pollution; sprawl and development; massive fish kills and endangered birds; the Cuyahoga River catching on fire and oil spills. But the real consciousness changer was seeing Earth from space. The first Earth Day in 1970 came as a revelation; twenty million people from all walks of life came out to demonstrate their concern about the natural world and what we humans were doing to destroy it. Like water bursting through a dam, a new environmental movement emerged, consisting of new people with new con-cerns.

Discussion Questions:

1. Do you think that basic human needs, like water and other resources, are the most important considerations in thinking about nature? Is nature ever valuable for its own sake?

2. Why do you think we decide that some places are “pristine” and “beautiful” and worthy of preservation, and other places are suitable for industrial develop-ment?

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3. What is “progress?” What did it mean in the early 1900s? Can protecting wild places or not damming a river be part of “progress?”

4. Why do you think environmental-ists were successful in stopping the dams proposed for Dinosaur National Monument and the Grand Canyon in the 1950s and 1960s when John Muir and the Sierra Club failed to stop the Hetch Hetchy Dam in the early 1900s?

5. Why were/are dams so controversial? What are their benefits, and what are the environmental drawbacks to their use?

6. Why do you think some members of the Sierra Club disagreed with John Muir’s “whole earth” idea? Do you think it was right of him to split with the group and form his own? 7. What are other environmental groups you know of that try to protect and pre-serve wild places? How do their mis-sions and goals different from the Sierra Club? How are they similar? 8. How did environmentalists use im-ages in their public relations campaigns to protect wild places--specifically, how did the Sierra Club use them in its fight to save Grand Canyon? Why were the images so powerful?

9. Name some environmental disasters from US history that may have helped inspire the environmental movement. Did any of them occur near where you

live? If so, how did they affect your com-munity?

10. Think of some wilderness areas and/or parks in your neighborhood, commu-nity, or city that have been preserved in their natural state. How are these areas beneficial to the community? How do you use them? If they were threatened by building or development, what meth-ods could you use to ensure their protec-tion?

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Act II: Pollution

“When Love Canal came, it was a new segment of the movement. It really was about people and peo-ples’ health. It wasn’t that we don’t care about the forest, but it was the people-focus that set us aside from other elements that had come be-fore us. If the fish are dying and the birds are dying, we’re gonna die!” ~Lois Gibbs

The publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962 sparked wide-spread concern and controversy over the unregulated use of chemicals and the effects of pollution on both humans and non-human life. DDT, which had saved millions in the fight against ma-laria but proved lethal to wildlife, was Rachel Carson’s main target. But other chemicals as well as sewage and toxic waste, smog and air pollution, lead and mercury, strontium 90 from nuclear testing fallout... a witch’s brew of poi-sons threatened Americans. Earth Day brought pollution issues to the fore and created a tide so strong that it swept up both Republicans and Democrats. Presi-

dent Nixon jumped aboard, creating the Environmental Protection Agency. Con-gress passed a series of landmarks laws including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and Superfund to clean up toxic wastes. New environmental groups consisting of lawyers and experts became the enforc-ers. They helped write regulations, then sued the violators and the government if they didn’t live up to the regulations. The “golden era” of environmental prog-ress ended with the oil crisis of 1973. Industrial America realized that this was a fundamental threat to the way they do business and they mounted a powerful counter-attack. They exempted old fac-tories from the Clean Air Act and then, rather than build new factories, kept operating the old ones dirty. They made jobs versus the environment into a pow-erful issue. They were unable to roll back environmental protections, but slowed progress.

The issue of toxic waste bubbled up at a place called Love Canal. Buried beneath a Niagara Falls, NY neighborhood were 20,000 tons of toxic chemicals. When a local journalist exposed the problem,

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Lois Gibbs led the “angry housewives with sick children” in a two-year battle to be evacuated. They proved relentless -- protesting and petitioning, conducting their own health study and forcing state and federal agencies to do likewise, even taking EPA officials hostage until President Carter agreed to relocate them and buy out their houses. Lois Gibbs took her settlement money, moved to Washington and started a group to help other Loises. She became the nexus of a web of grassroots groups fighting pollution and poisons in their own back-yards. 50,000 toxic waste sites were dis-covered in the wake of Love Canal. Lois’ strategy was to “plug up all the toilets.” Amazingly enough, they succeeded. No new toxic waste dumps have been built in the US for twenty-five years. Now the focus has shifted from end of pipe to front of pipe, detoxifying manufacturing materials and processes. The McToxics

campaign that banned clamshells made of poly-vinyl chloride is a sterling exam-ple of CCHW’s success.

Out of NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) campaigns grew the environmental justice movement. Bob Bullard’s pioneer-ing study Dumping in Dixie showed how all of the incinerators and most of the dumps in Houston were in black neigh-borhoods. The catalyzing event came in 1983 in Warren County, North Carolina, where a black community fought against a toxic waste site being dumped on them. Charges of environmental racism led to the forming of a movement. They fought against a lead smelter in Dallas, a rayon factory in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, a pesticide factory in West Vir-ginia, and many more. Neither the envi-ronmental movement nor the civil rights movement got it at first and it took two decades for those movements to merge. But their struggle for human rights – clean air and water, healthy communities – continues today.

Discussion Questions:

1. How was the new “environmental” movement different from the “conserva-tion” movement? What did they have in common? 2. What are some of the different types of pollution, and how do they harm peo-

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ple? How is human health related to the health of the environment?

3. What do you know about DDT? Can you name any other chemicals that were once widely used that are now known to be dangerous to human health?

4. What role do you think the govern-ment should play in protecting people from environmental harm? What are some of the ways government does this?

5. How did the environmental movement grow and change after Love Canal? What issues became the most important?

6. Is public protest an effective method of bringing about change? Why or why not. Can you think of any examples to support your opinion?

7. Talk about the phrase “Not In My Back Yard”. What do you think it means? How does it relate to the idea of “environmen-tal justice”?

8. The New York State Health Depart-ment referred to the community health study conducted by Love Canal resi-dents as “useless housewife data.” How does this compare to how government officials responded to the EPA’s study on chromosome damage among Love Ca-nal residents? What do the differences in these responses tell us about the values

our society places on science compared to the lived experiences of people? Which data would you trust and why?

9. How did gender, race, and class figure into environmental struggles? How did this differ from earlier struggles to preserve “nature”?

10. Can you name any other men or women like Lois Gibbs who became na-tionally recognized after fighting against environmental injustice and/or pollution in their community?

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Act III: Alternatives

“We were asking the question, ‘Okay, the war in Vietnam’s over. What are we gonna do next?’ And the answer to that question was, ‘We’re gonna start an ecology movement. And the first thing we’re gonna do is we’re gonna go save the whales.’” ~Rex Weyler

Alternative ecology movements arose alongside mainstream environmental-ism. Their concerns were less stopping bad stuff than developing good alterna-tives – “Let’s re-imagine what it mean to be a human being,” as Paul Hawken puts it. They went back to the land and built domes, windmills, organic gardens, solar heaters, composting toilets, even a Living Machine that used aquaculture to clean sewage, grow food and heat their Ark. The Whole Earth Catalog was their bible and its guru was Buckminster Fuller, whose “doing more with less” be-came a mantra. His vision of Earth was a spaceship that needed to be guided by humankind if we were to survive.

Resource questions came to the fore with The Limits to Growth, the first com-puter modeling of future environmental trends. The standard run led to over-shoot and collapse in the 21st century. It arrived just as the oil crisis gave impetus to developing alternative and renewable energy sources. Research spurred development of wind turbines, photovoltaics and solar thermal arrays in the desert. Prototypes of experimental vehicles were built. Most federal funds went to big energy: coal gasification and breeder reactors. But renewable energy technologies flourished with tax sub-sidies. Physicist-turned-activist Amory Lovins developed the soft path to an energy future based on efficiency and a transition to renewables. President Cart-er even put solar heaters on the White House. Then President Reagan killed it all and the US lost its lead.

Out of the same counter-culture cauldron grew Greenpeace, a ragtag band of ecol-ogists who brought passion and excite-ment to the environmental movement. They began by protesting nukes. But at the end of a meeting, when an elder pacifist said, “Peace,” someone shouted,

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“Make it a green peace!” Greenpeace brought together anti-war and ecology movements for the first time -- and the issue that launched them on the wildest ride of any group was whaling. They decided to stop the Russians by putting their bodies between the har-poons and the whales. They used media to create what they called “mind bombs.” It had an explosive effect, making Green-peace famous all over the world and launched a host of campaigns. One, to save baby harp seals, was dreamed up by Paul Watson -- and led to his ouster. The first year, Greenpeace got out on the ice and confronted the sealers, but held back from spraying the seals with dye that would make their pelts worth-less. Paul was bitter about compromising and came back the next year determined to stop the slaughter. He grabbed a sealer’s club and threw it in the water, then chained himself to a pile of pelts, whereupon the sealers dunked him in the icy waters. Paul was kicked out of Greenpeace for breaching their ethic of non-violence. He’d gone too far. However, Paul set up his own group, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, got himself a ship and went after whal-ers. Within a year he cleared the Atlantic of pirate whalers – and then went after whaling nations.

It took everyone working together to

ban whaling. For ten years, radicals, mainstream NGOs and governments like the U.S. worked to turn the Interna-tional Whaling Commission from hunting to saving whales. A moratorium finally passed in 1982 and in time it became a permanent ban on whaling – one of environmentalism’s biggest successes, yet a battle that must be waged over and over again. Greenpeace grew into an international environmental colossus and took on a host of new causes, including its first, opposition to nukes, both bombs and power – which put it at the forefront of environmentalism rising across Europe. Discussion Questions:

1. What do you think about Green-peace’s policy of non-violence, and Paul Watson’s decision to break that policy? Can non-violence be an effective tool in activism? Why or why not?

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2. Is it ever permissible to break the law to save an animal or protect the environ-ment?

3. Do you think Paul Watson’s radical actions, such as dying the fur of baby seals to prevent their poaching, were acceptable? Can radical actions and groups like the Sea Shepherd Conserva-tion Society benefit more mainstream efforts, or cause harm? 4. How important are the media and images in changing the way people think about issues? How do activists use the media and images to achieve their goals?

5. What are “mind bombs”? How do they work? Can you think of any similar cam-paigns you have seen that use shocking imagery to convey their message?

6. According to what you’ve seen in the news, what does an environmentalist look like? Do you think this depiction is accurate? How does it affect how you think about environmental issues?

7. Are alternatives all about stopping bad things from happening or are they also about developing new ideas and solu-tions to environmental problems? How do alternatives fit in the mainstream envi-ronmental movement?

8. Why do you think government has chosen to give the bulk of federal funds and tax benefits for energy to the fossil fuel industry and continues to do so?

9. Name some alternative sources of energy, and talk about their history.

10. How are the environmental move-ment and anti-war movement related? What issues do they have in common?

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Act IV: Going Global

“The theme that runs through all these movements is the loss of the commons. That’s what people are fighting for, is the right of subsis-tence and the right of access to clean water, to food, to forests. The right to live.” ~Vijaya Nagarajan

The world’s forests are home to nearly ninety percent of terrestrial biodiversity and hold over forty percent of global car-bon stores. Worldwide, 1.6 billion people depend on forests for fuel, medicinal plants and subsistence. Struggles to protect these important ecosystems and the livelihoods of people who depend on them are key to the history of the environmental movement in the twenti-eth century. The ongoing fight to protect the Amazon rainforest from logging and industrial agriculture mirrors global struggles to preserve both biological and cultural diversity.

By the 1980s the Amazon faced threats from mining and oil, hydroelectric dams, logging, ranching and a disastrous

colonization scheme. Efforts to save the greatest rainforest on earth turned on an unlikely environmental hero, a union organizer and rubber tapper or seringueiro named Chico Mendes. The seringueiros squatted on the old planta-tions, produced rubber and subsisted off the land. They were protected by being in the remote western Amazon where roads had not penetrated. But as ranchers arrived and began clearing land to claim it, Mendes organized his fellow seringueiros to defend their terri-tory. Through nonviolent resistance, they were able to halt the clear-cutting of their forests. In 1986, Chico allied with environmen-talists protesting development financed by the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank. The banks financed the paving of roads in the Amazon, facili-tating the development of ranching op-erations the seringueiros were fighting. In Washington, D.C. Chico and his U.S. allies lobbied members of Congress and met with the banks’ funders, which ulti-mately led to negotiations between the seringueiros and bank officials.

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Chico built alliances at home as well, forming a national council of rubber tap-pers. Concluding that a lack of land use rights was preventing them from defend-ing the forest, Chico came up with the idea of extractive reserves. The rubber tappers wouldn’t own the land but it would be theirs as long as they worked it. It was a breakthrough that came from within, not imposed from outside – and has grown into a great movement in Am-azonia. The rubber tappers decided to establish the first reserve at Cachoeira, the plantation where Chico was born and lived. But the land had been bought by a rancher named Darli Alves. It turned into a showdown. Darli vowed to kill Chico, who was fearless in the face of danger. The rubbertappers won at last. Cachoeira was declared the first extractive reserve in the world. But two days before Christmas in 1988, Chico Mendes was assassinated. His death proved to be the turning point to an era of reserves that now total a third of the Amazon.

The battle to save the Amazon was part of a larger movement across the Global South that tied together indigenous rights, social justice, and environmen-tal issues during the last quarter of the twentieth century. From India’s Chipko or Tree Huggers, to Kenya’s Green Belt Movement led by Wangari Maathai, indigenous people organized themselves to protect the natural resources upon

which their livelihoods depend. Their struggles brought attention to questions of equity and sustainability in a global economic system dependent on the exploitation of natural resources. They also called for a new model of protection, one that did not remove people from the land and pose nature and human beings in opposition to each other.

Discussion Questions:

1. What are common resources all hu-mans depend on? Who controls these resources and who profits from this control?

2. Why should people living in the United States be concerned with struggles over natural resources in the other parts of the world? 3. Do you think access to clean water, to food, and to forests is a universal human

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right? Why or why not?

4. Modernization and development are generally seen as positive things. What are some examples of development in the Amazon? How have they benefited the people that live there, and how have they done harm?

5. Compare and contrast the struggles of the seringueiros in Brazil, the Green Belt Movement in Kenya, and the Chipko movement in India. What resources sparked conflicts in each region? Who profited from control of these resources? What strategies did local people use to resist outside control of resources?

6. In what ways were the actions of Chico Mendes and Lois Gibbs similar? What methods did they have in com-mon? Where did they differ?

7. Think about the major historical ac-tors (people and institutions) in Act 4. Compare them to the actors in Love Canal, Hetch-Hetchy, and in the Green-peace campaigns. What are some simi-larities and differences among environ-mental activists, their causes, and the strategies they used? Were they fighting against similar forces?

8. How did the movements in the Global South depicted in the film bring together social justice, indigenous rights, and environmental issues? Can these issues be separated when thinking about these movements? Why or why not?

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Act V: Climate Change

“There’s no question in my mind that, as people who care deeply about the environment, we keep looking for love in all the wrong plac-es. And that’s from our political lead-ers. If we haven’t learned yet, then we should get it now. This is not going to be top-down. It goes right back to the hundreds of millions of people on Earth who are trying to find and craft and create solutions every single day.” ~Paul Hawken

In A FIERCE GREEN FIRE, Jennifer Morgan of the World Resources Institute calls global warming the “problem from hell”... “You have to go at the cars, and the oil, and the power plants, and the way we farm, and which food we eat. It’s everywhere. And associated with those sources are huge political and financial stakes.” Unlike previous issues, activ-ists encountered great difficulty building a movement equal to what many agree is the greatest challenge humankind has ever faced. It’s too big an issue for the environmental movement to take on alone.

Scientists have been aware of the earth’s rising temperatures since 1900, but couldn’t tell whether the warming would be half a degree or three – “the difference between no big deal and Oh my god!” as Stephen Schneider puts it. The key moment of its emergence was the summer of 1988, the hottest on record, when Dr. James Hansen testified to Congress that, “the greenhouse effect has been detected and it is changing our climate now.” In 1992 world leaders signed a landmark treaty known as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Yet, due to pressure from the United States, limits on green-houses gases were purely voluntary.

In the US, industrial actors – particularly big oil & coal – mounted a campaign to thwart climate legislation. Deep re-sistance to any measure forcing indus-trial polluters to limit carbon emissions emerged in the public and political spheres, and Americans were bom-barded with arguments against collec-tive solutions to climate change. In 1997 the world’s leaders gathered in Kyoto to negotiate a follow-on treaty. While Eu-ropeans pushed for aggressive controls

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on global carbon emissions, the United States resisted any mandatory mea-sures. Vice President Al Gore arrived at the last minute to forge a compromise and United States signed the Kyoto Pro-tocol. The treaty, however, was dead on arrival. It was never submitted for ratifi-cation, and, upon taking office in 2000, President George W. Bush rejected Kyoto.

Disasters brought back the issue of climate change. Hurricane Katrina; a heat wave in Europe that killed 70,000 people; drought and fire in Australia and the American Southwest; Arctic ice dis-appearing; coral reefs bleaching – every-thing was happening faster than scien-tists predicted. At last, a movement started to emerge: Avaaz on the international front; and 350.org in the U.S.

In December 2009 as world leaders gathered in Copenhagen for COP15, millions marched in hope that at last the United States and China, the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, would join with the rest of the world and take action before it was too late However, COP15 turned into another case of top-down political failure. The U.S. declined to offer significant emis-sions reductions and China backed out of negotiations. Deadlock loomed when President Barack Obama salvaged a last minute accord. But it was a pledge exercise, not a binding treaty. And it became meaningless when climate legis-lation died in the U.S. Congress. Climate change remains the impossible issue: impossible to deal with, yet impossible to ignore. Paul Hawken flips the film from top-down political failure to bottom-up movements, sharing his insight from Blessed Unrest that there are two million organizations worldwide working on issues of environ-mental and social justice.

“It’s growing, it’s growing, it’s growing because its not a movement. It’s in a sense humanity’s immune response to the despoliation of the environ-ment, the degradation of living sys-tems, the corruption we see in eco-nomic systems, and the pollution of the industrial system.” ~Paul Hawken

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Discussion Questions:

1. What is global warming? What are some of the causes of global warming?

2. Is climate change a global issue? How might climate change affect differ-ent countries around the world?

3. Do you believe that addressing cli-mate change is a social and moral re-sponsibility? Why or why not?

4. Is climate change simply an environ-mental issue, or does it also have social, cultural, and economic implications? If so, what are they?

5. The film claims that, “Climate change remains the impossible issue – impos-sible to deal with, yet impossible to ig-nore.” Do you agree with this statement? Why or why not? Identify the political and economic challenges world leaders have contended with in their quest to address climate change on a global scale.

6. Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, ar-gues that global warming is too large an issue for the environmental movement to take on. Do you agree? If the environ-mental movement cannot fully take on this issue, who should?

7. Do you believe that addressing cli-

mate change is a social and moral re-sponsibility? Why or why not?

8. Discuss the Kyoto Treaty. Why is it important for many countries to try and reduce their emissions and polluting? Can countries act on their own to impact climate change?

9. Why might some officials and indus-tries oppose the Kyoto Treaty and similar efforts to reduce emissions and pollu-tion? Why might they support it?

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Books and Articles

Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962. Gibbs, Lois Marie. Love Canal and the Birth of the Environmental Health Movement. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2010.

Gottlieb, Robert. Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2005.

Guha, Ramachandra. Environmentalism: A Global History. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000.

Hays, Samuel P. Beauty, Health, and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United States, 1955-1985. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989.

Hawken, Paul. Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming. New York: Penguin, 2007.

Hawken, Paul, Amory B. Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins. Natural Capitalism: The Next Industrial Revolution. Washington, DC: Earthscan, 1999.

Hertsgaard, Mark. Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011.

Kirk, Andrew. Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2009.

Kolbert, Elizabeth. Field Notes from A Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2006.

Lovins, Amory B., et. al. Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for The New Energy Era. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Co., 2011.

McKibben, Bill, ed. American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008.

McKibben, Bill. Earth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. New York: Random House, 2011.

LEARN MORE

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McKibben, Bill. The End of Nature, New York: Random House, Inc., 2006.

Montrie, Chad. A People’s History of Environmentalism in the United States. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011.

Nash, Roderick. Wilderness and the American Mind. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967.

Quammen, David. The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions. New York: Random House, Inc., 2012.

Rodrigues, Gomercindo. Walking the Forest with Chico Mendes: Struggle for Justice in the Amazon. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007.

Shabecoff, Philip. A Fierce Green Fire: The American Environmental Movement. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2003

Shabecoff, Philip. Earth Rising: American Environmentalism in the 21st Century. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2001.

Shabecoff, Philip, and Alice Shabecoff. Poisoned for Profit: How Toxins Are Making Our Children Chronically Ill. New York: Random House, Inc., 2008.

Udall, Stewart. The Quiet Crisis. New York: Henry Hold & Co., Inc., 1963.

Weart, Spencer R. The Discovery of Global Warming. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004.

Weyler, Rex. Greenpeace: How a Group of Ecologists, Journalists, and Visionaries Changed the World. Emmaus, PA: Rodale, Inc., 2004.

Internet Resources

The Discovery of Global Warming: A Hypertext History of How Scientists Came to (Partly) Under-stand What People Are Doing to Cause Climate Change http://www.aip.org/history/climate

The Environmental History Timeline http://www.environmentalhistory.org

Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative http://www.ejcc.org/

Global Footprint Network http://footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/

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The Green Belt Movement http://www.greenbeltmovement.org/

Greenpeace http://www.greenpeace.org

Love Canal Collections: A University Archives Collection http://library.buffalo.edu/libraries/specialcollections/lovecanal/index.html

National Center for Appropriate Technology http://www.ncat.org/

Sierra Club http://www.sierraclub.org

United States Environmental Protection Agency http://www.epa.gov

Whole Earth Catalog http://www.wholeearth.com

350.org http://www.350.org

Films

The Age of Stupid. Directed by Franny Armstrong. Produced by Lizzie Gillett. 2008. http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/aos.html

An Inconvenient Truth. Directed by Davis Guggenhem. Produced by Lawrence Bender, Scott Z. Burns, and Laurie David. 2006.

Blue Vinyl. Directed and Produced by Judith Helfand and Daniel B. Gold. 2002. http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/bv.html

Cape Spin: An American Power Struggle. Directed by Robbie Gemmel and John Kirby. Produced by Robbie Gemmel, Daniel Coffin, Libby Handros, Josh Levin, Jim Butterworth, Daniel Chalfen, Marcel Quiroga, and Steven Latham. 2012. David Brower: A Conversation with Scott Simon. Directed by John de Graaf. Produced by John de Graaf with KCTS/Seattle. 1995. http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/dave2.html

The Decade of Destruction. Directed by Adrian Cowell. Produced by Adrian Cowell and Nomad Films Ltd. 1990. http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/dod.html

Deep Down: A Story from the Heart of Coal Country. Directed by Jen Gilomen and Sally Rubin. Produced by David Sutherland and Nancy Golden. 2010.

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Dirty Business: “Clean Coal” and the Battle for Our Energy Future. Directed/Produced by Peter Bull. 2011.http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/dbiz.html

Everything’s Cool. Directed by Daniel B. Gold and Judith Helfand. Produced by Daniel B. Gold, Judith Helfand, Chris Pilaro and Adam Wolfensohn. 2006.http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/ecool.html

Force of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie. Directed by Sturla Gunnarsson. Produced by Sturla Gunnarsson, Yves J. Ma, Janice Tufford. 2010. http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/fon.html

For Earth’s Sake. Directed by John de Graaf. Produced by KCTS. 1989. http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/dave.html

Fuel: Uncovering America’s Dirty Secret. Directed and Produced by Josh Tickell, 2009.

Gasland. Directed by Josh Fox. Produced by Trish Adlesic, Molly Gandour, Josh Fox, and David Roma. 2010.

Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action. Directed and Produced by Roberta Grossman. 2005. http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/hland.html

Oil on Ice. Directed and Produced by Dale Djerassi and Bo Boudart. 2005.http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/oil.html

In Our Own Backyards: The First Love Canal. Directed and Produced by Lynn Corcoran. 1982. http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/lc.html

Life Among Whales. Directed by Bill Haney. Produced by Uncommon Productions. 2005. http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/law.html

Living the Good Life with Helen and Scott Nearing. Directed by John Hoskyns-Abrahall. Produced by Bullfrog Films. 1977. http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/lgl.html

Lovins on the Soft Path: An Energy Future with a Future. Directed by George C. Lynde, Jr. Produced by Nelson B. Robinson. 1982. http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/losp.html

Monumental: David Brower’s Fight For Wild America. Directed by Kelly Duane. Produced by Loteria Films. 2004. http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/mdave.html

Shattered Sky. Directed by Steve Dorst and Dan Evans. Produced by Dorst MediaWorks. 2012. http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/ssky.html

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PO BOX 149 OLEY PA 19547info@bullfrogfilms.com

http://www.bullfrogfilms.com

Sun Come Up. Directed by Jennifer Redfearn. Produced by Jennifer Redfearn and Tim Metzger. 2010.

The Cove. Directed by Louie Psihoyos. Produced by Fisher Stevens and Paula DuPre Pesmen. 2009.

Thomas Berry: The Great Story. Directed by Davis Guggenhem. Produced by Nancy Stetson and Penny Morell. 2002. http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/tb.html

Who Killed the Electric Car? Directed by Chris Paine. Produced by Jessie Deeter. 2006.

The Four Corners: A National Sacrifice Area? Directed by Christopher McLeod. Produced by Christopher McLeod, Glenn Switkes, and Randy Hayes. 1984. http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/4c.html