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The 11th Hour (2007 Film)
''The 11th Hour'' is a 2007 documentary film on the state of the natural environment created, produced, co-written and narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio. It was directed by Leila Conners Petersen and Nadia Conners and financed by Adam Lewis and Pierre André Senizergues, and distributed by Warner Independent Pictures. Its world premiere was at the 2007 60th Annual Cannes Film Festival (May 16–27, 2007) and it was released on August 17, 2007, in the year in which the Fourth Assessment Report of the United Nations global warming panel IPCC was published and about a year after Al Gore's ''An Inconvenient Truth'', another film documentary about global warming. Synopsis With contributions from over 50 politicians, scientists, and environmental activists, including former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, physicist Stephen Hawking, Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai, journalist Armand Betscher, and Paul Hawken, the film documents the grave problems facing the planet's life systems. G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Global Warming
In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to Earth's climate. The current rise in global average temperature is more rapid than previous changes, and is primarily caused by humans burning fossil fuels. Fossil fuel use, deforestation, and some agricultural and industrial practices increase greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide and methane. Greenhouse gases absorb some of the heat that the Earth radiates after it warms from sunlight. Larger amounts of these gases trap more heat in Earth's lower atmosphere, causing global warming. Due to climate change, deserts are expanding, while heat waves and wildfires are becoming more common. Increased warming in the Arctic has contributed to melting permafrost, glacial retreat and sea ice loss. Higher temperatures are also causing m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sandra Postel
Sandra Postel is the founding director of the Global Water Policy Project. She is a world expert on fresh water and related ecosystems. From 2009-2015, she served as Freshwater Fellow of the National Geographic Society. She is the author of scores of articles and several books on global freshwater issues, including ''Last Oasis'', which appears in eight languages, and most recently ''Replenish: The Virtuous Cycle of Water and Prosperity''. She is the recipient of four honorary doctor of science degrees. From 1988 to 1994 she served as the Vice President for Research at the Worldwatch Institute. Postel has taught water policy courses at Tufts University and Mount Holyoke College. In 2002, Scientific American magazine named her as one of their "Scientific American 50" to recognize her contribution to science and technology. Postel's work aims to build a more water-secure world for all earthly beings. In 2021, Postel was awarded the Stockholm Water Prize Presented annually since ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thom Hartmann
Thomas Carl Hartmann (born May 7, 1951) is an American radio personality, author, former psychotherapist, businessman, and progressive political commentator. Hartmann has been hosting a nationally syndicated radio show, ''The Thom Hartmann Program'', since 2003 and hosted a nightly television show, '' The Big Picture'', between 2010 and 2017. Early life Hartmann was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan,"Thom Hartmann". ''Who's Who in America'', 63rd Edition. one of four children of Jean and Carl Thomas Hartmann. His paternal grandparents were from Norway, and his other ancestry includes Welsh and English. He lived in Detroit at age two, and later grew up in Lansing, Michigan. ''The Thom Hartmann Program'': July 25, 2013. Interested in politics from a young age, he was raised in a conservative, Midwestern household with a right-wing point of view. He campaigned with his staunch-Republican father for Barry Goldwater during the 1964 presidential election when he was thirteen. Although a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kenny Ausubel
Kenny Ausubel is a social entrepreneur, investigative journalist, and award-winning filmmaker. He launched the annual National Bioneers Conference in 1990 with Nina Simons. He has received the Buckminster Fuller Institute’s Challenge Award as well as awards from the Rainforest Action Network and Global Green, among others. He emphasizes the interdependence of all things, and the need to use nature's own diversity, kinship, community, cooperation and reciprocity in finding the urgently needed solutions to environmental and human crises. Background At age 19 Ausubel woke up one morning paralyzed on the left side of his body. Unable to see straight or even swallow, he went to several different doctors but none of them could diagnose what had caused the stroke-like symptoms. Out of desperation Ausubel sought alternative forms of medicine where he learned what had caused his health crisis- massive exposure to a chemical called dioxin, a toxic environmental pollutant. Upon learning t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Conservation Movement
The conservation movement, also known as nature conservation, is a political, environmental, and social movement that seeks to manage and protect natural resources, including animal, fungus, and plant species as well as their habitat for the future. Conservationists are concerned with leaving the environment in a better state than the condition they found it in. Evidence-based conservation seeks to use high quality scientific evidence to make conservation efforts more effective. The early conservation movement evolved out of necessity to maintain natural resources such as fisheries, wildlife management, water, soil, as well as conservation and sustainable forestry. The contemporary conservation movement has broadened from the early movement's emphasis on use of sustainable yield of natural resources and preservation of wilderness areas to include preservation of biodiversity. Some say the conservation movement is part of the broader and more far-reaching environmental movem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Responsibility
Social responsibility is an ethical framework in which an individual is obligated to work and cooperate with other individuals and organizations for the benefit of the community that will inherit the world that individual leaves behind. Social responsibility is a duty every individual has to maintain; a balance between the economy and the ecosystem one lives within. A trade-off might perhaps exist between economic development, in the material sense, and the welfare of the society and environment. Social responsibility pertains not only to business organizations but also to everyone whose actions impact the environment. It aims to ensure secure healthcare for people living in rural areas and eliminate barriers like distance, financial condition, etc. Another example is keeping the outdoors free of trash and litter by using the ethical framework combining the resources of land managers, municipalities, nonprofits, educational institutions, businesses, manufacturers, and individual ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Holocene Extinction
The Holocene extinction, or Anthropocene extinction, is the ongoing extinction event during the Holocene epoch. The extinctions span numerous families of bacteria, fungi, plants, and animals, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, invertebrates, and affecting not just terrestrial species but also large sectors of marine life. With widespread degradation of biodiversity hotspots, such as coral reefs and rainforests, as well as other areas, the vast majority of these extinctions are thought to be undocumented, as the species are undiscovered at the time of their extinction, which goes unrecorded. The current rate of extinction of species is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural background extinction rates, and is increasing. During the past 100–200 years, biodiversity loss and species extinction have accelerated, to the point that most conservation biologists now believe that humankind has either entered a period of mass extinction, or is on the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deforestation
Deforestation or forest clearance is the removal of a forest or stand of trees from land that is then converted to non-forest use. Deforestation can involve conversion of forest land to farms, ranches, or urban use. The most concentrated deforestation occurs in tropical rainforests. About 31% of Earth's land surface is covered by forests at present. This is one-third less than the forest cover before the expansion of agriculture, a half of that loss occurring in the last century. Between 15 million to 18 million hectares of forest, an area the size of Bangladesh, are destroyed every year. On average 2,400 trees are cut down each minute. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations defines deforestation as the conversion of forest to other land uses (regardless of whether it is human-induced). "Deforestation" and "forest area net change" are not the same: the latter is the sum of all forest losses (deforestation) and all forest gains (forest expansion) in a gi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Hawken
Paul Gerard Hawken (born February 8, 1946) is an American environmentalist, entrepreneur, author, economist, and activist. Biography Hawken was born in San Mateo, California, and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where his father worked at UC Berkeley in library sciences. He attended UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University. Hawken's work includes founding ecological businesses, writing about impacts of commerce on living systems, and consulting with corporations and governments on economic development, industrial ecology, and environmental policy. Hawken was the co-founder and executive director of Project Drawdown, a non-profit that describes how global warming can be reversed. Hawken was active in the civil rights movement. He currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Writing Hawken has authored articles, op-eds, and peer-reviewed papers, and seven books, including: ''The Next Economy'' (Ballantine 1983), ''Growing a Business'' (Simon and Schuster 1987), ''Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wangari Maathai
Wangarĩ Muta Maathai (; 1 April 1940 – 25 September 2011) was a Kenyan social, environmental and a political activist and the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. As a beneficiary of the Kennedy Airlift, she studied in the United States, earning a bachelor's degree from Mount St. Scholastica and a master's degree from the University of Pittsburgh. She went on to become the first woman in East and Central Africa to become a Doctor of Philosophy, receiving her PhD from the University of Nairobi in Kenya. In 1977, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation, and women's rights. In 1984, she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for "converting the Kenyan ecological debate into mass action for reforestation". Maathai was an elected member of the Parliament of Kenya and between January 2003 and November 2005 served as assistant minister for environment and na ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfred Nobel was a Swedish chemist, engineer, and industrialist most famously known for the invention of dynamite. He died in 1896. In his will, he bequeathed all of his "remaining realisable assets" to be used to establish five prizes which became known as "Nobel Prizes." Nobel Prizes were first awarded in 1901. Nobel Prizes are awarded in the fields of Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace (Nobel characterized the Peace Prize as "to the person who has done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the establishment and promotion of peace congresses"). In 1968, Sveriges Riksbank (Sweden's central bank) funded the establishment of the Prize in Economi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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