What a Way to Go: life at the end of empire

The independent film-makers are at it again. And they’re doing a bang-up job! Who? Sally Erickson and Tim Bennett.

This movie, ‘What a Way to Go: life at the end of empire’ should be seen in every high school classroom in the USA.

Community screenings are indeed being organized around the world as this unique two hour documentary hits hard and hits deep right where it counts; at the heartstrings of humanity.

“What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire is not Just Another Eco-tastrophe Movie. It’s a personal, poetic, and challenging cultural analysis of the mess Western and rich capitalist societies are in.” source

A middle class white guy comes to grips with Peak Oil, Climate
Change, Mass Extinction, Population Overshoot and the demise of the American Lifestyle. source

The documentary is in four parts: “Waking on the train“, “The train and the tracks“, “The locomotive power“, and “Walkabout“. So, in a well organized fashion, in just over two hours, the film thoroughly explores elements of our planetary predicament: how we got into it, how bad it is, and what our prospects are for recognizing our collective dilemma before it’s too late.

One gets the clear sensation of needing to immediately save our planet for the approximate half of today’s living species that may still be around in a few decades. source: Culture Change Letter #159 – May 20, 2007 Contributed by Jan Lundberg [pdf]

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Is the American Middle Class worried yet?

Sarah Anne Edwards’ Middle Class Lifeboat Blog pokes at the fat cats who are stubbornly clinging to sustaining the lifestyle of the status quo we have been enjoying all of our known lives, and projecting it onto our children. Can an entire middle-class of people be wrong??

Once in a while you find an awakened soul; as this survey respondent had to say about his unconventional thinking:

“Not that I don’t worry about the future, just that I worry about concerns not on your list, such as an imminent economic collapse or, even worse, that such a collapse (combined with peak oil and other resource depletion issues) might be severe enough to knock our society into widespread violence and looting for a time. How I might plan to survive such a scenario is currently occupying my worry space. A drop in my material standard of living? Ha, I regard that as inevitable, and I stopped worrying about it a few years ago.” read entire article