Earth Days is a documentary of stunning visual footage taken from around the globe and woven into a grim reminder of the perilous environmental situation in which we find ourselves today. Director Robert Stone uses a montage of archival footage dating back to the genesis of the green movement in 1962, and brings us through the last 47 years to present day showing interviews, protests, and demonstrations. Much of the footage shows the consequences of having ignored the warnings of experts who have attempted to convince people of the need to conserve limited planetary resources and curb the population explosion. There is shocking footage of factories spewing chemicals into rivers, landfills with garbage climbing into the sky, and smokestacks blackening the stratosphere. At the same time the film offers hope, guidance and inspiration to the next generation of environmentalists.
The film points to the 1962 novel “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson as the jumping off point for the modern environmental movement. Carson’s book was an expose of the agricultural industry’s use of dangerous pesticides, including DDT which was subsequently banned under the Nixon administration as a result of Carson’s research. For the first time Americans began to examine the way they interacted with the planet and the damage they were causing both the Earth and themselves by carelessly polluting the environment. The book stirred enough people to action nationwide that it gave birth to the first Earth Day festival on April 22, 1970. Earth Day was the first coordinated, national effort to address the destruction of our atmosphere.
A major failing pointed out by Stone occurred during the energy crisis of the 1970’s under the Carter administration. Gasoline prices skyrocketed under the Saudi oil embargo and the opportunity to develop alternatives to fossil fuels was as necessary as it was timely. The movements efforts to “Go Green” were hindered by politicians and wealthy oil companies then, just as they are today. There are lighter moments in the film where archival footage shows reactionary environmentalists making outlandish predictions that the Earth would essentially implode by the year 1986, and sobering moments when extremely accurate predictions of global warming were made, that have become our present-day reality. Earth Days leaves no doubt that our current rates of population growth and consumption of natural resources are entirely unsustainable. While offering little in the way of solutions, Earth Days re-stokes the fires of indignation that are essential to any revolution, and renews a determination to change our present course of destruction. Earth Days is currently playing at the Ken Cinemas on Adams St.
by ANTHONY TEMPLETON