The 11th Hour is a 2007 feature film documentary, created, produced and narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, on the state of the natural environment. It was directed by Leila Conners Petersen and Nadia Conners and financed by Adam Lewis, Pierre André Senizergues and Doyle Brunson, 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.
Plot
With contributions from over 50 politicians, scientists, and environmental activists, including former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, physicist Stephen Hawking, Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai, and journalist Paul Hawken, the film documents the grave problems facing the planet's life systems. Global warming, deforestation, mass species extinction, and depletion of the oceans' habitats are all addressed. The film's premise is that the future of humanity is in jeopardy.
The film proposes potential solutions to these problems by calling for restorative action by the reshaping and rethinking of global human activity through technology, social responsibility and conservation.
Quotes
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Global warming is not only the number one environmental challenge we face today, but one of the most important issues facing all of humanity ... We all have to do our part to raise awareness about global warming and the problems we as a people face in promoting a sustainable environmental future for our planet. |
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—Leonardo DiCaprio. [1]
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Environmental Views
Experts interviewed stressed the fact that human involvement in the fight against global warming is mandatory. This is due to the fact that the increased anthropogenic cycle is pinned down as the main cause of climate change in the movie. The role of humans in the destruction of the environment is explained from the viewpoint of several different professional fields: environmental scientists, oceanographers, economic historians, medical specialists, etc. The best example of this came from philosopher Wade Davis who theorized that to people, “You are either a person or property,” referring to mankind’s view on land and natural resource.[2]
Criticism
Patrick Moore, an early member of Greenpeace, now supported by the Nuclear Energy Institute, who later rejected traditional environmentalism, directly criticized Leonardo DiCaprio and the film The 11th Hour in an article for the Vancouver Sun on August 29, 2007 titled ‘An Inconvenient Fact’
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DiCaprio's movie, The 11th Hour, is another example of anti-forestry scare tactics, this time said to be "brilliant and terrifying" by James Christopher of the London Times.
Maybe so, but instead of surrendering to the terror, keep in mind that there are solutions to the challenges of climate, and our forests are among them.
This film should be a good, clear reminder for us to put the science before the Hollywood hype. |
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—Patrick Moore, in the August 29, 2007 issue of The Vancouver Sun, [3]
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References
External links
