Three Short Films

This is the original animation of The Lorax, from 1972 (much thanks to Synthetic_Zero for posting it). There was a more recent version, which unsurprisingly, is presented with a rosier view of humanity's relentless exploitation of the natural world.



It is so bleak - "If I don't do it, somebody else will" - in fact, that it reminded me of this brilliant and stark satire of human nature:


Both of these are completely unsentimental and offer none of the popular idealized, romanticized alternate view of the behavior of humanity - which is a relief, since from any objective viewpoint, it's undeniably true that our practices have been, in general, so self-serving that we aren't even aware of just how anthropocentric we are.

This is inadvertently illustrated in the Greenpeace documentary below in which indigenous people decry factory fishing (quite understandably) because it is threatening "their" food supply.  One of them even describes themselves as being "part of the ecosystem" which seems absurd since the ecosystem would be just fine without any people there at all.

Depicted, but not discussed, is that they are living in houses produced by industrialized civilization, driving vehicles and boats built using industrial mining and powered by oil, wearing clothing produced and transported by industrial manufacturing - even the children's toys are plastic.  All of these modern amenities only exist, because somewhere, somebody else lost their traditional homeland to industrial agriculture and mineral extraction and drilling.  I wonder how many in the audience who have seen this film at all the "festivals" where it was shown noticed that glaring dichotomy.

The Silent War on Trees

A Modest Masterpiece of Mockery

The Kates demonstrate with disarming light humor the futility of achieving true sustainability.