Transition Sheffield - Discussion Forum

“For some decades now we have been talking about saving the planet; but I’ve come to realize that this is not really the issue. The issue is civilization itself and whether we can save it.”
-Lester R. Brown, Founder of the Earth Policy Institute

The Great Squeeze picks up where the documentary Energy Crossroads left off. This new film explores our current ecological and economic crisis stemming from our dependence on cheap and abundant energy. Although our actions for the past 200 years have lifted our civilization to new heights, it has come at a tremendous price.

With the help of specialists in anthropology, economics and biology, the film demonstrates that there are recurring patterns in history of self-destructive and shortsighted behaviors that parallel our modern times. Today, with 6 billion people and growing, those patterns are no longer isolated and are affecting the entire globe.

We are now at a point where humanity's demands for natural resources far exceed the earth's capacity to sustain us. The extraction and the use of those resources in the past two centuries have changed our climate and ecosystems so significantly that a new geological era had to be created.

Our current paradigm must change. We will have to accept the new reality; the human economy is part of nature and not the other way around. We are faced with great challenges. But unlike the rest of the living world, we have the unique ability to adapt and decide our fate and the fate of most of the biosphere, for better or worse, in order to survive the human project.

The Great Squeeze features: economist Lester Brown, founder of The Earth Policy Institute, Richard Heinberg, world renowned Peak Oil expert, Edward O. Wilson, legendary biologist, Alexandra Cousteau, leading advocate for marine ecosystems, author James Howard Kunstler, paleoclimatologist Jim White and many more.