I was caught in a swirling maelstrom, emotionally battered and clinging on for dear life – this was my experience of sitting through two hours of this dismal movie at my local cinema last night.
I survived to tell the tale but only just.
I accept that you don’t go to disaster movies expecting deep insights into the human condition but some recognition that we the audience are not universally brain dead would have been nice.
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Shellac at Beaches Brew Festival
Beaches Brew – Ravenna’s annual four-day musical extravaganza at Hani-Bi beachside club/bar is a cool free festival which helps launch Italy’s summer outdoor concert season in style.
The friendly, relaxed mood is enhanced by a lack of any visible policing. The only sign of any security is a bag check at the entrance to make sure you have no glass bottles (or bombs). Continue reading
Who wants to watch an entire film about veganism? Well, I do but I am already converted to the cause so I don’t really count.
Comedian Simon Amstell is aware that preaching to the choir isn’t going to change hearts, minds and eating habits. His savvy BBC film is therefore aimed at the not so silent majority who still cling to the outdated notion that being a vegan is unachievable, extremist and faintly ridiculous. Continue reading
As individuals we can save water, ride bikes and use energy-saving lightbulbs but even if everyone diligently did all these things the problem would not go away.
Today the cities were full of people marching to demand action to prevent global warming. A good thing of course. It prompted TV news stations to dust off their stock footage of ‘natural’ disasters and smog-filled cities.
Animal agriculture is the number one cause of climate change, a fact that governments and businesses have kept quiet for obvious reasons. To make matters worse, Al Gore, Greenpeace, Naomi Klein and other campaigners have also all but ignored this issue.
If you are truly worried about climate change then you should watch Cowspiracy and check out the Green Your Diet website.
Going vegan is the ideal solution but even reducing the consumption of meat would help the planet far more than turning off unnecessary lights or not using water sprinklers on your lawn.
THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING by Naomi Klein (Allen Lane, 2013)“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding” – Upton Sinclair.
Alternative titles to this brave and important book could have been ‘Everything Must Change’, ‘Everything is Fucked’ or even more despairingly, The End Is Nigh.
Whatever way you look at the situation that Naomi Klein presents, it is clear that humanity is well and truly up shit creek climate-wise.
It would nice to report that this book also provides us with some metaphorical paddles but, sadly, this is not the case.
Klein presents the scale of the problem but in terms of solutions ultimately offers only a faith in the essential resilience of the human spirit. Continue reading
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