Unique and attention getting web project.
Should the human race suffer a massive die-off or even extinction, Mother Nature, to hear Julia Roberts tell it, won’t much care.
“I’ve been here for eons,” she says, giving voice to the natural world in a 2-minute video released today. “I’ve fed species greater than you. And I’ve starved greater species than you. My oceans, my soil, my flowing streams, my forests: They all can take you—or leave you… Your actions will determine your fate. Not mine.”
Roberts brief monologue—she’s heard, never seen, as viewers are zoomed over dramatic landscapes and eventually into space—kicks off a series of 10 such short films called “Nature Is Speaking.” They’re being posted on the Web, screened this week (as leads-in to four keynote speeches) at the SXSW Eco conference in Austin, Tex., and are clearly intended for online sharing.
Along with Roberts, an A-list of movie stars donated their time and intonations to the project, which was produced by Washington, D.C.-based Conservation International and co-created with Lee Clow, the ad legend responsible for Apple’s(AAPL) Think Different campaign (“Here’s to the crazy ones.”). In the segments, we hear from various natural elements and sentient beings questioning why humans pay so little attention to the hazards posed by overpopulation, an overheated climate, and other ecological pressures. Harrison Ford holds forth as a deeply exasperated ocean. Kevin Spacey is an unbearably smug rainforest. Ed Norton is soil—with anger issues. Penelope Cruz speaks for fresh water; there is nothing you wouldn’t do for “Agua” when she’s through. Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) likes the campaign so much it has committed to donating $1 to CI for every unique use of the hashtag #NatureIsSpeaking, up to $1 million.
Project is here. I’ll be tweeting this using the hashtag #NatureIsSpeaking as suggested.
This is terrific stuff. Outstanding visuals and message. Roberts is great, Spacey is even better. Redford is good too. They need to NOT publicize who the speakers are, though, or conservatives might not watch. Let them figure it out for themselves.
Cruz is a bit hard to understand because of her accent and the music—the loudness of the music simply ruins The Dirt. Peter—-why do the music soundtracks have to be so loud?
Yes put up a Alter to this Queen of green she is so deep and has all the Models under control .;>)
/SARC
Another strong reminder from some of the prominent actors and actresses of today, we have played with the awesome power of nature, by releasing carbon into our atmosphere that had been locked up by nature as fossils for a few million years during the carboniferous period and beyond. Now we can see the result of our endeavours with this neat online monitor.
“Unless this unprecedented increase is slowed down, models show the balance in a highly complicated structure of climate systems will be tipped and a series of chain reactions will set off. ”
http://co2.climate-kic.org/
“Unless this unprecedented increase is slowed down, models show the balance in a highly complicated structure of climate systems will be tipped and a series of chain reactions will set off. ”
WOW! How come nobody has said anything about this before now? (bad joke)
A clever graphic, but needs to be updated to 401ppm. Which reminds me that people HAVE been talking about this for a long time, and some seem to think that 350ppm is where we need to get BACK to in order to have any hope of restoring “the balance in a highly complicated structure of climate systems” and avoid tipping things into the series of chain reactions that will likely be set off, etc.
I grow more pessimistic every day. I only hope that there is some unknown unknown mechanism out there that will pop up and save us from ourselves before Mother Nature employs her last ditch defense of all life on Earth, the removal of the cause of the disruption—-humans.
In the same vein I’ve had this beautiful cartoon hanging on my office door for years
http://humon.deviantart.com/art/Mother-Gaia-207388674
Nice!
Powerful!
Best,
D