This documentary directed by Deborah Koons-Garcia is a testament to how well agribusiness and biotech industry have hidden the dangers of recent trends in food technology, gene engineering, monoculture farming, and transgenic Frankenfood.
After California mandated that automakers sell some electric cars, they complied. This documentary is the story of how they produced a popular electric vehicle but refused to sell it, choosing instead to lease it, fight the mandate in the courts, and eventually re-possess, crush, and destroy all the cars.
Today’s concept cars from GM are less interesting than the production cars of 1997 (see below). What’s going on here?
http://www.enn.com/sci-tech/article/38207
All the auto makers want consumers to believe they are doing their best to solve our dependence on oil, but this documentary demonstrates that the profitability of oil has led companies like GM to ignore common sense and extend the oil addiction.
Ironically, as oil prices have risen, and demand for vehicles powered by alternative energy sources has risen, American automobile companies have been struggling to sell oversized SUV gas guzzlers and their market share has fallen. Ford now brags about its Highlander Hybrid (“bold moves”), but Toyota has a half-dozen similar vehicles and passenger hybrid cars also. So while Ford tries to portray itself as leading the way, they are really lagging behind. Who Killed the Electric Car shows how the American auto industry got to this sad state by fighting the inevitable decline of the internal combustion engine.
In the late 19th century corporations were accorded protections as if they were human beings under U.S. law. The Corporation takes a look at the behavioral patterns of these quasi-human entities, and applies conventional definitions of psychological maladies to demonstrate that the state of the modern corporation is very ill indeed.
The Corporation is very useful viewing for anyone trying to get a handle on greenwashing because it is a primer on how corporations became what they are today, and a review of ways that they operate.
This film combines G-rated animal adventure with a relatively soft environmental message. The film ends with a CODA about the dire predictions of the imminent disappearance of summer sea ice in the arctic, necessary for the survival of the film’s animals. The estimated date when sea ice would be gone is 2040. But NASA’s James Hansen revised this figure down to 2012 only a few months after the film’s release. Yipes.
Source: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/12/11/arctic.melt.ap/index.html
This documentary featuring Al Gore and has won an academy award for the best documentary of 2006.
The award is clearly a gesture of support, and a signal of alarm, rather than a declaration that this particular film is brilliant. While informative, the film begs the question why Gore’s call to action was relatively muted in his years as the Vice President?
