The 'continuing' Age of Stupid & Rethinking Environmental Folklore

So in the past week I've been sent a couple of things to watch from friends, and I thought I'd share them with you too.

The first was a TED talk (I love these) by a sustainability strategist, who urges us to think bigger in order to create systems and products that ease the strain on the planet.  Really interesting, very accessible and challenging. (18 mins long)

http://www.ted.com/talks/leyla_acaroglu_paper_beats_plastic_how_to_rethink_environmental_folklore.html

The second is a movie from a few years back, that I missed at the time, and is called 'The Age of Stupid'.  Wikipedia sums it up nicely: The film is a drama-documentary-animation hybrid which stars Pete Postlethwaite as a man living alone in the devastated world of 2055, watching archive footage from the mid-to-late 2000s and asking "Why didn't we stop climate change when we had the chance?"

It has very challenging footage from Iraq, the US, Nigeria, France and some infuriating footage from the UK.  It's a bit longer at 89 mins, but is a challenging watch, and in some ways makes my small changes seem like total drops in the ever rising oceans, but inspires me to think further and beyond as well.  http://youtu.be/XpSdPP9b0pc

A few weeks ago someone was shocked when I explained that we no longer have a car and rarely leave the city, and that I hope not to have to travel on a plane in the future.  Was I not limiting my children's outlook on life by not taking them to the woods and the countryside frequently, by not flying them to different places?  On one level the answer could be 'yes', but on a more future planet-state level, perhaps I'm helping to keep opportunities and life as we know it on our planet for a bit longer.  As another movie title suggestions, it's an 'inconvient truth'...and a constant battle/challenge to make decisions....but it often feels like the 'right choice'.

All a bit more heavy that bins, plastic and nappies...but hey ho.