Last night I went to the screening of '
Surviving Progress' at the
Environmental Film Festival Melbourne (EFFM). The organisers are to be congratulated as they have put together a solid and varied program. Unfortunately taking it all in would be too intense for me. In this vein I overheard an audience member say last night 'where are the environmental comedies'?
'Surviving Progress' makes it clear that our situation is no laughing matter - an implicit message of the film is that we are in a type of evolutionary cul-de-sac and it will be a real test of the evolutionary gifts bestowed on humans as to whether we can get ourselves into a new, viable, trajectory. As one commentator said, when civilisations failed in the past there were other models in the wings. At the moment it is not clear that any such models exist.
The movie is a Canadian production:
'Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks, 2011 (Canada)
Produced and distributed by the National Film Board of Canada
1 hour 26 mins
Surviving Progress presents the story of human
advancement as awe-inspiring and double-edged. It reveals the grave risk
of running the 21st century's software � our know-how � on the ancient
hardware of our primate brain which hasn't been upgraded in 50,000
years. With rich imagery and immersive soundtrack, filmmakers Mathieu
Roy and Harold Crooks launch us on journey to contemplate our evolution
from cave-dwellers to space explorers.
Ronald Wright, whose best-seller, "A Short History Of
Progress" inspired this film, reveals how civilizations are repeatedly
destroyed by "progress traps" � alluring technologies serve immediate
needs, but ransom the future. With intersecting stories from a Chinese
car-driving club, a Wall Street insider who exposes an out-of-control,
environmentally rapacious financial elite, and eco-cops defending a
scorched Amazon, the film lays stark evidence before us. In the past, we
could use up a region's resources and move on. But if today's global
civilization collapses from over-consumption, that's it. We have no
back-up planet.
Surviving Progress leaves us with a challenge: To prove that making apes smarter was not an evolutionary dead-end.'
I particularly liked the challenge posed in the film to contemporary economic and financial models, especially how debt has been manipulated by a global oligarchy. Given how economics and finance models failed in the GFC (and continue to fail) it is disturbing that so many young people want to study economics.
Diane Coyle writes that:
'According to UCAS figures (UK), 7,800 students began an undergraduate degree
in the subject [economics] in autumn 2011, and more than 50,000 applied to do so.
This represented an increase in student numbers of 8.5 per cent since
2010, compared with a 1 per cent rise in the total number accepted to UK
universities.'
This concern is particularly valid given the evidence that:
'The messages from employers are consistent, be they in the public
sector, investment banks or consultancies. Young economists do not know
enough economic history, or enough about the intellectual history of
their own subject and the continuing debates about methods. Although
they are technically adept, they are too narrow in how they approach the
problems they face at work.
Scandalously, many economics
students also leave university without two essential practical skills
for employment as economists: the ability to find and use data
correctly, and the ability to communicate their technical knowledge to
non-specialists.'
Coyle, an economist and employer of economists, goes on to argue that:
'Economics [has] also become very abstract, taking no account of
institutions such as hedge funds and standards of behaviour that, with
hindsight, were so obviously important........As far as undergraduate economics is concerned, one important change
needed is to introduce more interdisciplinarity into courses. Among
other things, this would help to teach that both inductive and deductive
reasoning can be applied to the same problems. Economics has become too
narrowly deductive and theory-based. Exposure to other social sciences
can correct this'
I was less enamoured with the ways in which '
Surviving Progress' dealt with our propensity to seek out 'miracle innovations' that will resolve our collective dilemma. In other words to extend the models of thinking and acting that underpin our current trajectory rather than opening up new, radical possibilties. The material devoted to J Craig Ventner I found disingenous and systemically flawed. Colleagues have recently drawn my attention to
articles which
typify what I mean, including this one in Ventner's own domain of genetics. In the language of the film, these susgestions are merely attempts by the existing oligarchies to maintain their hegemony!
They also reflect the systemic failure of our governance processes as is vividly portrayed on the front page of today's
leader in The Age:
'Australia's highest-emitting brown coal electricity generators are
between $400 million and $1 billion better off than they would have been
without the carbon tax, according to new modelling.
In terms of what to do next 'Surviving Progress' has little to offer that is new, an argument echoed
in this review. We have known about limits for some time. Also of the need to reduce consumption (though one part on this was well handled and deserves a YouTube slot of its own). One way the film could make a real difference is if every senior managment team (including Universities) put it on the agenda of their next away day and treated a viewing like a book club exercise. That said, it would probably require a few non-board invitees to keep the conversation going beyond 10 minutes!
