Reviews
Six Degrees That Could Change the World
by Sydney L. Murray
We have all seen catastrophic weather in the last few years, beginning with Hurricane Katrina and the flooding along the Mississippi river, which was reportedly unprecedented for the last 500 years. Six Degrees Could Change the World, a 96-minute film narrated by actor Alec Baldwin, tackles global warming as only National Geographic could—with a brilliantly colored travelogue of the possible impact on some of the world’s most remote and fragile locales, from the pristine headwaters of the Ganges River, high in the Himalayas, to the tiny villages of Greenland.
Based upon scientific research and climate models, the broadcast, as well as the website, presents a powerful look at what will happen to the Earth, degree by degree, if global temperatures continue to rise.
This film was inspired by the book, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, by Mark Lynos, and includes interviews with NASA’s Jim Hansen and IPCC Chair Rajendra Pachauri (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).
What can we do about global warming and what will happen if we don’t change it? What would a single degree increase do to our world? Many of the coastal cities of the world could be threatened by rising sea levels and other catastrophic events.
Severe dryness is another issue we must face. Australia has experienced the worst drought in a thousand years. The Amazon region in 2005 went through the worst drought in recorded history.
One image from the film that I can’t get out of my mind is the abandoned dogs in Greenland who once were the lifelines for their owners, allowing them to travel over hundreds of miles of frozen tundra. Now as the ice and snow recede, the owners have abandoned these dogs, unable to feed or care for them. This region has lost a way of life that is symbolized by these dogs tethered to wooden pallets without food or hope.
I’m not some paragon of green virtue. I don’t have solar panels on my roof or a wind turbine in my back garden, but I have I grown increasingly aware of the need to keep my own greenhouse gas emissions to a minimum. I want to be able to prove to myself that a low-carbon lifestyle is not only possible, but desirable too. Check out this film to find out some simple ways you can change your life and hopefully change our world.
Six Degrees Could Change the World is available on DVD at www.nationalgeographic.com/channel. – SLM