Product Description

Studio: Microcinema Inc. Release Date: 11/27/2007

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20261 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-11-27
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 78 minutes

Customer Reviews

Life-Changing Eye-Opener
Life-Changing Eye-Opener, March 18, 2008
By Sarah Anne Edwards"

I am amazed there are so few reviews of this DVD. It was the feature at a conference I attended three years ago and watching it was an eye-opening, life-changing event. Yes, we knew about the drawbacks of sprawl and its effects on the environment. Yada, yada. What we didn't know about was that our entire "non-negotiable" American way of life is perched on, if not already tipping over, the edge of collapse in the not so distant future as a result of world-wide fossil fuel depletion, among other things. The implications of this well-documented DVD affect nearly every aspect of our daily lives. Every American needs to see this. Few if any will like it. Many will discount it. But hopefully most of us will wake-up and realize that we need to get real busy, real fast safeguarding our own personal circumstances and electing officials at all levels of government who recognize the impending crises we face and have the courage to take needed action to address it. Granted the DVD goes on a bit long on the same points and verges occasionally into unnecessary political commentary. But what is being laid out here bears repeating and is not a political issue. It is a survival issue. Over the past 3 years my husband and I have made many decisions about our careers, finances, lifestyle choices, and every one has been influenced by what we learned from watching this documentary. If only we'd seen it a couple of years earlier we wouldn't be trying to compensate now for decisions we made before we knew what was at stake.

Informative and motivational
The take away message for me is to "live locally" and conserve. Peak oil will in time shift our "American" way of life, our culture, and our values. In a time of growing concern for future energy shortages, this documentary approaches the subject by suggesting that our suburban way of life - suburban sprawl, extended commutes, and even the accessibility of household merchandise - is soon coming to an end. Alternative fuel sources are flawed. Hydrogen requires electricity for conversion; Biodiesel requires farmland, which continues to become more costly to maintain. By conserving fuel and shifting to urban revitalization, we can help reduce some of the negative impacts of living in an oil-based economy.

For those of you hot on the issue of peak oil, this documentary will be more of the same. It is still an interesting and informative film, albeit biased in that it presents only one point of view. I gave it 4 stars, also because of the frequent film noise (though that may be attributed to the copy I viewed).

Informative
I had read a review of this DVD before it was on sale in the shops. I still have not found it in the shops. It answered a lot of questions about the use of bio fuels and other forms of energy that are also not sustainable if we want to continue living the way we do at present. It could well help make decisions on where we live in the future and certainly on the use of petrol driven cars. It reinforced my view of wasteful use of land for housing that takes people a long way from services and does not foster a sense of community. I live in New Zealand and we are big users of fossil fuels.