Planet Earth The Future is a BBC documentary series about conservation surrounding some of the species and environments featured in Planet Earth, using interviews with the film-makers and eminent figures from the fields of science, conservation, politics and theology.
The series comprises three episodes:
1. BBC Planet Earth The Future movie series online | Saving Species movie - There have been few natural history films like it. Planet Earth. Filming Planet Earth has been a wonderful experience because we've been able to visit an extraordinary range of our planet, really, and it's been something of a bittersweet experience because we have seen some very threatened animals and that's always sad to see, but at the same time we've met some wonderful impassioned individuals who are doing a great deal on the ground to improve the situation for those particular species. How much will it matter to us if they are lost? What can we really do to save them? And in this new millennium, are we still going about it the right way?
2. BBC Planet Earth The Future movie series online | Into The Wilderness movie - Well, wilderness is a concept that really has been developed a lot in Western society, recognizing that there are certain places that have either very low human populations or are entirely devoid of people. It's not a concept that necessarily has spread worldwide, yet it's something that I think is increasingly becoming important on an evermore overcrowded planet. Overcrowded? This programme will ask if population is the greatest threat to wilderness. It can't be coincidence that it shrinks as humanity grows. Ignoring population strikes me as the biggest own goal that the environment movement has ever scored. I would argue the bigger threat is effectively the growth in our economy and the way we use our wealth.
3. BBC Planet Earth The Future movie series online | Living Together movie - The good news in this picture is that we also see glimmers of the solution that we can begin to see strategies that work, that it is possible to shift our economies so that it works for conservation instead of against it. I've always felt a kind of very deep gut-wrenching sense of pain when I think about the speed with which we're laying waste the planet.
BBC Planet Earth The Future movie series reviews:
"I have two sons, who are 17 and 19, and I worry about their future. I worry about the planet that we are leaving to them. And I am a conservationist, so I am by nature an optimist. Because you have to believe it's possible to turn around the trends that you see on this planet."
"And everywhere where you go, there are people that care about these places, and care about the species. And while they still exist, I think we should all feel hopeful that they can continue to live and survive in these incredible places."
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Watch BBC Planet Earth The Future movie series online | Watch Saving Species movie - Questions to the decision-makers and conservationists on the ground  We'll demonstrate that the environmental debate today has never been more important. I don't think that the conservation organizations, the giants of conservation, know better than the people who, historically, have been staying with wildlife. We'll use footage from Planet Earth to look at some of the world's most important wild places and what's been happening to them. The situation in the Asian region in particular is extremely serious. Nearly all of the natural rainforest has gone from several countries now, Thailand and the Philippines, and what remains in the big blocks, for example, in the Indonesian islands and New Guinea is now under serious threat, not least because of the huge consumption boom that's going on in China. |
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Watch BBC Planet Earth The Future movie series online | Watch Into The Wilderness movie - Why it isn't just virgin territory waiting for an ever-expanding humanity to take it over  We'll discover that the environmental debate has never been more heated, and not just at the political level. Think about it this way, if you had to decide to keep a tree standing or feed one of your children, what would you do? Despite everything, there are still vast wildernesses. For instance, the Boreal forest. This vast forest circling the globe contains a third of all the trees on Earth and produces so much oxygen it changes the composition of the atmosphere. So how much of our planet is still covered with wilderness? In fact, there is a figure. A couple of years ago, Russ Mittermeier conducted the study that produced it. So there are a lot of places out there that have very few people. You have to recognize that about a third of that is ice. I mean, Antarctica is huge. Antarctica is about 14 million square kilometres, which is about one and a half times the size of the United States. But the other two thirds, places like Amazonia and a number of other wilderness areas also have very low human populations. |
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Watch BBC Planet Earth The Future movie series online | Watch Living Together movie - It is possible to shift our economies so that it works for conservation  The conservation vision is always struggling against another, more seductive vision. That of a world based on Western lifestyles. I go to other countries and start telling them about conservation, I'm always cognizant in the back of my mind that they're thinking, Well, that's great for you to say that, but, you know, you guys have all these things in the US and you're well developed and all that, and now you're trying to prevent us from doing the same thing. I mean, these are real human aspirations that there's no way you're gonna stop, or stem the tide. I just don't believe that you need to make the exact same mistakes we made, in getting people who are at a very poor standard of living to the next step. It is impossible and unacceptable and just won't work, to say to the poor of China and India; you can't have what we've got. So the only way that we can get a deal with the people of the world to preserve human civilization is to say, It's not any longer going to be economic growth for economic growth's sake. It's a more equitable world where everyone has the basic things that human beings need, and then we cease to find the meaning of life out of more and more economic growth and more and more consumption. |
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BBC Planet Earth The Future movie series quotes:
The country of Costa Rica, in Central America, has come up with this concept of forests as water factories, and they're actually paying farmers who are letting their pasture land go back into forest for the water services that are being provided by these forests.
But during all our recorded history, the last 6,000 to 8,000 years, the climate has been unusually steady.
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I was fed up with politicians talking and I saw an opportunity to actually take action and that's why I bought this piece of rainforest.
The Green Belt Movement holds seminars, and in every class of about 100 people if I ask, How many of you know of a river that was flowing when you are young child, but is no longer flowing? More than 60% of the people will raise their hands up. So people understand what's happening at the very local level.
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BBC Planet Earth The Future movie series online | Saving Species movie - What kind of world is it in which there's going to be no development? Everything stops right now. If you want to use these mountainous forests, for example, for the plantations to produce paper, or to produce building materials, you can. But you do that at the risk of not having rivers flow, and not having rainfall. It seems to me that the issue of conservation of the natural world is something which can unite humanity if people know enough about it. Persuade them to change the way, in which they behave, to change the view that gross materialism and the search of material wealth is not the only thing in life. This is an opportunity for greatness which has never been offered to any civilization, any generation in any civilization in human history before. To act as a generation to do the right thing. If we fail to receive that opportunity, to act on it, then my feeling is we will become the most vilified generation that's ever lived in human history. Saving wilderness, saving ecosystems, saving the planet, saving humanity, for that matter, all have to start somewhere. So maybe in the end, conservation is only a wealthy Western concern, a luxury. A fantasy, even. Can we really believe that by investing money in some other animal species, we're going to save the planet? Save ourselves? When there are hungry humans out there, can we Justify spending money on wildlife conservation? You bet your life.
BBC Planet Earth The Future movie series online | Into The Wilderness movie - The US Congress is under pressure to allow drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR. Oil and natural gas production in the North Slope of Alaska under modern technology will have a tiny environmental footprint, especially in comparison to the oil and gas development we see elsewhere in the world, sponsored by many countries hostile to the interests of democratic states. In the US we have the most stringent safety laws. We have the most stringent environmental protection requirements, and, once oil and gas production is done, the most stringent reclamation requirements. So we basically, like hikers and campers, leave no trace when we're done. We can do it in modern technology. We should do it. In a sense, it makes man very much back in their place. Their role in nature is put right by being in Antarctica. All of nature puts humans in their place because their place is in nature. I think for many people, maybe all people at some level, there is something about the wonder of nature, that nature in its infinite variety and its infinite mystery, and I think that's important. It touches people in their souls. There is a very interesting relationship between wilderness and sacredness. All the great monastic traditions, whether that's Christian, Buddhist or Daoism, all find their roots in an experience of their founders going into the desert, into the wilderness, onto the mountains and finding there something that civilization cannot give them. A realization about themselves, about nature, about the divine. In Daoism, for example, the symbol of someone who has achieved enlightenment is that of a human being alone on a mountain. It's that sense that you are in front of something greater than yourself.
BBC Planet Earth The Future movie series online | Living Together movie - But I think they've left it a bit late in the day, I must admit. 25 years ago, as I remember very well, the World Wildlife Fund organized a big conference of multi faiths, of Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism. They all got together and determined that all those religions carried within them the moral precept that they ought to care for the environment and for the creatures with which we share the world. I suppose in a way, the problem is that the world by and large has turned away from religions and they are having less effect than they did. I'd hope that, in relation to the whole question about the environment and ecology, I could help to keep open some of the really big questions, the questions about what is human nature in this. It's not just a practical problem about how do we avoid disaster, but how do we imagine our humanity freshly, and I think religion has a unique perspective to offer there. They could only have seen it on television, there was nowhere else. They don't see it in the cinema.
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