The film includes disturbing scenes like this one of elephant tusks burning in Kenya.
It’s not too late to save the planet, according to a visually stunning documentary to be screened by UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies in advance of a pivotal United Nations climate summit.
A free showing of Anthropocene: The Human Epoch on Sept. 25 at Union South Marquee theater coincides with others across the nation, timed ahead of the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York. The event is co-sponsored by the Madison-based Outrider Foundation, where Tia Nelson, daughter of Wisconsin Sen. Gaylord Nelson — the founder of Earth Day and the Nelson Institute’s namesake — is a managing director.
Anthropocene is a succession of short stopovers at international sites visited by the Anthropocene Working Group. The international body of scientists argues that the geological Holocene Epoch gave way to the Anthropocene Epoch in the mid-20th century — an era marked by profound and lasting human-made changes to the Earth.
Wide and aerial shots of environmental degradation — at times, oddly breathtaking — tell the story of humans’ impact on the planet. Light narration and brief commentary from residents of the locations add context. At the white- and-black-striped Carrara marble quarry in Italy, originally operated by the ancient Romans, cutting was done by hand until the last 50 years or so, when earth-moving equipment began to hasten the process. In Chile’s Atacama Desert, the driest in the world, workers row boats through acres of aquamarine moats that use the ample sunlight to produce lithium for pharmaceutical and battery production. In the world’s largest landfill in Kenya, 6,000 people work each day, dumping out garbage bags to forage for usable or recyclable materials.
Although the climate is at a critical point, Nelson says there’s hope if individuals demand change in the way they did when her father pioneered Earth Day. After 17 years with The Nature Conservancy, she worked as executive secretary to the Wisconsin Board of Commissioners of Public Lands. Now she’s the managing director of the human-caused climate change branch of the Outrider Foundation. The foundation uses interactive digital content to inform, engage and inspire action on global risks and threats.
“Individuals collectively created that political will and they changed the course of American history,” Nelson says, noting the subsequent founding of the Environmental Protection Agency. “We should never forget our power and our obligation to be involved in the political process and in building that brighter future for our children and for future generations.”
[Editor's note: This article was corrected to note that in the scene in Chile's Atacama Desert, workers were harvesting lithium, not lichens.]
