“Solving Converging Global Crises” Film Festival

“Solving Converging Global Crises” Film Festival

Stamp Student Union

Friday, April 30, 2010

1:30-3:45 pm


1.“The End of Poverty?” (2010, 104 minutes) – Benjamin Banneker Room
The End of Poverty? is a daring, thought-provoking and very timely documentary revealing that poverty is not an accident. The End of Poverty? asks why today 20 percent of the planet’s population uses 80 percent of its resources and consumes 30 percent more than the planet can regenerate? Can we really end poverty under our current economic system? Think again. Join William Easterly, Susan George, Amartya Sen, Joseph Stigltiz and other leading experts to rethink this issue!


2.“A Sea Change: Imagine A World Without Fish” (2009, 83 minutes) – Juan Ramon Jimenez Room
A Sea Change documents how the pH balance of the oceans has changed dramatically since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution: a 30 percent increase in acidification. With near unanimity, scientists now agree that the burning of fossil fuels is fundamentally reshaping ocean chemistry. Experts predict that over the next century, steady increases in carbon dioxide emissions and the continued rise in the acidity of oceans will cause most the world’s fisheries to experience a total bottom-up collapse – a state that could last for millions of years. A Sea Change conveys the urgent threat that these dramatic changes pose to our survival, while surveying the e steps we can take to reduce the severity of climate change.

3.“Crude Impact” (2009, 97 minutes) – Margaret Brent Room
It took hundreds of millions of years for petroleum to form on Earth. It took just 150 years for human beings to bleed the planet of roughly half this oil. Arresting in its honesty and erudition, Crude Impact examines the catastrophic prospect of “world peak oil” – or the point in time when the quantity of petroleum extracted from the earth begins to irreversibly decline. Elegantly weaving together an alarmingly accelerating pattern of consumption and depletion, Crude Impact reveals a frighteningly dark future that can only be averted by becoming informed, spreading awareness, and revolutionizing the way we think and live.

Film Festival Sponsors

The Beyond the Classroom Living and Learning Program and the Harrison Program on the Future Global Agenda have partnered with the Office of Undergraduate Studies at the University of Maryland to support this free, public film series on “Solving Converging Global Crises.”

·Beyond the Classroom is a selective interdisciplinary program dedicated to equipping upper-level undergraduate students with the educational and professional leadership skills to understand and contribute constructively to civic engagement and social change in a global context. (http://www.beyondtheclassroom.umd.edu/)

·The Harrison Program on the Future Global Agenda promotes teaching, research,and public dialogue on critical global issues of the twenty-first century. (http://www.bsos.umd.edu/harrison/).