Anima Mundi

Will you survive the transition of human industrial civilization happening now due to peak oil and climate change? Can you see the forest for the trees, the earth for the dream, the universe for the seed? Anima Mundi is an innovative documentary about the planetary animal called Gaia and the human animal we deny, we deny at our own peril, yet a peril that is perfect in design.

Featuring:
David Holmgren – co-founder of Permaculture
John Seed OAM – Deep Ecology
Stephan Harding – Gaian Ecology
Vandana Shiva – Human Rights
Michael C Ruppert – Peak Oil (as seen in the movie Collapse)
Michael Reynolds – Earthships (as seen in the movie Garbage Warrior)
Noam Chomsky – Activism
Dr Mark O’Meadhra – Integrative Medicine
Dr Christine James – Psychology
Permablitz – Permaculture



Peak Oil

Intentional Communities In Spain

8th Life (Canary Islands)

We believe that stopping the destruction, working to build soil, restore ecosystems, heal our addictions, change organizational structures of the global economy & learn to live in community starting locally ... are the most important & urgent jobs to do now.

Website: 8th Life

Matavenero (Castile & Leon)

Website: Matavenero 



Sunseed (Andalusia)

Welcome to the Sunseed Desert Project, a hands-on practical centre for low-impact living and environmental education in Andalucía. At this lively international community, staff and volunteers work and learn together to develop, demonstrate, research and communicate alternative ways of having less impact and a smaller environmental footprint. Situated in a Los Molinos del Río Aguas, in a beautiful valley in southern Spain, Sunseed is off-grid and committed to low impact living and environmental stewardship.

Website: Sunseed

Valle De Sensaciones (Andalusia)

The project 'Valle de Sensaciones' is creating a space rich in nature, whose design, installations and sustainable infrastructure are allowing people to experiment with a wide variety of projects that revive the senses, including the conscience, and help to recreate a profound contact with the spirit of nature, the basis of our life. A space where various creators find fertile soil for the development of new initiatives between Art, Ecology and Technology. Another objective is to transmit the whole range of knowledge and inspiration out of the creation of this project. Beside the thematic areas of permaculture, green building, ecotecnology, and many other, we like to mediate a different attitude towards the need of changing our lifes, where each iniciative is enriched by creativity, art, music, spirituality, sensuality and by the spirit of comunal living.

Website: Valle de Sensaciones 

Ecoaldea de Lakabe (Navarre)



Other Ecovillages & Communities in Spain:
(Click for link to website)

Escanda (Asturias)
Falcon Blanco (Ibiza)
KanAwen (Catalonia)
Los Portales (Andalusia)
Flores de Vida (Catalonia)
Matricultura (Canary Islands)
Taller Karuna (Castile & Leon)

Iberian Ecovillage Network

Midway (trailer)

The Midway film project is a powerful visual journey into the heart of an astonishingly symbolic environmental tragedy. On one of the remotest islands on our planet, tens of thousands of baby albatrosses lie dead on the ground, their bodies filled with plastic from the Pacific Garbage Patch. Returning to the island over several years, our team is witnessing the cycles of life and death of these birds as a multi-layered metaphor for our times. With photographer Chris Jordan as our guide, we walk through the fire of horror and grief, facing the immensity of this tragedy—and our own complicity—head on. And in this process, we find an unexpected route to a transformational experience of beauty, acceptance, and understanding.

The Many Uses Of Hemp

This video takes you on a quick tour of the many uses of hemp and offers a little bit of history. The first drafts of the American Declaration of Independence were written on hemp paper. It was eventually banned in the US not because of any potential that it could be abused as a drug, because commercially grown hemp does not have THC as marijuana does but because it's a major threat to corporations.

We are familiar with hemp used in textiles, but did you know it is also being used to manufacture bricks and building materials like chipboard? And fuel...and plastic? And it makes a great nutritional supplement? Did you know hemp makes up to 4 times as much pulp as trees for paper production? There are thousands of uses for hemp and the time has come for the U.S. government to legalize the growing of hemp so that we may benefit economically from this truly amazing plant.

See also:

- Hemp can save the world

- If we grow...this is what we can do

- Understanding the hemp plant and its 50.000 uses and benefits

The Majestic Plastic Bag

Follow the poignant migration of a plastic bag as it travels from the parking lot of a supermarket, through the urban landscape, to the sea. If it can avoid predators and earthly ensnarement, it will 'join a billion other petroleum species' in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and live joyfully in perpetuity.

O.U.R. Ecovillage (Canada)

O.U.R. Ecovillage in British Columbia is aiming to create a self-sustaining community where they live in balance with the land, the animals and the environment. This is likely the most well developed eco community in Canada and is used as a model for similar sites all over the world.

Website: O.U.R. Ecovillage

From their Zero Mile Meal Eatery to zoning and financing innovations, O.U.R. Ecovillage in BC, Canada has paved the way for many communities worldwide. For co-founder Brandy Gallagher, the story on the planet right now could be a shared ethos of caring: "Everyone is fed. Everyone is taken care of." Asserting that "No is just an uneducated Yes," Brandy shows how a village mindset can transform individuals, preserve land, reduce resource use, apply permaculture principles, change laws, and even the way money works.

O.U.R. stands for "One United Resource," expressing how interdependence and inclusion undergird this 25 acre demonstration sustainable community on Vancouver Island. This model ecovillage comprises natural buildings, a school, long- and short-term residences, extensive gardens, greenhouses, and even a bed & breakfast. Brandy Gallagher MacPherson describes how they created an entirely new zoning category by building relationships with regulatory agencies that go beyond "us versus them".

Let's Talk About Soil

This animated film tells the reality of soil resources around the world, covering the issues of degradation, urbanization, land grabbing and overexploitation; the film offers options to make the way we manage our soils more sustainable.

Phillip Wollen: Animals Should Be Off The Menu

Amazing must see speech by Phillip Wollen. Cornell and Harvard state that the optimum amount of meat in a healthy diet is precisely zero!

Earth Friendly Moving

Cardboard boxes are not the way to move anymore. This video spotlights an exceptionally forward thinking company called Earth Friendly Moving, serving Orange county and Los Angeles county in California. They offer a Rent-A-Green Box service. These are strong plastic boxes you rent, all made from 100% recycled plastic bottles. Owner Spencer Brown got the idea when he spent $800 on moving supplies, only to have to drive to the dump and trash them all after their one day of use.

His company also makes pallets to stack on, and a bubble wrap replacement out of waste materials. The trucks they drive are fueled by waste vegetable oil, which he says saves him half a million dollars a year.

Those styrofoam packing peanuts are not just a terrible choice because they float around and do not biodegrade: they break off into smaller bits and birds, fish and other animals eat them. They choke, become poisoned and die. This company has wonderful biodegradable solutions to replace them; small paper cubes made of recycled cereal boxes that people return when they are done, and another product that is fully compostable.

Yes we are moving on! See if you can support initiatives like this in your area when anyone you know needs to move from now on.

Gasland (Full Movie)

The Halliburton-developed drilling technology of “fracking” or hydraulic fracturing has unlocked a “Saudia Arabia of natural gas” just beneath us. But is fracking safe?

When filmmaker Josh Fox is asked to lease his land for drilling, he embarks on a cross-country odyssey uncovering a trail of secrets, lies and contamination. A recently drilled nearby Pennsylvania town reports that residents are able to light their drinking water on fire. This is just one of the many absurd and astonishing revelations of a new country called Gasland.

Short version on YouTube: Gasland

Fracking Hell: The Untold Story

An original investigative report by Earth Focus and UK's Ecologist Film Unit looks at the risks of natural gas development in the Marcellus Shale. From toxic chemicals in drinking water to unregulated interstate dumping of potentially radioactive waste that experts fear can contaminate water supplies in major population centers including New York City, are the health consequences worth the economic gains?

Marcellus Shale contains enough natural gas to supply all US gas needs for 14 years. But as gas drilling takes place, using a process called hydraulic fracturing or "fracking," toxic chemicals and methane gas seep into drinking water. Now experts fear that unacceptable levels of radioactive Radium 226 in gas development waste.

Fracking chemicals are linked to bone, liver and breast cancers, gastrointestinal, circulatory, respiratory, developmental as well as brain and nervous system disorders. Such chemicals are present in frack waste and may find their way into drinking water and air.

Man

Looking at mans relationship with the natural world.

Julia Butterfly Hill

Adventures In Treesitting

This award-winning documentary reveals the extraordinary journey of a woman who lived 200 feet up in a redwood tree for two years to save the thousand year-old tree from destruction.

Part 2
Part 3

Nearly four years ago, Julia Butterfly Hill sent an international message through her silent protest, living 738 days in the branches of “Luna”, a 1,000 year old Redwood Tree. From 20 stories high, she witnessed first hand the devastation of “clear cutting”, a method of cutting down these ancient trees. In this video, Julia offers a profound message about viewing the world as a whole, overcoming separation and expanding our consciousness.

Environmental & social justice activist Julia Butterfly Hill shows how our belief that we are separate from the whole has created a disposability consciousness. "I know in my heart that as long as trashing the planet and trashing each other, a healthy, holistic and healed world is not possible. We can not have peace ON the earth unless we also have peace WITH the earth. Our disposability consciousness is a weapon of mass destruction." She is referring to how we mindlessly buy a cup of coffee - or anything - in disposable packaging. And where is "away" when we throw it away? It's all right here, isn't it? What a monumental disconnect we have come to accept! She speaks of reclaiming every step of life as a step toward consciousness, and a step toward healing!

Reel Change Films captured an amazing and inspiring talk by Julia Butterfly Hill, the 2010 keynote speaker at the Midwest Yoga conference sponsored by Johnny Kest's Center for Yoga of Michigan. Julia is best known for having saved a group of redwoods from destruction by the northern California logging industry by spending over 2 years on a 4x6' platform 200 feet above ground. Her story is amazing, but her commitment to practicing what she preaches is even more impressive. This talk blew away everyone in the room. I felt privileged to be there. It's well worth sitting through all 6 segments. This is part of a series of interviews conducted by Jason Scholder of Reel Change Films from Asheville, NC, comprising an ongoing, on-line spiritual documentary project entitled Walking the Path.

Divine Mirrors    

   

Part 2: Gift Of Breath
Part 3: Ancestors To The Future  
Part 4: Power Of Love 
Part 5: Manifesting Heaven On Earth
Part 6: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rejoice... Rethink!

Zero Waste Family

Here they are: The Johnsons - contemporary family in California that has arranged their life so that they generate practically NO waste. It's not only that it's NOT so hard - they save money too!

AirPod, A Car That Runs On Air

AIRPod is the culmination of MDI studies on pollution and urban mobility. This concept will be the first to leave the production line in spring 2009. MDI will respond to an invitation to tender of the city of Paris, 'Autolib', and is already the subject of applications for various municipalities. With small size, a tiny price, zero pollution, fun and futuristic design, AIRPod mark a turning point in the range of urban vehicles while renewing the idea of the automobile and transportation. You can drive with a joystick, it only costs one euro per 200 km and leaves no one indifferent in crept in traffic. It is a real breath of fresh air in our cities and the prelude to travel without pollution. Its small size make it easy to park, keeping still a large internal volume. AIRPod help us to forget the price of petrol.

Website: MDI Enterprises

Sea The Truth

The state of our oceans and seas is the main focus in 'Sea the Truth'. Leading scientists such as Daniel Pauly suggest that if we continue to catch and eat fish at the current rate, the oceans and seas will be empty within 40 years. The hunt for fish is an economic monster on the run: large bottom trawlers are scraping the bottoms of the seas empty, taking with them all living things with destructive force. The massive amount of bycatch is thrown back into the sea, maimed or dead.

Under the guidance of Dutch MP Marianne Thieme, two young marine biologists Marianne van Mierlo and Barbara van Genne, are searching worldwide for scientific information about the condition of our biggest ecosystems, which cover more than two thirds of our planet. Underwater photographer Dos Winkel shows them the beauty of marine life and the enormous threats to which it is exposed. For the documentary the producers filmed in Newfoundland, on Bonaire, on the North Sea, the Azores and at various locations in the Netherlands. Authorities offer the solution of sustainable fisheries projects while leading scientists say that every fish that is taken now, is one too many. This documentary shows that, unfortunately, there is no such thing as 'sustainable fishing'.

House Of Trash

See how beautiful and efficient a house of trash can be. Annie and Jay Warmke in Ohio live in a wonderful House Of Trash so special they even give tours of the place. All the structures on their property are built with reclaimed materials, and actual 'garbage'. There are 1,400 old tires packed with mud, along with bottles, cans and plastic jugs providing insulation. They even bought a barn for $200 at auction just to use the wood! As this couple says, there's a lot of garbage out there to put to good use. They have a plastic bottle greenhouse for year round food production. Both structures manage their own heating, cooling and water needs without any external help.

No Impact Man

Colin Beavan decides to completely eliminate his personal impact on the environment for the next year. It means eating vegetarian, buying only local food, and turning off the refrigerator. It also means no elevators, no television, no cars, busses, or airplanes, no toxic cleaning products, no electricity, no material consumption, and no garbage. Can one man save the planet without driving his family crazy?

Ecovillage Experiments Around The World

Having come to the realization that international treaties, top-down, government programs, and even academic research isn't going to get us out of the environmental mess we are in, Professor Karen Litfin set out to study communities that are trying to live sustainably. She researched 14 ecovillages intensively from four perspectives: ecological, economic, social and spiritual sustainability. She concludes that these ecovillages, located in different continents and settings, have a lot of commonalities that serve as a model for how we can all live our lives where we are today. 

Samso: The Renewable Energy Island

Clear Thinking, Investment and Cooperation.

Welcome to Samso, an island off the coast of Denmark. Here is an example of something so remarkable: a community pulling together, investing together, and succeeding at becoming completely energy independent. In 1998 they had a bold plan to switch to renewable energy. The civic leaders hit the road and convinced 450 island residents to invest in wind power. The farmers liked the idea of making money on the power they could sell back to the grid, as there is plenty of wind on the island. They formed a cooperative and put up 2 windmills. Private investors put up another 5. These windmills produce more electricity than the island consumed, and they recouped their investment completely within a few years.
Meet an electrician who installed his own wind turbine. He powers his whole house, an electric car and again, because of selling energy back to the grid -- his $30,000 wind turbine will have paid for itself in just 5 years. He can look forward to a lifetime of no energy bills, and needs no gas for the car. When the islanders decided to install 10 offshore windmills, they produced so much power that Samso was now completely carbon neutral. 'We would rather buy our energy from our neighbor or another investor on the island than we would pay (suppliers in) The Middle East or an oil company. We just like the money to stay on the island.' says a resident.
This is truly a fascinating example of clear thinking and cooperation -- spread the word!

Repurposing Plastic Beach Debris

Along the surf line of a seemingly pristine beach on the Bahamian island of Eleuthera, fashion designer Barbara de Vries spotted some pretty specks of color, which turned out to be pieces of discarded plastic. And so, what started out as a vacation turned into a new career - raising awareness about plastic debris through art. De Vries marvels at the poetic justice of picking up plastic on a beach, taking ownership of the problem, repurposing the plastic into high fashion jewelry, and having it sold back right on the same beach.



One Beach

Why do we love the beach? "Maybe we love the beach because we carry the sea within us, a heart full of ocean pumping a rhythm, a rhythm, a rhythm..." But our beaches are currently filled with plastic debris, littered or washed up from across the sea. This film highlights the work of five individuals and organizations that are caring for their ONE beach with creative solutions. Their message? Take ownership of this plastic. And while you are at it, pick it up and do something creative with it.