Video Reflection #1- The 11th Hour(2007)

I've watched this documentary film "The 11th Hour" which is presented by Leonardo DiCaprio.
This 95-minutes running film introduce and/or remind the viewers of the current issues between developing human society and the natural ecosystem.
One of the expert thinker interviewed in the film tells me that it's our [instictual] mind and act of human for the need to survive is creating a devastating gash on our planet.

Because human are capable of making tools and tools are made from non-renewable sources of the earth, and with the exponential growth of human population, we are using our finite resources at a very, very, very fast rate.
The combination of: obtaining natural resources, turning them into useable products, and then the disposal of them as wastes, and with the ways in how we handle the mechanical processes and the uses of the earth's materials is unsustainable and is causing negative effect on the earth's environment.

It's interesting to hear a notion from another expert, that the general public fear the loss of our ecosystem and the chances of survival of many species. But the idea is that human are actually running the end of their lively-journey and our natural environment may actually survive the harmful ways like deforestation, exploding cliffs and rocks to reach rich metal ores, and pumping oil from the ocean and the continent.

Because in our recorded history the naturals on earth had survived many hardships of natural disasters, and severe climate change, e.g. the Ice Age. While species have the natural ability to survive the environment, such as spider's body can producde webs; geckos regenerate their loss tail; plants' ribozomes allow them to re-sprout after fires; bacteria are immune to other invading bacterial cells.

Human don't have these kind of adaptative responses. Human are able to create a ''comfortable'' environment for themselves, but with unsustainable practices the offsets also became destructive and harmful to own environment.
Moving back to the film, experts also describes that we can create design-solutions imitating nature bio-forms and -functions, incorporating natural-principles in our sustainable designs, such as plants and flowres use of photosynthesis to capture water and sun-light energy.
There is current incentives and researches well spent into creating harvesting-renewable sources efficiently and using them in sustainable manner.
The hope of this documentary is to expand the awareness to the human community. That our world is in crisis and needs attention to. The presenter of this film, DiCaprio, indicated that it requires the global effort to turn things around to help us live harmoniously with natural system.

And experts, says we cannot just blame the national government for their lack of attention and unreliable environmental policies and market organisations (e.g. petroleum companies) that performs unsustainable practices, it's we human are actually to blame for our acts, because we demanded to have commercial products; we wanted more food, homes, cars, electronics, luxuries, etc.

I reckon this film is important to be noted by designers. This generation human society is very advance and well educated, it is therefore, very worthwile and essential that design organisations come up with solutions for our today's and future problems.