On September 26th, I went to see the movie Anthropocene: The Human Epoch. This academic event was a documentary about how humans have changed the Earth since we have lived on it, and how because of this, we have now left the Holocene Epoch and entered the Anthropocene. It provided many examples throughout the entire world. This topic is one that is debated among the science community. Those who argue for this say that because of all the changes we have made and cannot reverse, we have moved on from the last Epoch. There is also debate about when we entered this time period.
In the beginning, there is a large fire displayed. This gets circled back to at the end, where it is clear that ivory is being burned as symbolism for not killing elephants for their ivory in Africa. It was the largest amount of ivory burned at one time.
The documentary then takes its viewers to many places all over the globe demonstrating the changes that humans that made on the surface out the Earth. In China, the concrete seawalls, put up to prevent flooding, are shown. These walls cover about 60% of the mainland coast. The largest terrestrial machines ever built are housed in Germany, and it shows how massive they are. In the Russian Ural Mountains, the potash mines are shown. When showing the Great Barrier Reef, the destruction of the corals are displayed. In the Atacama Desert, the lithium evaporation pools are shown. There are more examples provided throughout the film, and they are all just as eye opening.
Personally, this documentary revealed a lot to me. I knew about many things that humans as a whole have done to the earth, but this film brought up many things I did not know existed or that we had done them. It was also very interesting to me to learn about all of these tactics used for making our world more convenient for us. However, it was made in a completely different way than I expected. Much of the film was without talking. There was sound, but it was related to what was occurring. In addition, there was a slight amount of explanation used to discussed what was happening, but after, the viewer just observed the event. In my opinion, this made it more impactful. The information was put forth, and with only noises that would be present in the environment the event that was taking place were heard. Because of this, I was able to form my opinion about how I felt about the situation. The long periods where one thing was viewed allowed for a tremendous amount of reflection on the world.
This relates to international affairs because it is a problem for everyone. With going around the entire world to show certain things that happen all over, it proves that these issues do not just occur in one spot; countries all over have contributed to changing the Earth and its surfaces. It also shows that it is the responsibility of all countries to figure out what to do, not just one area.