Documentary: The 11th Hour

Some documentaries make me nervous. Nervous for what’s to come, but also nervous about what’s happening now already. The 11th Hour is such a documentary, because it really brings across a message: we need to combat climate change if we still want to live on this planet for the coming decades. And that’s why I want to share it with you today.

Horrific at First

I have to admit, the beginning of such documentaries are always a lot to handle. They make me consider to save all my money so that I might be able to save myself by buying a one-way ticket to Mars when the earth will be chaos (I would be living in a spaceship, cool!). It also makes me want to travel more, because I’m afraid that all the beautiful places we have now will be gone. Yet, I don’t want to share this documentary to convince you to go to Mars with me or to travel the world. The documentary gets better after some time.

The Better Part

The documentary gets better because it also shows us that there is a lot to save still. It is a call for action and that’s what we need right now. After seeing this I evaluate again: can I personally do better? The answer is always yes. We can make a difference, and we have to. The most heard criticism I get is that it makes no sense to do this all alone. But the point is, I’m not alone. There are millions of people around the world working hard to make a change. I would even argue that there are way more people wanting a better world than the ones who don’t.

It is really obvious who are the bad ones in this story. The same names always come up in documentaries like this one. ExxonMobil, Shell, Koch Brothers. They have too much power and we can take it from them. It’s only a matter of time until we will.

My Opinion

I think the 11th Hour is a good documentary because it tells about most of the problems there are when it comes to climate change. From oceans to deserts, from fossil fuels to consumerism. The documentary also describes how these problems are related and how they impact each other. That’s why I felt so pessimistic at first, it can seem so overwhelming. It’s not a simple problem with one solution and so insight like these are good.

I would say the documentary is a little long, but worth the watching. It’s 1,5 hours long, but because it’s highly informative it feels quite long. It aired in 2007 and was made by Leonardo Dicaprio (amongst others of course). He made another documentary again later, I wrote about Before The Flood here.

Yours sincerely,
Romee

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