Introduction
Since the industrial revolution, people’s living environment has experienced a hard time. The environmental issues are rising from various aspects: overused resources, energy shortage, water pollution, nuclear pollution, air pollution, global warming and so forth. Along with these issues are the growing concerns about the circumstances we are living, and the sustainability of the environment. Documentary filmmakers are trying to uncover the related stories which have been ignored or under-reported by mainstream media. Covering from the negative effects of industrialization to a new “green” lifestyle, most of these documentaries are generally not for commercial purpose, but to inform, arouse and encourage people to make a difference.
The main issues the environmental documentaries are addressing currently can be categorized into: Agriculture, fossil fuels, energy, global warming, mining, nuclear war and weapons, water shortage and pollution. This website will introduce documentaries about some of those major issues. Please see more information on the category page. Some outstanding environmental documentary filmmakers are: Davis Guggenheim, Thomas Riedelsheimer, Stephanie Black, Jennifer Baichwal, Basil Gelpke, and Franny Armstrong, etc. Some successful examples are Al Gore's 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth , and FernGully's 1992 film The Last Rainforest
According to Wikipedia (2013), “Sustainability is the key to preventing or reducing the effect of environmental issues. There is now clear scientific evidence that humanity is living unsustainably, and that an unprecedented collective effort is needed to return human use of natural resources to within sustainable limits. For humans to live sustainably, the Earth's resources must be used at a rate at which they can be replenished.”(para. 5)
Reference
Wikipedia. (2013). Environmental Issue. Retrieved April 10, 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_issue#cite_note-2
