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March 10 2021 film reviews: 'Hot Money' and 'Kiss the Ground' That's right -- it's a two-fer! Both are recent documentary films and although they occasionally cross topical paths they are somewhat partisan affairs and framed for their target audiences. Both are worth watching. - - Hot Money - (c) 2021 - https://www.hotmoneyfilm.com/ I came across this film on Rob Mielcarski's blog 'Un-Denial' [0] which provides both a review of the film and information on ways to see it. Essentially I see this film as a Systemic Risk primer for Republicans. It covers most of the usual topics -- peak resources, climate weirding, financialization of the economy, ecological overshoot -- but from a more selfish perspective which I think it's fair to say syncs up pretty with modern GOP rhetoric. So instead of worried Greenies expressing concern about accelerated warming we get a former oil executive sharing her conclusion that all the evidence points towards climate change being a real thing(!), or a Houston small business owner pointing out how her net worth took a big hit when her house flooded due to sea level rise. Green technologies are pitched primarily in terms of national security and their money-making opportunities rather than a way to slow climate change, admittedly a fairly accurate take as most are unlikely to produce significant de-carbonization cradle to grave. The film is carried along by the meandering banter of retired general Wesley Clark [1] and his adult son. This achieves several things: it contrasts the generational differences of conservatives while providing some insight as to how some of their points of view came about and how they continue to frame discussions of just what is going on and what, if anything, might be done. To assuage any suspicion that Leftist ideology is being peddled the Clarks engage in some good old-fashion commie bashing as they slam Venezuela's on-going chaos while conveniently ignoring the US's role. Scandalously, Clark Jr. later questions the soundness of US covert operations used to "knock over" governments. Kids these days, eh? Clark Sr. apparently knows quite a bit about the banking industry and is himself a banker of sorts, sitting on the boards of several investment and business advisory firms. His breakdown of the current state of the economy and the various ways the shadow banking system is miss-incentivized is probably the best aspect of Hot Money and reason enough to overlook the film's shortcomings. In conclusion I thought the film did a pretty good job of explaining why even self-centered capitalists ought to be paying more attention to the creaking sounds emanating from the mega-machine that is global industrial civilization. - - Kiss the Ground - (c) 2020 - https://kissthegroundmovie.com/ I got an invite to watch this celebrity-enhanced "good news" film which groups like the Sierra Club are promoting to cheer up their apparently depressed members. The film starts off with Woody Harrelson confessing he has given up on humanity as it careens towards a multifaceted collapse. BUT.. look -- good news! The Earth can save itself (and us too!) if we just help it a bit. Several actors and other well-known Lefties subsequently proceed to make appeals for nature-based solutions to humanity's overshoot. Mostly this entails promoting the adoption of permaculture principles as a way of both lessening human impacts on habitat and mitigating climate change. Various approaches to leveraging the planet's living crust to create habitat and/or sequester carbon are presented. Much of it is sound science but some of it is more speculative. People like former NRCS agronomist Roy Arehuleta [2] and ecologist John Liu [3] promote solid techniques for improving farming and rehabilitating erosion damaged lands. No-till farming for example can cut energy costs by 2/3 while building top soils and significantly cutting water and chemical use. As soil becomes more complex it also sequesters more carbon. On the more speculative end of the spectrum is Alan Savory [4] and his holistic management [5] that among other things promotes livestock grazing to reverse desertification. Bringing grazers and grass or crop lands back together makes total sense from both an animal and cropland health perspective, but it's unlikely by itself to help much with addressing the climate change and ecological overshoot created by way too many humans using way too much stuff. In fact several reviews seem to shoot down much of Savory's climate mitigation claims [6]. Moving livestock out of concentrated feed operations and back to crop or grasslands also translates into much more expensive meat, sure to disappoint many a carnivore. Other ideas presented are actually old ideas made new. For example, "Keep the Poop in the Loop" [7] was standard practice for agriculture as documented in the classic book 'Farmers for Forty Centuries' [8]. The real question is if the developed world is ready and willing to say goodbye to flush toilets and start filling curbside brown bins. So is this good news, a reason for hope? Not by itself I don't think. Certainly much of what's suggested is good for the planet and should be adopted if only because it improves habitat and resiliency. And even if nature-based climate mitigation is limited in what it can actually accomplish -- photosynthesis falls as temps increase; CO2 pulled from the atmosphere is replaced from what the oceans have absorbed -- it is relatively low-cost. For example, implementing just 80% of the INRA's '4 per 1000' soil initiative [9] as presented in the film would only cost $112 billion annually. That sounds like a lot but it's cheap when compared to most engineered CO2 sequestration schemes if scaled up; most likely can't. A reading of the 'Kiss the Ground' website suggests it's just one of several solutions laid out by the Drawdown Project [10]. There are quite a few ideas presented and not all of the techno-fix variety. Some are bound to be useful but ultimately humanity needs to drastically shrink it's footprint RIGHT NOW, particularly in the developed countries. My concern is that all this effort towards trying to keep consumerism going via green substitution just delays the inevitable reversion to simpler living arrangements. And it necessitates keeping Business As Usual going in the hope of achieving those breakthroughs instead of initiating transition with what we know works. The time for exploring novel solutions was 50 years ago; we are now out of time. - - Refs: [0] https://un-denial.com/2021/02/19/hot-money/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_Clark [2] https://soilhealthacademy.org/team/ray-archuleta/ [3] https://vimeo.com/19661805 [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Savory [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holistic_management_(agriculture) [6] https://www.slu.se/globalassets/ew/org/centrb/epok/dokument/\ holisticmanagement_review.pdf http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/11/\ cows-carbon-and-the-anthropocene-commentary-on-savory-ted-video/ [7] https://www.kenyaconnect.org/2019/05/01/keeping-poop-in-the-loop/ [8] https://archive.org/details/farmersoffortyce01king [9] https://www.4p1000.org/ [10] https://www.drawdown.org/solutions