Movie Review: "Racing Extinction"

Hey folks! Tonight I watched "Racing Extinction", an hour and a half television special. After seeing the previews, I was very excited to watch the show, and I have to say, it exceeded my expectations.

Within the first minute, my heart was racing. Images of elephant feet, jaguar heads- we're talking serious stuff here. Right off the bat, we're forced to face the facts:

"1 in a million species should expire each year, and right now, the rate of extinction is 1000 times faster than it should be. "

"It's like we're living in the age of dinosaurs, but we can do something about it."

"Humanity has become the asteroid"

The whole movie was just incredibly moving. I really enjoyed the fact that the animals they talked about are some of the lesser conservation topics- not that they are less important, but they are less popular. We always talk about pandas, rhinos, and tigers as poster children for conservation, but a lot of the issues are going on with oceanic animals. For example, they covered the story of how a sushi restaurant was shut down because it was serving endangered whale species. The biggest topic discussed explained the story of the manta ray, but, being that I have a hockey game to get to tonight, I'm going to save that for another blog entry. 


One of the other issues was about shark finning. Shark finning kills 250 thousand sharks every day, and we saw a heartbreaking film of a nurse shark with her fins cut off trying to swim, hanging on to her last moments of life. I almost broke my t.v. screen when, later on, a Chinese man said that video was made up by the "greenies". The good thing is that shark finning awareness has been improving, especially thanks to Mr. Yao Ming, whose WildAid commercial you can see here. 

The movie also talked a lot about climate change. There is a massive increase in CO2 going on right now, and the scary part?- that's a common factor in every single mass extinction in the history of the Earth. And we humans are not safe from that in any way. Right now, we are creating an acidic ocean- creatures simply dissolve in acid, and the movie proves that by putting shells in vinegar. Think about it. It's scary. This damage is caused by everyday activities- we're making our lives a lot better for us, but at the expense of everything else. A very interesting point was made: livestock is a huge problem. The methane released by livestock is arguable the biggest cause in this spike in CO2. So, the more dependent we are on meat, milk, and eggs, the greater the CO2. If everyone simply didn't eat meat for one day every week, it would be the equivalent of taking 7.6 million cars off the road. There's your New Years resolution, folks. 

On somewhat of a sidenote, it's also a very quotable movie. Try these on for size: 

"If we all lose hope, there is no hope...there's still a lot left that's worth fighting for."

"We need more people to understand it's worth doing, the small choices we make each day can lead to the kind of world we want for the future."

"We always think there's going to be somebody else to save these animals..." but "we're the only generation left to save these animals."

"Better light one candle than curse the darkness."

Ok, so here's the last paragraph of this blog, but don't think for a moment I'm done talking about this movie. All my coworkers will tell you, I still have a lot to say. I plan on writing more entries on some of the topics from the movie I didn't cover here, like the politics of conservation, and technology's role in public education. But long story short, this movie was phenomenal. The message: we have to keep fighting. Visit Startwith1thing.com  and commit to changing just one thing in your daily life to make a difference. Please, please, please watch this movie. It is so incredibly important to be aware of all these issues and battle them together. 

"Change starts in the heart."

Thanks for reading everybody! Stay tuned for more blogs soon, and visit A Voice For the Voiceless for a more in-depth look at the whale, shark, and manta issues in this movie.