VIDEO REFLECTIONS: THE 11TH HOUR

The 11th Hour is a documentary video which highlighting the serious issues of environment. Many politicians, scientists, and environmental activists interviewed in the video. The 11th Hour demonstrates the grave problems facing the planet’s life systems. Global warming, deforestation, mass species extinction, and depletion of the oceans ‘habitats are all addressed. Through the video, I realized how worse our environment turning to be. Besides, we always encourage people saving the environment. But we always misunderstand, the environment will always survive but it’s the humans who would be at the risk of extinction. Therefore, according to the video, it is very crucial to find the way maintain a balance between human society and nature. Because our human lives are totally dependent on natural resources, so as we are destroying our environment, we also destroying ourselves. The 11th Hour searches for what would be the greatest obstacles for our times, and solutions for restoring the planet’s ecosystems in order to creating a sustainable environment.  

In the film, almost every scientist agrees that the global warming is an immediate threat. As Leonardo DiCaprio said: “Global warming is not only the number one environmental challenge we face today, but one of the most important issues facing all of humanity ... We all have to do our part to raise awareness about global warming and the problems we as a people face in promoting a sustainable environmental future for our planet.” Those scenes about global warming which shown in the film shocked me. As a industrial designer, we need to consider about what should we do to create some products can help balance us and environment? William McDonough, Architect, William McDonough and Partners mentioned about: “We’re at a point in History, with 6.4 billion of us that we have to imagine what it'd be like to redesign design itself and see design as the first signal of human intention, and see we need new intentions where materials are seen as highly valuable and need to go in close cycles, "cradle to cradle" instead of "cradle to grave"... So the design itself changes from mass production of things that are essentially destructive, to mass utilization of things that are inherently assets instead of Liabilities." Now we should think about using more sustainable material, good for design, for environment and ourselves.