[Peakoil] Australian premiere screening of "Scarred Lands and Wounded Lives" - 18 February

[Nature and Society Forum]

Australian premiere screening of "Scarred Lands and Wounded Lives"

Venue: CSIRO Discovery Centre
Date: Wednesday 18 February 2009
Time: 7:30 - 10:00pm, including discussion led by the film's makers.

About the film:

What prompts this film is recognition of our deep dependence on the  
natural world and the significant threat to that world posed by war  
and preparations for war.

The scale of environmental damage over the last half century is  
unprecedented. Falling water tables, shrinking forest cover, declining  
species diversity - all presage ecosystems in distress. These trends  
are now widely acknowledged as emanating from forces of humanity's own  
making: massive population increases, unsustainable demands on natural  
resources, species loss, ruinous environmental practices. Ironically  
however, war, that most destructive of human behaviours, is commonly  
bypassed.

In all its stages, from the production of weapons through combat to  
cleanup and restoration, war entails actions that pollute land, air,  
and water, destroy biodiversity, and drain natural resources. Yet the  
environmental damage occasioned by war and preparation for war is  
routinely underestimated, underreported, even ignored.   The  
environment remains war's "silent casualty."

Activities that do such damage cry out for far-reaching public  
scrutiny. The very sustainability of our planet is at stake. We can no  
longer maintain silence about the environmental impact of war on the  
grounds that such scrutiny is "inconvenient" or "callous" at a time  
when human life is so endangered.

If we cannot eliminate war, we can at least require a fuller  
accounting of war's costs and consequences, and demand that  
destructive forces used in our name leave a lighter footprint on this  
highly vulnerable planet. It is to this change in values and actions  
that this documentary film is directed.

The energy profligacy of military activity and the mindsets of the  
personnel involved is explored well, and this has direct relevance to  
the use of oil by the military.

Please circulate this notice to your friends and acquaintances. The  
venue is of a size to accommodate a large audience - air-conditioned.
--------------------------------------------------
Keith Thomas
Office Manager
Nature and Society Forum
www.natsoc.org.au --- www.biosensitivefutures.org
02-6125 2526 (Mon & Wed mornings) Mobile: 0412 487 625
--------------------------------------------------



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://act-peakoil.org/pipermail/peakoil/attachments/20090130/d4c57d24/attachment.htm