Manufactured Landscapes

last night i saw this film with chuck called manufactured landscapes. its basically a documentary that shows still frame pictures and videos of man made landscapes such as oil rigs, coal mines, dams, and junkyards. Although at times the documentary failed to keep me interested, there were some really breathtaking shots, and some very attention grabbing information, especially towards the second half of the film, which focused on China's extreme industrialization in the past few years. there was one shot of some coal mines that really blew my mind, it was just open black hills of coal for miles, as far as u could see. One of the most shocking things in the film was the part that covered the three gorges dam in china. its the biggest dam in the word, 5 times bigger than the hoover dam and has enough steel in it to build 63 eiffel towers, so big in fact, that its going to tilt the world off its normal axis, and cause a wobble in our earths rotation. I cant help but to think what kind of effects this is going to have on our lives. if it changes our rotation, could it not then cause changes in weather patterns? seasons? or any other number of things. I dont understand how things like this get cleared by our governments. How they think its a good idea to sacrifice our natural environment for the sake of China becoming an industrial superpower ill never know. Our lives are so reliant upon the natural world around us ( weather, drinking water, farming land ect...) that i dont understand why we care so little about it. The three gorges dam displaced over 1,100,000 people unwillingly from their homes. On top of that, they had the gaul to ask these same people to tear down their own homes and cities so that once the dam filled their cities with water, boats would be able to pass through. The purpose of the dams is to put 26 generators in, in order to provide the energy needed to continue building China's industrial economy. the documentary really makes you realize that if earth is one giant organism, then we are the cancer, and our smogging, polution causing mega-plants, are the tumor. Here is a short clip about the film maker Edward Burtynsky, with some shots of his film, and a short explanation by him. If you dont see the film, the clip is definitely worth watching.