"Post-Carbon Futures"

If we're going to avoid catastrophic change, we will need to move away from fossil fuels as quickly as possible. But which alternatives are most promising?

POST CARBON FUTURES, the companion documentary to MR. CO2, examines the options from massive wind and solar projects, to re-engineering the planet itself, to more modest local efforts in order to build a sustainable future.

The film travels to Nevada, where the largest solar plant in the US produces enough energy to power 10,000 homes, and to off-shore wind farms, where turbines use natural resources to produce electricity. But the future will not be powered by wind and sun alone. With 2,000 new cars hitting the road in Beijing every day, and China set to open a new coal-fired plant weekly for the next decade, we will require far more energy than solar and wind energy can produce.

Some believe the solution in enormous, continent-altering projects - such as a plan to blanket the Sahara in solar panels to produce electricity for Europe. Meanwhile, the developers of the proposed green city of Cao Fei Dian, 150 miles from Beijing, see the future in a city built from scratch on in-filled coastal land.

POST-CARBON FUTURES makes the case that we need a completely different approach to economic growth and prosperity - that geo-engineering to maintain a consumer society makes no sense. Could we instead solve the fossil fuel dilemma by retrofitting our towns and cities - insulating, growing local food and fuel, increasing transit - and promoting less globalized lifestyles?

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Clean
• Energy;
• Solar
• Plants;
• Wind
• Farms;
• Fossil
• Fuels;
• Geo-Engineering;
• Icarus
• Films