Global Environmental Security: The Greenhouse Crisis--Jeremy Rifkin; The Greenhouse Effect

Global Environmental Security. Now there's a title that'll leap off the shelf. Regardless, I loved this tape, and while that may not be the most critical of comments, it's straight from the heart. Jeremy Rifkin, a noted science writer and author of Entropy, gives a virtuoso lecture on "the greenhouse crisis." Which means that he doesn't spew forth 75 minutes of statistics; on the contrary Mr. Rifkin outlines the extent of the problem (his worst-case scenario for the year 2030: flooding in New York, 115 degree heat in Phoenix, super hurricanes bashing the southern U.S. coastline, etc.), and then talks about the underlying "worldview" which brought us here. Rifkin traces the history of the concept of progress and how it evolved into today's ultimate value: "efficiency." Dropping in on a Descartes fever-dream, or reliving Bacon's creation of the scientific method ("not why? but how?"), Rifkin takes an amiable romp through the history of philosophy ("Descartes, Bacon, Marx, Einstein--the boys")--all the time with one eye on our present condition and our not so distant future. It's interdisciplinary idea-juggling at its finest. How, Rifkin asks, can we possibly carry on a good reciprocal relationship with our planet when we can't even hang on to the same human partner for any length of time. While most talking-heads kind of videos don't exactly put me on the edge of my seat, this wide-ranging, freewheeling, and exceptionally intelligent discourse on the human condition and "the greenhouse crisis" was one of the rare programs I watched twice. (Rifkin's explanation of why digital watches basically suck eggs is worth the price of the tape alone.) On the other hand, we have The Greenhouse Effect, a much more stat-oriented approach to the problem of global warming, which tells you more than you probably need to know (various independent studies have worked hard on the "cloud question," i.e. will the sun's rays be trapped or will they escape the earth's atmosphere, but because of uncertainty over the kinds of clouds in question, as well as skepticism over some of the measuring methods, the end result is a big fat zero.) Like the cloud example, the program also examines the failure of the monsoon season in India, and spends a great deal of time discussing experiments on submitting plants to massive amounts of carbon dioxide (again, there are so many variables that nobody knows for certain...this is the program's main refrain.) The upshot is that there's a lot of information in the program, but one doesn't learn much. Roughly translated, that means serious snoring for students, and confusion for the interested adult. Global Environmental Security is highly recommended. The Greenhouse Effect is not a necessary purchase. (Global Environmental Security is part of a larger series called "Choices for a Healthy Environment" featuring speakers as diverse as singer Graham Nash, actor Dennis Weaver, and author John Robbins. It and the other tapes are available from: SunFire Productions, P.O. Box 624, Glenwood Springs, CO 81602.) (For availability of The Greenhouse Effect, see JACOB HAVE I LOVED.)