Comments Yolanda Crous has made

More thoughts on Children of Men

I too saw Children of Men recently, and I loved it as much as David Roberts did. In fact, I just can't stop thinking about it.

What struck me most about the film was the very real-world sense of uncertainty. We, like the characters, are left with no sense of what caused the infertility epidemic, let alone whether humanity will have the wisdom--or ability--to remedy the imbalances set in motion by the previous generation.

And let's face it, guys--we're uncertain about a helluva lot. We don't know which endangered plant species may one day yield a life-giving drug. We don't know where some pollutants will turn up after they've been released into the environment. We don't even know what the carrying capacity of the earth is. And yet, we as a society continue to ignore all the things we don't know, figuring we'll be able to sort it all out if and when our actions become a problem.

But amid all of this uncertainty lies one scientific certainty--environmental degradation is not always a linear process. Increasing a problem by a unit may cause a unit's worth of damage for a while, but once a system's threshold is reached, we may find ourselves sliding off the proverbial cliff. A chemical considered "safe" for exposure to humans may become lethal when combined with another. Fishing at a certain level may cause a small decline in population, while fishing at another may disrupt the reproductive cycle enough to cause near extinction. And someday all our melting glaciers might, just might, flush enough freshwater into the ocean to shut down the thermohaline circulation belt in the North Atlantic, sending a chunk of Europe into a deep freeze.

Or not. We just don't know. But wouldn't it be nice if we started doing a little preventative care before the patient gets too sick to save?
On Best movie of the year, hands down posted 2 years, 10 months ago 81 Responses