This should be interesting...

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The following report by Bill Moyers will be premiering on PBS June 19, 2001 at 8 p.m. EST (check local listings) with a related website launch date of June 1, 2001.

Acclaimed journalist Bill Moyers and an award-winning team of producers reveal recent scientific evidence that we are approaching a key environmental threshold. Bill Moyers Reports: Earth on Edge showcases new data depicting the scale of human impact on the planet's life-support systems. The two-hour broadcast explores one of the the most important questions of the new century: What is happening to Earth's capacity to support nature and civilization?

The broadcast coincides with the launch of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, an international effort to gauge the health of the world's forests, grasslands, coastal and freshwater areas. Preliminary findings were featured in the World Resources Institute's World Resources 2000-2001: People and Ecosystems: The Fraying Web of Life. The statistics from their preliminary findings are staggering: half the world's wetlands lost in one century, half the world's forests chopped down, 70 percent of the world's major marine fisheries depleted, the world's reefs at risk.

But the broadcast pushes well past the numbers. Moyers and his team also take us on a journey of hope to meet people from the American Midwest to Mongolia who are pioneering sustainable solutions to ecological problems. Each story takes place in one of five major ecosystems: forest, agriculture, coastal, grassland, and fresh water. Reports from Kansas, British Columbia, Brazil, South Africa, and Mongolia illuminate the ways in which human demands over the past century have been wearing holes in the fabric of life.

This broadcast profiles individuals who are confronting the challenge head on, people who understand how their lives depend on Earth's ecosystems and how their own energy and dedication might help restore them.

Moyers tells individual stories, in far-flung locations, but in the end it is strikingly clear that the program is about all of us-what we've done to the Earth and what we can still do to turn things around, if we act quickly.

Bill Moyers Reports: Earth on Edge will be augmented by an extensive web site as well as an education and outreach campaign directed by WRI. The site will provide in-depth information about ecosystems as well as updates on their status and information about how you can take action.

WRI is also organizing a series of live events and panel discussions promoting public dialogue around the issues raised by Earth on Edge and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.

-- Anonymous, April 14, 2001

Answers

Many thanx for the Info Jim, and here's hoping all is well with you and yours following your medical "hiatus" and always.

-- Anonymous, April 14, 2001

I'm planning on setting my VCR, Jim. Thanks for letting us all know about it. I really don't think Bush will be making an announcement about this show!!! Glad to hear everything is fine for you now and you're feeling better.

-- Anonymous, April 15, 2001

I'll be watching it too. Glad you are on the mend Jim and welcome back.

Blessings, Judy

-- Anonymous, April 15, 2001

Makes me wish we had the T.V. again. Glad you are back Jim, you have been in my prayers.

-- Anonymous, April 15, 2001

As a deep ecologist I'm glad to hear about this program. Now if we could just get everyone in the whole country to sit down and watch it. I'm sure it will anger some and scare the poo out of others. The more I study the subject the more depressed I get. Maybe its time to spend a couple of weeks camping in a wilderness. It seems that's the only thing that can get me out of a funk.

By the way there is a great book I've been reading titled "The Ecology of Commerce" by Paul Hawken. It discusses how our economy practically forces business to degrade the environment and proposes in detail how we can shift to an ecomony that doesn't. Very interesting and eye opening.

-- Anonymous, April 16, 2001

Thanks guys. :-)

debra: I *think* I read Hawken's book a while back but can't remember for sure. The one thing I'm uncertain of is if we can have an economy that's based on endless economic growth? Does Hawken address this issue in his book?

-- Anonymous, April 16, 2001

Hi Jim, Yes Hawken does address that issue and very well too. There are growth economies and developmental economies. An economy can grow without developing or develop without growing.

-- Anonymous, April 17, 2001

Thanks debra,

I do vaguely remember reading it but it's been almost seven years ago so I'm not really remembering the gist of the book. Looks like I'll have to get a copy from the library and re-read it... :-)

-- Anonymous, April 17, 2001