From the collection of
London’s Screen Archives is a network of over 50 organisations with a collective vision – to preserve and share London’s history on film. The network is managed by Film London and we work with our partners to digitise, preserve, and offer access to their moving image collections.
The IEE Faraday Lecture explores the prospects for techical solutions to climate change.
This Faraday lecture sets the audience on an 'Emission Impossible' and poses the question "can technology save the planet?" - from pollution, increasing deforestation, melting polar ice caps and natural disasters including Hurricane Katrina, which struck just six months before this lecture took place. Glossy production values and dynamic live demonstrations, using participants from the audience, help show how energy is created and used and the problems different sources of energy such as fossil fuels create. Ice cubes, blue liquid and a blow torch are used to good effect to show how the greenhouse effect causes rising sea levels.
But it's not all doom and gloom: solutions are also presented, from smart metering to a completely redesigned energy efficient house. Controversially, perhaps, nuclear power is presented as a viable option, though the ideal solutions shown for a carbon neutral future are renewable power sources such as wind, wave and tide turbines, and solar panels. The lecture culminates with a tour round fictional rapper and film star I.B. Green's crib with a tongue-in-cheek look at what the house of the near future could be - with the help of the future scientists and engineers in the audience!
This video is from the IET Archives, a member of the London's Screen Archives Network.
How green causes have been covered and communicated on screen, from acid rain to global warming.
Issues related to climate and the environment are never far from the forefront of public debate and, from the 1990s onwards, the topic of global warming was brought very close to home by a succession of government campaigns tasked with raising awareness about the impact our everyday energy use has on the world around us.
To encourage us to use our cars less, or turn down our thermostats, or adopt a series of energy efficiency guidelines, the powers that be corralled all the ingenuity of the creative sector. And so, be they painted, celeb-filled, funny, heart-breaking or stop-motion animated, these short films appealed to our hearts (and our bank balances) in a bid to save the planet.
This collection places these public information films in dialogue with other environmentally-minded works, ranging from activism to news reports, children's programming to industrial films, to fill out a complex and wide-ranging story that has never been more relevant.
