All over the world species are becoming extinct at an astonishing rate, from 1000 to 10,000 times faster than normal. The loss of biodiversity has become so severe that scientists are calling it a mass extinction event.
Call of Life: Facing the Mass Extinction is the first feature documentary to investigate the growing threat to Earth’s life support systems from this unprecedented loss of biodiversity. Through interviews with leading scientists, psychologists, anthropologists, philosophers, and indigenous and religious leaders, the film explores the causes, the scope, and the potential effects of the mass extinction, but also looks beyond the immediate causes of the crisis to consider how our cultural and economic systems, along with deep-seated psychological and behavioral patterns, have allowed this situation to develop, continue to reinforce it, and even determine our response to it.
Call of Life tells the story of a crisis not only in nature, but also in human nature, a crisis more threatening than anything human beings have ever faced before.
Director: Monte Thompson | Producer: Chera Van Burg
Genre: Documentary | Produced In: 2010 | Story Teller’s Country: United States
Tags: Earth, Ecology, Ecology, Environment, Evolution, Future, Global, Globalization, New Community, Spirit, Spiritual Awareness
Synopsis: DOC: If current trends continue, scientists warn that within a few decades at least HALF of all plant and animal species on Earth will disappear forever. “Call of Life: Facing the Mass Extinction” is the first feature documentary to investigate the growing threat to Earth’s life support systems from this unprecedented loss of biodiversity. Through interviews with leading scientists, psychologists, historians, and others, the film explores the causes, the scope, and the potential effects of the mass extinction, but also looks beyond the immediate causes of the crisis to consider how our cultural and economic systems, along with deep-seated psychological and behavioural patterns, have allowed and continue to reinforce the situation, and even determine our response to it. “Call of Life” tells the story of a crisis not only in nature, but also in human nature, a crisis more threatening than anything human beings have ever faced before.
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From the most remote mountaintops to forests, grasslands, and deserts, from river headwaters to the deepest seas, reports from around the globe tell the same story: wild places that have been stable for millions of years are in turmoil. Weather patterns and water sources are being disrupted. Plant and animal species are vanishing faster than ever before. Our cities and farms, our parks, even our backyards are changing in ways we’re only beginning to notice, but that are already affecting the health and well-being of our planet, and us.
During the four billion years that life has been evolving on Earth there have been five distinct periods when as much as 90% of the species alive at the time suddenly disappear from the fossil record. The most recent of these events ended the reign of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Paleontologists believe that each of these earlier mass extinctions was triggered by some extraordinary event such as an asteroid impact or a period of unusual volcanic activity. Each of these extinction spasms was actually a slow decline, taking place over many centuries, yet these periods were brief compared to the many millions of years the Earth took to recover its diversity after each mass extinction had finally run its course.
Today, scientists believe that we are entering the 6th Mass Extinction. But unlike the previous five, this one will not take centuries to unfold—in fact, it will take place in our lifetimes. As scientists begin to realize the severity of the crisis and new worldwide assessments are made, the news is difficult to believe. At least half of all plant and animal species are likely to disappear in the wild within the next 30-40 years, including many of the most familiar and beloved large mammals: elephants, polar bears, chimpanzees, gorillas and all the great apes, all the big cats, and many, many others. Bird species are similarly imperiled, songbird populations have declined by 50% in the last 40 years. One out of every eight species of plant life worldwide and almost one third of the plant species within the United States already face extinction. Populations of large ocean fish have declined by 90% since the 1950s. All around the world, birds, reptiles, mammals, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates, as well as trees, flowering plants, and other flora, are all in steep decline. The rate of extinction today could be as much as 10,000 times greater than the expected natural or background extinction rate. Scientists estimate that tens of thousands of species are vanishing every year, including many that have yet to be discovered or named.
We depend on many species directly for our basic human needs such as food, clothing, fuel, shelter, and medicine, but the complex network of all species is necessary to support those species that we depend upon directly. Ecosystems are intricately interdependent—species depend on each other for survival in complex and subtle ways that science is only beginning to understand. Biologically diverse ecosystems provide indispensable ecosystem services that we often take for granted, including purification of the air and water, climate regulation, nutrient cycling in the soil, disease control, pollination, seed dispersal, biological pest control, and prevention of erosion, to name just a few. We cannot live without these essential services that healthy ecosystems provide. When any species within an ecosystem becomes extinct, species that depend on that species are threatened and other species that depend on those species will become threatened and so on, in a cascade or ripple effect that runs through the whole system. The loss of any species within the ecosystem can potentially affect the ability of other species to thrive, or even survive. What’s more, a species does not need to become totally extinct in order to have this effect. A severe decline in a species’ population can be nearly as detrimental to the ecosystem as extinction and can weaken the entire ecosystem. As stresses due to species loss increase, eventually the ecosystem will reach a breaking point, after which total catastrophic collapse is rapid and irreversible.
Researchers have identified six primary direct drivers of extinction and all are the result of human behavior: habitat loss, invasive species, pollution, climate change, over-exploitation of resources, and above all—the factor that magnifies all the others—human overpopulation. Any of these drivers can wreak havoc by itself, but in combination with each other and with other social and environmental factors, their cumulative effects are devastating. The mass extinction will not be slowed or averted until each of these direct drivers is controlled or eliminated.
Call of Life examines the collective and individual responses that will be needed to mitigate the impacts of the mass extinction and makes clear the critical choices we have before us. We face the potential of the natural world devastated beyond recognition, with the loss of human life in the billions. Yet, we still have time to avert the worst of the crisis and save much of the biosphere, if we act now. The first step to is to create broad public awareness of the problem—its magnitude and its implications. Only then can our whole society begin to recognize the systemic changes that will be required. The solution is clear: in order to save our planet and secure a future for our own species and all species, we need a new worldview. We must recognize that technology alone cannot save us. We must realize that business-as-usual is no longer an option. Instead, we need to create fundamental change in our culture, our minds, and our hearts. Unique among all human generations, those of us alive today have been given a great opportunity: one last chance to preserve the vitality and magnificence of the living planet that brought us into being, and is our only home.
Steve Beissinger
Professor of Conservation Biology, University of California, Berkeley, worked extensively with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, research associate with the Smithsonian Institute.
Rev. Sally G. Bingham
Episcopal priest and Canon for the Environment in the Diocese of California, founder of The Regeneration Project, member of President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based & Neighborhood Partnerships, board member with Environmental Defense Fund and Union of Concerned Scientists.
Ignacio Chapela
Microbial ecologist and mycologist at the University of California, Berkeley and a Senior Researcher at GenØk, the National Center for Biosafety, Norway.
Gretchen C. Daily
One of the world’s leading ecologists and author of The New Economy of Nature: The Quest to Make Conservation Profitable.
Brock Dolman
Director of the Watershed Advocacy Training Education & Research program and co-director of the Permaculture Design and Wildlands Biodiversity programs at the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center.
Paul R. Ehrlich
Famed Stanford University conservation biologist, ecologist, and author of, among many books, The Population Bomb and Human Natures: Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect.
Mary E. Gomes
Professor of Psychology, Sonoma State University, co-author, Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind.
Tyrone B. Hayes
Professor of Biology at University of California, Berkley, known for his research on the effects of the pesticide atrazine on frogs.
Derek Jensen
Revolutionary environmental activist and prize-winning author.
Allen D. Kanner
Psychologist, leader of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.
Richard Leakey
World famous paleonanthropologist and author of The Sixth Extinction.
Oren Lyons
Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga Nation and Chief of the Onondaga Nation Council of Chiefs of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, professor emeritus at SUNY at Buffalo.
Joanna Macy
Revered eco-philosopher, systems theorist, Buddhist scholar, and author.
Norman Myers
Renowned Oxford University authority on biodiversity, the first scientist to alert the global community to tropical deforestation, an impending mass extinction, and environmental security, author of The Sinking Ark.
Melissa K. Nelson
Professor of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University, author Original Instructions – Indigenous Teachings For A Sustainable Future.
Stuart Pimm
One of the most cited scientists working in the field of conservation biology, professor at Duke University and author of A Scientist Audits the Earth.
Peter D. Roopnarine
Associate Curator and Chair of the Department of Paleontology and Geology, California Academy of Sciences.
Mary Evelyn Tucker
Professor at Yale University, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and the Divinity School and Department of Religious Studies, Co-Director of the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale University.
Peter Vitousek
Noted biologist, named one of the United States’ best scientists by Time Magazine, Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment.
Bernard Daley Zaleha
Former Vice President of the Sierra Club; founder, Wildlands Interstate Legal Defense Fund; Vice President, the Constitutional Law Foundation.
Call of Life was produced by Species Alliance, a nonprofit organization formed in 2005 to raise public awareness of the impending mass extinction and the threat to Earth’s life support systems due to the loss of biodiversity.
David Ulansey, Executive Producer, is the creator and webmaster of massextinction.net, the Web’s oldest and most comprehensive source of information on the current mass extinction. He is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and has taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Boston University, Barnard College (Columbia University), the University of Vermont, and Princeton University. He is the author of The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries (Oxford University Press), and has published articles in Scientific American and numerous other scholarly journals.
Monte Thompson, Director, has worked professionally in film and television since 1983. With a background in fine art and theater and an M.A. in Philosophy and Religion, he has directed, designed, written, and produced a wide array of award-winning film, video, and other media, from music videos to news programs to commercial spots to feature films. His design and messaging for national and international corporate, broadcast, and educational clients, as well as his work on a variety of independent feature productions, has been broadcast and distributed worldwide.
Chera Van Burg, Producer, is an award winning filmmaker, psychologist, writer, and educator. She has written, produced, and directed feature and short films, which have shown at film festivals and educational conferences worldwide. Her background as a psychologist brings a depth to her work and informs her use of film as an agent of social and individual change. She has a doctorate degree in psychology and has taught at Skidmore College, University of California at Davis Medical School, and Stanford University Medical School. She recently published an article in The California Psychologist (July/August 2010) titled, Cultural Traumatic Stress Disorder: Identifying Cultural and Psychological Causes of Planetary Destruction.
Susan Scott, Co-Producer, has worked in the media industry for 20 years and is passionate about image making. As a digital artist she has worked with renowned photographers and major international ad agencies on high profile campaigns. As a photographer she has worked with numerous writers, musicians, filmmakers and visual artists. Her fine art photography has been collected and shown in galleries worldwide.
Greg Tennant, Co-Producer, has 17 years experience in film, television, and video. He has worked on independent features, cable movies, documentaries, educational films, corporate videos, and television commercials as a writer, director, producer, editor, cinematographer, assistant director, assistant editor, grip, and electrician. His feature-length drama “The Distraction” is available on DVD and has been distributed internationally.
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