Science Literacy Week September 18 - 24, 2023

A documentary chronicling American environmentalist Bill McKibben's efforts to build a movement to challenge the fossil fuel industry and to change the terrifying math of the climate crisis.

A decade after An Inconvenient Truth brought climate change into the heart of popular culture comes the follow-up that shows just how close people are to a real energy revolution.

Investigates the birth and death of the electric car, as well as the role of renewable energy and sustainable living in the future.

Peace Out is the story of British Columbia's magnificent Peace River and the true on-the-ground costs of fuelling North America's unrestrained thirst for energy. Wilkinson examines the real benefits vs. the actual costs of a new mega dam [the 'Site C' Dam proposal], unregulated hydro-fracking [the N.W. Shale Gas 'Plays'], the Peace nuclear proposal, and the Tar Sands.

Filmmakers Loren and Matt Feinstein provide an eye-opening account of the downside of alternative, food-based fuel sources. Delving deep into the world of agrofuels and monocrops, they explore how the increasingly common practice of diverting food crops to the industrial production of cellulose-based fuels is devastating indigenous communities, undermining small farmers, and endangering the environment across Latin America. Turning to the promise of the future, they also show how grassroots communities are developing better, cleaner alternatives.

Presents step-by-step instruction on building a straw bale home designed to be energy efficient, generating it's own pollution-free power that can be sold to the utility company. Lessons covered: straw bale walls; post-and-beam framing; adobe thermal mass walls; passive solar heating and cooling; rubble trench foundations; concrete floors; radiant floor heat; earth plaster walls; electrical wiring; photovoltaic systems; rainwater cisterns; design and aesthetics; green building materials.

In the debate over energy resources, natural gas is often considered a "lesser-of-evils". While it does release some greenhouse gases, natural gas burns cleaner than coal and oil, and is in plentiful supply-- parts of the U.S. sit above some of the largest natural gas reserves on Earth. But a new boom in natural gas drilling, a process called "fracking", raises concerns about health and environmental risks.

By 2006, as many as 5,000 electric cars were destroyed by the major car companies that built them. Today, the electric car is back with a vengeance. Without using a single drop of foreign oil, this new generation of car is America's future: fast, furious, and cleaner than ever. It's not just the next generation of green cars that's on the line, it's the future of the automobile itself.

The extraoridinary career of Marie Curie, the two-time Nobel Prize winner, is documented using excerpts from intimate letters that reveal her inner struggles in life and love.