Screening “The Great Squeeze: Surviving the Human Project”

“Fate of Our Earth” documentary series is a collaboration between The Wadi Environmental Science Centre and Prince Alwaleed American Studies Centre – AUC, to raise awareness about BIG global issues that affect us, to start analyzing and discussing ways by which we can understand and maybe solve these issues.

The documentary Series is a lead up to the World Environment Day 2010 Celebration in Egypt that will take place on the 5th June 2010 at Al Azhar Park.

The Great Squeeze was selected at 14 film festivals around the world and won two awards for best documentary. It features the environmental heavy weights Richard Heinberg, Edward O. Wilson, Lester Brown, Alexandra Cousteau, Jim White, Howard Kunstler and many more. Our dependence on cheap and abundant fossil fuels has been feeding the engine of our economic system for the past 200 years. Although it has lifted modern civilizations to new heights, prosperity has come at a tremendous price. We are now at a point where humanity’s demands for natural resources far exceed the earth’s capacity to sustain us. The extraction and the consumption of these resources in the past two centuries have changed our climate and ecosystems so significantly, that a new geological era had to be created. These man-made threats become even more ominous when you look at them together as part of a global trend. The film then goes back in time and takes us on a journey through history when past civilizations made the same mistake of growing too fast, depleting their natural resources and ultimately collapsing. Instead of the usual band-aid approaches, The Great Squeeze challenges us to learn from history and transition towards a more sustainable economy that values our environment.