On Wednesday, November 11th, our group went to the SoHo Patagonia Store for a press conference and showing of the documentary film, This Changes Everything. Once the event started, a few representatives of different climate change and environmental improvement groups and projects spoke about what they were working on. We learned about the South Bronx, and the Fresh-Direct problem and threat it poses. Fresh Direct has taken over a large part of the South Bronx, and a large percent of the population there is getting poorer because of it. Also, they’re trucks are putting a lot of greenhouse gasses in the air. We also learned about the Algonquin Pipeline from a woman who purchased her house, not told that it was only 400 feet away from the pipeline. It is a gas pipeline that is causing a lot of pollution. It is incredibly dangerous to live near it, due to possible gas problems. She is working on stopping any further development plans already made, and shutting it down entirely. I was really inspired from the work these groups are doing. We were also given lots of sources for future fieldworks, all of which sound really interesting, such as the Sierra Club, South Bronx Unite and ResistAIM. Then the movie began. This Changes Everything was originally a book by Naomi Klein, then turned into a documentary film by Avi Lewis. It is about climate change all over the world. It was very educational, and it showed how much Earth is impacted by climate change, and how much we are too. The movie had sections on the Alberta Tar Sands project, an awful oil drill, the second largest in the world. It also taught us about the plans in India for power plants.
I remember when they talked about this, they said that there was a group of Indians, very against the plans for a power plant in their village, who waited in one place for 215 days, to stop any continuation of these plans. They knew it would cause pollution, especially in their area but also the world, and they didn’t want it there. It would have also taken space in their village, and people might lose their homes. It really impacted me, and I will always remember this.
Overall, the movie was very inspiring, as well as eye opening. I learned so much about climate change, and the impact we have on it, and that was really important for us to learn.
