Exercise #4: Documentary Reflection
Instructions
For your fourth Exercise assignment, you will make connections between the environmental movement in the recent past and today by considering what you are challenged to learn from documentarians of that movement.
- Find a current or recent report in the mainstream or alternative media of an environmental topic or issue in your local or wider region. As you read/ hear about the issue, consider where you stand on it. Identify your position and your thoughts.
- Use the documentaries in this course unit to reflect on the role that civil disobedience has played in the history of environmentalism, researching one other recent example to defend your answer to the question of whether it works to bring positive change.
Use your research in the mainstream and alternative media from Activity 1 of this unit for this exercise Post the media links and your analysis. Aim for a minimum of 300 words.
Please note, you should write and edit your submission in a separate file then copy and paste it into the submission box. Once submitted to the HIST 3991 trubox site, you will not be able to edit your post.
Are you a student of HIST 3991? Click here to add a submission to this assignment.
Submissions
Fairy Creek Blockade
August 18, 2023 By: Robin Arens
The Fairy Creek Blockade is an ongoing act of civil disobedience, protesting the logging of old-growth forest on Vancouver Island, BC. This protest, blocking logging roads to stop Teal-Jones personnel from performing any logging activities in the Pacheedaht territory, has been ongoing since August 2020. In June 2021 the Pacheedaht, Ditidaht and Huu-ay-aht First Nations submitted a request to the Province for a two-year deferral of the old-growth logging, which was subsequently accepted and led to Teal-Jones halting its operations in the area. This deferral was extended by another two years in June 2023. In the summer of 2021, RCMP…
Documentary Reflection
August 8, 2023 By: Jared Daumont
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-clean-climate-plan-2018-1.4933083 This article reports on the major climate change plan released in British Columbia in 2018. This plan aimed to reduce BC’s GHG emissions by requiring all new buildings to be net-zero and all new cars to be zero emissions by 2040. Alongside these ambitious goals, officials announced that incentives would be proposed for large industries to reduce emissions. With the LNG project moving forward, the government at the time said it would cut provincial sales tax from building costs for the project, since the project would be overall beneficial to GHG reductions. While these announcements seem fantastic at…
Documentary Reflection
August 5, 2023 By: Clarissa Wight
This Vancouver Sun article is about the use of administrative penalties for companies that fail to comply with environmental regulations. Although the penalties given out have increased substantially in recent years, the court fines have decreased. For large industrial companies that are profiting millions or billions of dollars, a $500,000 fine is easy to make back. Lawyer Andrew Gage argues that the court prosecutions are more effective. He also notes that in most situations where someone continually breaks the law, they either go to jail or lose their license but that is not something that is happening to the multimillion-dollar…
Exercise #4
July 30, 2023 By: Xinmao Huang
One of the most poignant documentaries I have watched is Yung Chang’s 2007 documentary, Up the Yangtze, which covers both the environmental, socio-cultural, economic, and political implications of the construction of the Three Gorges Dam in Hubei China. What was jarring for me was how it resonated with my own environmental views and underlying understanding of core-peripheral issues. I feel that there are important similarities with the construction of the Three Gorges Dam in China and the ongoing construction at Site C in British Columbia that adversely affect the subsistence livelihoods of rural/remote residents due to pollution, biodiversity loss, and…
Exercise #4: Documentary Reflection
April 24, 2023 By: Philip Thrum
In the documentary film “How to Change the World: The Revolution Will Not Be Organized”, Bob Duncan states, “if you don’t know your history, you’re destined to repeat it”. I find this a powerful statement as reminds us that humans often neglect the past and continue with actions which are known to cause harm to the environment. In January of 2023 a container ship spilled fuel/oil into English Bay. Threatening the marine wildlife in the bay. I find that the quote from the documentary above is quite insightful regarding this topic. Oil spills have been a problem for many decades,…