Name ______Block ______Date ______

The 11th Hour Film Questions

Directions: Answer the questions while watching the film.

  1. Why is it misleading when we say “save the environment”?
  1. What happens when we destroy nature?
  1. How are ecological disasters depicted by the media?
  1. If time was one calendar year, when would humans have been born?
  1. What allowed humans to take over the world and throw us out of balance with nature?
  1. What was the great rupture with nature that occurred in the 1800s and 1900s?
  1. We used to live on current sunlight. Meaning that the amount of sunlight that fell on the earth in a year was the maximum amount of energy we could use. During this our population never exceeded 1 billion.
    Human population : Pre 1800s - 1 billion, ______- 2 billion, ______- 3 billion
  1. Why has there been such a large growth in population?
  1. How many people can Earth maintain with current sunlight?
  1. How much money does the US borrow every year?
  1. How much money do we use every day for oil imports?
  1. What effect does the melting of the icecaps have?
  1. How much have humans increased carbon dioxide and methane levels in the atmosphere by?
  1. What does the tipping point mean?
  2. What is the tipping point?
  1. What is the current estimate for Earth’s temperature change?
  1. How much sea ice has already melted?
  1. How long will it be before the Arctic is ice free?
  1. As sea levels rise, millions of people will be displaced as the waters swallow their homes. In the US ______million, China ______million, Netherlands _____ million, and another ______million in Bangladesh. That is 242 million people because of a 10m rise in sea levels. The United Nations estimates that there will be at least 150 million environmental refugees by the turn of the century.
  1. What creates ocean dead zones?
  1. In half a century we have lost _____% of the big fish in the sea.
  1. What communities are most affected by water pollution and dumping? Why?
  1. How much of the original U.S. forest is gone?
  1. What happens when trees are removed from rainforests?
  1. WangariMaathai warns the citizens in her country not to cut down trees on the mountains because without the trees the rivers will stop flowing, the rains will become ______, the crops will fail, and you will die.
  1. How much soil in the world is classified as “very degraded”?
  1. How much water can one tree hold and filter into the aquifer? What happens without them?
  1. The last time the ocean waters stagnated it caused the Permian mass extinction, and ______% of all the species on earth went extinct.
  1. What is the “greatest weapon of mass destruction”?
  2. How much would it cost us a year to do what nature does for us already? (Such as pollination)
  1. For every truckload of products we produce, there are ______truckloads of waste.
  1. If we don’t change, how much life may we lose?
  1. What percent of all species, that have ever existed, are now extinct?
  1. Extinction is a natural process, it is necessary for evolution and adaptation as the world changes. The problem is the rate at which we are causing it. We have caused ______species to go extinct. Why is this a problem?
  1. Why are we at this crisis point?
  1. How many times stronger is spider silk than steel? What do you think we could use it for?
  1. What does “Green Building” make possible? How much energy could you save?
  1. What does it mean, to you, to be human in the 21st Century?
  1. What type of energy has been developed to a point that it competes with fossil fuels?
  1. Is nature a resource that is endlessly available?