Blind Spot

Himself - Environmentalist:
It's a good deal easier to lie to people when they're happy to have you lying to them.

Himself - Prof. Emeritus of Physics:
U of Colorado, Boulder: Of course, if *we* don't stop population growth, Nature will. And it'll be the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, it'll be disease and war and famine and that sort of thing.

Himself - Prof. Emeritus of Physics:
U of Colorado, Boulder: Modern agriculture is the use of land to convert petroleum into food.

Himself - Journalist, Educator:
We have been advertized into being the world's greatest consumers. Americans aren't genetically predisposed to being consumers; we are, I'd say, the victims of the greatest propaganda-system ever devised in human history.

Himself - Global Agriculturist:
We have an energy problem in the United States, without any question. With little over 4% of the world's population we are burning 25% of the world's fuel.

Himself - Prof. Emeritus of Physics:
U of Colorado, Boulder: This isn't high-level mathematics, this isn't rocket science. This ist just plain common sense, and it's universally rejected by the business community, the commercial community, by the political communities.

Himself - Prof. Emeritus of Physics:
U of Colorado, Boulder: People are generally innumerate, which is the mathematical equivalent of illiteracy.

[first lines]

Himself - Activist:
[voiceover] The World's saying: "Look, you got a choice. You can either fix it or... I can fix it. And if I fix it you're not going to like it, because I'd throw everything away." And... "everything" means: most of us.

[last lines]

Himself - Activist:
[voiceover] The World's saying: "Look, you got a choice. You can either fix it or... I can fix it. And if I fix it you're not going to like it, because I'd throw everything away." And... "everything" means: most of us.

Himself - Professor Emeritus of Sociology:
We're not going to like it, but, eventually, the population of this planet is going to be a whole lot less than six billion. The question that we face is: will it come about through voluntary or involuntary means? If it comes about by involuntary means: how horrendous are those involuntary means going to be?

Himself - Environmentalist:
A century ago half of Americans were farmers; now that number is under one percent... there's a lot more people in the prison than working on the farms.

Himself - Journalist, Educator:
Fossil fuels are inherently finite. Oil was created 90-115 million years ago, and we're drawing down this stock of highly concentrated fuel in an amazingly short period of time. What's 200 years compared to 115 million years? And that oil is going to be gone virtually by the end of this century. So the 20th century was all about using more of the stuff. It was the great petroleum fiesta - one time only in the history of our species. The 21st century is going to be all about how that party winds down. This is the most serious problem to face the human race since we've been human.

Himself - Global Agriculturist:
You can see how far out-of-balance we are with our eco-system if you look at the total of solar energy that is collected by all agriculture, all forestry, lawns and everything else in the U.S.: all of this solar energy captured totals less than one half of what we're burning as fossil energy.

Himself - Former Head of the California EPA:
[author of "Lives Per Gallon"] As I lay out in my book, over the last 10 or 12 years oil and auto companies have spent 186 million Dollars on campaign contributions on the federal level. And for every one of these $ 186 mio they have gotten back a thousand Dollars in tax breaks and other subsidies.