Summary The ‘Biosphere: One Priority’ campaign is a compelling calling to our species to combat the catastrophic threat life faces as result of human induced climate change.
our species. It will both declare a great paradigm shift and outline an effective plan to meet the threats we face with the force that is required.
The campaign consists of two main elements: a visually stunning short film that demonstrates just how tiny and fragile the Earth’s biosphere is, and a manifesto for the Earth, constructed and chosen by the global community.
In support of this campaign, we have an Academy Award-winning animator and world-class animation team involved. We are hopeful that one of the world’s greatest environmentalists, Dr David Suzuki, will join the campaign to narrate this film and introduce the historic Earth Manifesto to humanity.
The short film will use photorealistic animations to “peel up” the thin living layer of Earth and condense it down into its true dimensions. By demonstrating the tiny size of the biosphere in relation to the vastness of space, it will become alarmingly obvious to humanity that the protection of the biosphere is essential to our survival. The Earth Manifesto will challenge, empower and unite
A bold and revolutionary statement is required to ensure that the Earth’s Biosphere becomes humanity’s number one priority.
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Note: The graphics and script used in this proposed treatment are not representative of what will be used in the final film. The animations will be photorealistic and the script will be further refined.
“Hello, my name is Dr. David Suzuki. For over 40 years, I have been educating people about science and the wonders of the living world. During this time, its become clear that a number of human activities are having a detrimental effect on the natural world. As a result of my concern, I joined the global movement to protect the Earth’s living environment, otherwise known as the biosphere. The biosphere is the region of the Earth that supports all life. It is the living layer that includes both the environments where life lives and also life itself. It is one dynamic interconnected system where environments shape life and life shapes the environment.�
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“Life, since it first came into existence, has spent over 3.8 billion years through the natural process of evolution, creating the wonderful level of complexity and biodiversity of the biosphere that we have today. Even now, opponents to the environmental movement claim that the Earth is far too big for humanity to impact the systems inherent in the biosphere that keep it healthy for abundant life. Now let me show you something.“
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Dr David Suzuki reaches down into the Earth and starts the process of peeling up the biosphere. “I am now going to show you the extent of our biosphere… the totality of our life support system here on planet Earth.”
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“The biosphere can be divided into three interconnected zones; these being the Atmosphere, Hydrosphere, and the Lithosphere. Now, I must clarify in the name of scientific accuracy that the biosphere has fuzzy edges. This is because fungal spores are found up in the high atmosphere and extremophile bacteria deep within the Earth. For the sake of this demonstration, we will include only the area of the biosphere that contains complex multicelluar life.�
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“So, if we look at the thickness of these layers, the atmosphere or gaseous section of the biosphere extends up to a maximum of 9km above sea level; the Hydrosphere or the liquid water element has an average depth of about 4km; and the Lithosphere, which is the rocky land component, is 1.5km deep. Included within these layers is the life that lives within them.“ As the biosphere peels up from the planet, descriptions of the section of the planet’s surface being peeled away will be given here.
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Example Script: “Here is the city of Shanghai in China with a dense population of over 24 million people. This the Amazon rainforest, which has highest diversity of species. The vegetation here is responsible for producing over 20% of the oxygen we breath. This is the ocean, home to most of life on Earth, covering 75% of its surface. Here are the Himalayas, the highest mountain range on Earth… there goes Mt Everest “ (This can be modified according to the length of the animation)
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“Now, if we condense the layer of the biosphere into one sphere comprising of all three zones, this is what it looks like in relation to the rest of Earth. This sphere is only 2285km in diameter, which is almost exactly the length of the Red Sea. This is the planet’s biosphere. This tiny ball represents the totality of the planet that supports life. It symbolizes just how precious, small and fragile our stage is in the Universe. “
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The camera zooms out from the Earth and biosphere through the planets and out through the Solar System to the Sun, just becoming a single star in the blackness of the void of space. “It is a ridiculous and dangerous fantasy to delude ourselves into thinking that we could migrate to another planet. Space is simply too vast for this to be a possibility. The fact is that this very thin layer, this tiny sphere of life, floating in the depths of the vacuum of deadly space, is all humanity has to support it. Earth’s biosphere is where we make our stand to exist. ”
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Camera transition between the blackness of space to the black sky with Dr David Suzuki standing on the Earth stripped of the biosphere. “Scientists everywhere are crying out to be heard in their one united message: we are detrimentally altering the life support systems of the biosphere. We are on course for a mass extinction event… all because of man-made catastrophic climate change. There’s no denying that the Earth is showing significant signs of the damage we have collectively inflicted upon it. We are ignoring these signs and our scientist’s emergency pleas to our peril. We are collectively tipping the balance of life against us and our children, and endangering not only our future as a species, but all other species of life on Earth.. Many climate scientists believe that we are close to crossing a tipping point to a process known as “Runaway Climate Change”. If this tipping point is passed, temperature rises will cause other planetary heating processes to kick in, thereby creating a feedback loop that increases the temperature even more. Once this process starts, the Earth will rapidly heat up on its own accord and we will be powerless to stop it. Past this tipping point, humanity will be unable to control the effects of climate change and life as we know it will inevitably be doomed. Earth is the only known place that supports life, its continued survival now rests with us. Humanity must urgently address this planetary threat and fight to hold its place in the Universe. “
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“We will need to engage in a world war-like effort to rapidly phase out fossil fuels and switch to clean safe energy alternatives. We have all the tools, we have all the technology, and we have the know how to achieve the greatest transition of our planet. With our minds, we have the ability to think of and create new futures; we can transform our ways so that our beautiful home planet can remain as a haven for life. Earth is our home and it is up to us as species to fit with the laws of nature that govern it. We are the biggest threat to life on our planet but we are, also life’s greatest hope. We will need to change the way we see ourselves and become globally a much wiser species. We need a rapid and significant shift from one form of culture to another. If we work together as one planet, one global society, we can engage and take decisive action. We can collectively grow up together, take responsibility, and restore the life-support system of our planet…our biosphere. David Suzuki reaches up and encircles the biosphere in his hand. The biosphere must be made our number one priority.”
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The famous scientist Carl Sagan once said “We know who speaks for the nations; but who speaks for the human species? Who speaks for Earth?” It is you who will speak for our species. It is you who will speak for Earth.” Mid shot of Dr David Suzuki’s, transitioning into the montage of people speaking the Earth manifesto. This leads into the Earth manifesto. “We the people...” Final scene is of a small child reading the last section of the Earth manifesto. The camera then rapidly pulls away to reveal the Earth. The camera pauses on Earth for a period of time in silence for the audience to contemplate…
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The Earth Manifesto We need a bold goal, a decisive plan. We need an Earth Manifesto to define a great paradigm shift in our species. It is clear that only a mass collective spearhead of action will be able to meet the catastrophic threat we face with the force that is required. Manifestos have the power to bind humans into one purpose For the first time in history, a manifesto will be collaboratively generated by our planetary civilisation. By working directly with our top climate scientists, this manifesto will be created in such a manner to ensure that it is the voice of wisdom, and that it represents the voice of the global community. The manifesto will be free from the agendas of governments, nations, specialized groups and economic doctrines. The manifesto will reflect only what is in the best interests of our planet and us as a species. The threat to our global civilisation is far too serious to delay action on this issue any longer. The danger is exponentially increasing with time. The laws of physics do not wait for decisions to be made or bend to the will of wishful thinking. The threat is real. The danger is
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imminent. Climate change is happening. Real harm to much of life will be sustained, and on such a devastating scale if we do not decisively act with an effort and energy akin to that which is expended in a global world war. We must act boldly for life, with or without our governments, as one global community. And we need to act now.
The Two-step Process The process to create the Earth Manifesto can be broken up into two phases. The first is the generation of various manifestos for consideration. The second is a voting system to choose the best manifesto that is powerful enough to overcome the catastrophic threat we face.
Manifesto Generation The generation of manifestos will involve a system where people can either collaborate on manifestos or generate their own. To begin this process, the scientific community will be asked to give a true assessment of the threats we face.
Scientists will inform the global community of the goals that need to be achieved in order to avert catastrophe. The global community, using this information, will be asked to create manifestos for Earth. Individuals or teams of people can then submit video manifestos of up to 25 minutes in length or they can contribute to a collective process of manifesto generation.
Collective Generation The collective manifesto generation is based on an internet democratic system that has been shown to work well previously. The same system was used to generate the ‘Energise America’ policy. ‘Energise America’ was a 20-point energy policy developed by a group of bloggers on the website Daily Kos. The website attracts over 300,000 people with a vast array of different talents, skills and expertise. A French energy expert introduced the idea to create an energy policy using this vast pool of minds and the voting mechanism of the website. People on Daily Kos were asked to put forward ideas and each person’s submission could be read and voted on by the other members. Each suggestion could be voted a +1 if it was a good idea 0 if they were neutral and a -1 if was a bad idea. After running this process
for a couple of months the best ideas naturally rose to the top. The top 20 ideas were chosen and resubmitted back to the community to be improved upon and to be assessed for their scientific validity. The resulting 20 point plan was known as ‘Energise America’ and what they produced was astounding. This process of policy generation was an example of pure democracy. It is also free of the influence of pressure groups and corruption. The Biosphere One Priority campaign will use a website similar to Daily Koz, but one that has been structured specifically for the task of generating an Earth Manifesto. Manifestos generated in this manner can then placed on the ‘Biosphere: One Priority’ website and contend against other solo or group submissions. In order to ensure that the submissions are of a high quality, there will be a nonrefundable charge of $10 US dollars to submit an Earth Manifesto. Once submissions have been verified they will be placed on the ‘Biosphere: One Priority’ website. From here, the climate science community and global community can collectively select the very best Earth Manifesto.
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Voting Mechanism The voting mechanism is designed to give a fair weighting between the experts in the field of climate science and the global community. This is how it will work: The climate science community will have a rating system out of 100 that will included a number of key factors: • Validity: The effectiveness of the plan to combat the catastrophe we face • Usage: It’s implementation into the global human society • Clarity: The ease of understanding for society at large A weighting between factors will be employed and an overall numerical rating out of 100 will be given to each Earth Manifesto submission. The global public will have access to ratings to the submissions as decided by the climate scientists. The public will also be able to vote but they will have a simpler voting mechanism that consists of a one-vote system.
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The public will be allocated one vote per person, which will be symbolised as a star. They may place this star on any submission at any time during the voting process. If they find a submission they prefer to a previous one, they can place their star on the new selection and the system will automatically remove the star vote from the previously chosen video. The voting system therefore is a great combination of both meritocracy and democracy. The winter solstice of 2015 in the Northern Hemisphere will be the date set for the final Earth Manifesto to be chosen.
Crowdfunding Although many people are working on this campaign without payment or for greatly reduced pay, significant funding will still be required to facilitate a project of this magnitude. A crowd-funding campaign will be used to generate the funds needed to complete this project. Realistically, a production of this kind would cost close to a million dollars to produce. The photorealistic animation sequences will require huge computing power and computer render farms will need to be used to complete them. We estimate that we could complete this project for the cost of around $200,000.
This ability is only in its infancy but we have had tantalizing glimpses of the power of the internet. Campagins like ‘Occupy Movement’, ‘Kony Campaign’ and ‘March in March’ could have only been possible with the internet. In many way this shift can be likened to when a teenagers brain prefrontal cortex wires up for the first time giving them higher cognitive abilities and reasoned thought. There has never been a better time for our species to truly grow up. The time to launch such a paradigm shifting project is now .
Currently there are over 7 billion people on this planet and approximately 1/3 of the population has access to the internet. With initiatives like Google’s Project Loon, billions more will soon join us online. Humanity has the greatest tool at hand with this increased ultra connectivity. Large sections of the global population can now coordinate behind a common cause easily without the use of governments.
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Promotion To promote the ‘Biosphere: One Priority’ campaign, we have an ingenious and comprehensive marketing plan across all platforms. This includes viral social media, YouTube videos and even poster packs for home printing available via download.
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The Team
CHRISTOPHER LANSELL
NATHAN MULLIGAN
LEO BAKER
ANDREW GRAHAM
WILLIAM GAMON
Christopher is the concept and project director for this project. He is a scientific communicator artist and film director. A few years ago he completed his first major scientific artwork, the Melbourne Solar System - a one to one billion scale bronze and metal sculpture of the Solar System and nearest star Proxima Centauri.
Nathan is the concept and project co-director. Specialising in graphic design, storyboard conceptualisation, web design and social media. Nathan runs his own graphic design business Sigh Design, specialising in the areas of photo manipulation, corporate identity, and art direction.
Leo is the animation director for this project. Leo has won several awards for his work including an Academy award in 2011 for the best-animated short film. He is one of the world’s top animators and has worked for several years on international feature films as an animator and visual effects artist.
Andrew currently works at FX TD at Image Engine Design. He is one of the world’s best animators specializing in fire fluid and particular animations. He has completed sequences for many Hollywood blockbuster films including ‘The Great Gatsby’ ‘The Hunger Games’ and ‘Harry Potter’.
William is the owner of Cumulus FX and is also one of the world’s best animators. He has worked on the films ‘The Lord of the Rings’, ‘The Last Samurai’, ‘Blood Diamond’ and ‘Mission Impossible’ and is a specialist in compositing. His showreel can be seen here. https://vimeo.com/42024920
http://youtu.be/ApEUrJpyF2E
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Final Word The threat to our global civilisation is far too serious to delay real action on this issue any longer. The danger only exponentially increases with time. The fact is the laws of physics do not wait for decisions to be made or bend to the will of wishful thinking. Real harm to much of life will be sustained and on such a devastating scale if we do not decisively act with an effort akin to that which is expended in a global world war. We must act now boldly for life, with or with out our governments, as one global community to heal the life support system of our planet - the biosphere.
biosphereonepriority.com biosphereonepriority@gmail.com
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