I happened upon this documentary on Hulu a while ago and just recently had a chance to watch it. It’s a little less than 1.5 hours and is well worth your time. It was quite enjoyable to watch! Mikael Rioux lives in Quebec, Canada and quite the demonstrator. Eventually he becomes fed up with just asking questions and wants to find real solutions.

So what is it about? Sustainability. Trying to keep the earth and not allow it to be completely destroyed by the way we are currently treating it.

Mikael meets Christian de Laet who becomes his mentor and introduces him to others around the world who are working hard to find solutions. Mikael travels the world looking at what some of these other countries are doing and their progress and their focus.

One of the greatest quotes I heard in the whole film is that we are “sleepwalking into the future” which is so accurate and profound. We are simply closing our eyes to what is going on so that we don’t have to address it.

In Mikael’s travels we see sewage canals in China changed to clean canals with filtration and living plants, and travel to India with a change in resources used to build new buildings. Also in Switzerland with idea makers, trying to visualize what needs to happen and make people aware of it.

He also went to Sweden where they were trying to visualize the full scale of the problem and then trying to find solutions and what little steps could be started now to reach that goal. People need to know what the goal is and what steps to take to get there. And at some level we all know it takes more than turning off the lights in rooms we aren’t using and changing to CFL light bulbs.

So often we compete over resources when we need to work together to use and sustain them, not abuse them. A cooperative ethic often doesn’t exist and we need to rally people around constructive and feasible ideas.

Mikael started with activism and working against problems with anger and demonstrations. Now he working with government and leadership to find feasible and sustainable solutions. This has been much more effective! With optimism for the future and using solutions he knows will work to make a difrerence he seeks to educate people and bringing awareness which will effect lasting change.

Parts of the documentary are in english and others are in french with subtitles. there is also some great french poetry through out, which I really enjoyed listening to.

As I mentioned earlier it’s a great film and it helps us see that there is no one solution the the grand problem, but small people and communities need to start where they are and work together and a greater lasting change will take place.