Shunkashûtô monogatari
This film explores Stewart's storied life-past, present, and future. Stewart Brand was part of some of the most significant moments of the 20th Century: he helped found the modern environmental moveme…
Shunkashûtô monogatari
This film explores Stewart's storied life-past, present, and future. Stewart Brand was part of some of the most significant moments of the 20th Century: he helped found the modern environmental movement, he launched a seminal publication that Steve Jobs called a bible of the hippie generation, and founded the first Hackers Conference. Using never-before-seen 16mm film, photographs, and personal diaries, We Are As Gods briefly examines some of Stewart's extraordinary biography and influence. Following Stewart on his current global expedition to find out how de-extinction technology can reverse climate change and to prevent the loss of species on a global scale, his journey begins in a place called Pleistocene Park. Here two eccentric Russian scientists have been living in self-imposed exile trying to resurrect the woolly mammoth and bring back other ancient mega-fauna to stave off climate catastrophe. When Stewart arrives, it's the hottest year on record in Siberia. As the frozen soil warms, it threatens to release an ocean of greenhouse gasses that could trigger catastrophic climate change, a feedback loop of warming that threatens life on earth as we know it. This is why Stewart and his Russian hosts hope to bring back the ancient animals that roamed here when the earth was colder, before humans arrived in the area and wiped them all out. When animals like the mammoth are brought back, they believe they will keep the soil colder by kicking up the top layer of ice on the ground, allowing the freezing Arctic air to penetrate below the surface and cool the permafrost an estimated 15 degrees, keeping the greenhouse gas inside. At Pleistocene Park, Stewart examines the permafrost in ice caves, illuminates the highly combustible methane being released from the earth by lighting a huge plume of gas on fire, and excavates woolly mammoth bones from the thawing soil. It's an Arctic adventure with a central mission: Stewart and his scientific colleagues hope they can find a sample with enough ancient DNA that they can recreate the genome of the mammoth. While this sounds like science fiction, according to a fellow member of the expedition and biotech pioneer George Church of Harvard University, it is not. Church is the lead of Stewart's Woolly Mammoth Revival Project, and he is confident that with enough DNA, re-engineering these ancient animals is possible. When the group finds a clump of 30,000-year-old mammoth hair, they have what they need. George and Stewart package it carefully and to bring back to the lab at Harvard. Stewart's mission is not just about bringing back extinct animals. He's also hoping to expand the toolkit for the conservation of endangered and threatened species. DeExtinction may sound like a magic fix, but many environmentalists ridicule the idea. They say it is fraught with unintended consequences, and dismiss Stewart himself as misguided. This derision from his peers is a dramatic turn for Stewart, who was once at the vanguard of the environmental movement. In archival footage, we learn about Stewart's role in the 1970s counterculture, galvanizing a generation to live in a more sustainable way. Looking back on these days now, Stewart thinks he was wrong about much of what he started. He thinks the environmental movement is too fixated on what is "natural," and that humans need to use all the futuristic tools at their disposal to confront problems like mass extinction and climate change. Today, his heretical ideas have made him an outsider among his former friends. Stewart has staked his reputation on this belief that humans must learn to change, adapt, and develop technology for the future of the planet. Though he has changed his mind over the years about methodology, he is in many ways remarkably consistent. He is a futurist who encourages humans to take the long view as we contemplate our impact on the earth. The "Clock of the Long Now" project illustrate Stewart's enduring legacy and ability to create grand philosophical projects to shift our collective perspective on space, time, and ecology. For decades, Stewart has been dreaming of building a giant clock, bigger than the statue of liberty, that will last for 10,000 years come nuclear holocaust or climate catastrophe, keeping perfect time long after he and all of us are gone, reminding humans to look beyond their own lifespans at something larger than us all. December 2019, Stewart and his collaborators finished the clock and installed it in the core of the highest mountain peak in Texas.
Shunkashûtô monogatari
Drama
Film Details
This film explores Stewart's storied life-past, present, and future. Stewart Brand was part of some of the most significant moments of the 20th Century: he helped found the modern environmental movement, he launched a seminal publication that Steve Jobs called a bible of the hippie generation, and founded the first Hackers Conference. Using never-before-seen 16mm film, photographs, and personal diaries, We Are As Gods briefly examines some of Stewart's extraordinary biography and influence.
Following Stewart on his current global expedition to find out how de-extinction technology can reverse climate change and to prevent the loss of species on a global scale, his journey begins in a place called Pleistocene Park. Here two eccentric Russian scientists have been living in self-imposed exile trying to resurrect the woolly mammoth and bring back other ancient mega-fauna to stave off climate catastrophe. When Stewart arrives, it's the hottest year on record in Siberia.
As the frozen soil warms, it threatens to release an ocean of greenhouse gasses that could trigger catastrophic climate change, a feedback loop of warming that threatens life on earth as we know it. This is why Stewart and his Russian hosts hope to bring back the ancient animals that roamed here when the earth was colder, before humans arrived in the area and wiped them all out. When animals like the mammoth are brought back, they believe they will keep the soil colder by kicking up the top layer of ice on the ground, allowing the freezing Arctic air to penetrate below the surface and cool the permafrost an estimated 15 degrees, keeping the greenhouse gas inside.
At Pleistocene Park, Stewart examines the permafrost in ice caves, illuminates the highly combustible methane being released from the earth by lighting a huge plume of gas on fire, and excavates woolly mammoth bones from the thawing soil. It's an Arctic adventure with a central mission: Stewart and his scientific colleagues hope they can find a sample with enough ancient DNA that they can recreate the genome of the mammoth. While this sounds like science fiction, according to a fellow member of the expedition and biotech pioneer George Church of Harvard University, it is not.
Church is the lead of Stewart's Woolly Mammoth Revival Project, and he is confident that with enough DNA, re-engineering these ancient animals is possible. When the group finds a clump of 30,000-year-old mammoth hair, they have what they need. George and Stewart package it carefully and to bring back to the lab at Harvard.
Stewart's mission is not just about bringing back extinct animals. He's also hoping to expand the toolkit for the conservation of endangered and threatened species. DeExtinction may sound like a magic fix, but many environmentalists ridicule the idea.
They say it is fraught with unintended consequences, and dismiss Stewart himself as misguided. This derision from his peers is a dramatic turn for Stewart, who was once at the vanguard of the environmental movement. In archival footage, we learn about Stewart's role in the 1970s counterculture, galvanizing a generation to live in a more sustainable way.
Looking back on these days now, Stewart thinks he was wrong about much of what he started. He thinks the environmental movement is too fixated on what is "natural," and that humans need to use all the futuristic tools at their disposal to confront problems like mass extinction and climate change. Today, his heretical ideas have made him an outsider among his former friends.
Stewart has staked his reputation on this belief that humans must learn to change, adapt, and develop technology for the future of the planet. Though he has changed his mind over the years about methodology, he is in many ways remarkably consistent. He is a futurist who encourages humans to take the long view as we contemplate our impact on the earth.
The "Clock of the Long Now" project illustrate Stewart's enduring legacy and ability to create grand philosophical projects to shift our collective perspective on space, time, and ecology. For decades, Stewart has been dreaming of building a giant clock, bigger than the statue of liberty, that will last for 10,000 years come nuclear holocaust or climate catastrophe, keeping perfect time long after he and all of us are gone, reminding humans to look beyond their own lifespans at something larger than us all. December 2019, Stewart and his collaborators finished the clock and installed it in the core of the highest mountain peak in Texas..