Ecological Documentary – (Observe the facts and make up your own mind)

This week, NUCLEAR COMEBACK [www.sundancechannel.com] provides an in depth examination of everything nuclear. New Zealand filmmaker Justin Pemberton paints an overview of nuclear energy by visiting nuclear installations and interviewing people who have worked in nuclear plants for most of their lives.

Check out this clip from NUCLEAR COMEBACK

ECOISTS – (Find inspiration from a well known personality)

Sam Waterston, who plays a morally guided lawyer on LAW & ORDER, wants to save the fish in the ocean. He believes that the fishing industry is an important part of commerce but that you can save the habitat of fish by giving the fish enough room to replenish their population.
We hope you enjoy this video of Sam Waterston

Swing by the ECOISTS website and check out Sam Waterston’s profile.

ECO BIZ – (Successful companies become more profitable by helping to save the planet)

The ECO BIZ subject for this week is truly inspiring. Discover RecycleBank, an intensely useful resource for anyone who wants to get something back from being green. While it is important that people continue to make green choices out of the kindness of their heart, RecycleBank goes one step further by creating an incentive for people to recycle. They will actually PAY PEOPLE to recycle things with their organization. The bottle recycling program that has existed in the U.S. for decades has proven that an incentive can go a long way to making people do the right thing. RecycleBank clearly took note of this success and adapted it to their business model as a result.

BIG IDEAS FOR A SMALL PLANET: WATER – (In-depth analysis of the leading movers-n-shakers in the environmental movement)

Among other stories, discover CEO Amanda Brock and her revolutionary company, Water Standard Company. Her business desalinizes water in a new and exciting fashion. Check out the clip below to learn more.

If you liked this video you can find more in THE GREEN. There are more exciting businesses you can learn about on the BIG IDEAS FOR A SMALL PLANET website [www.sundancechannel.com].

Video games seem to have infected everything in society with their contagious delivery of interactive instant-gratification. In many ways, the interactive nature of video games makes them powerful tools for training people to react to stimuli. All other forms of media before video games were purely consumptive forms of communication. People who read books, watch televisions or look at a paintings can follow their imagination and react to the information they are observing, but they are not allowed to write the final chapter of the book, record their own director’s cut or paint more detail into the foreground of a painting.

Once the power of interactive graphic entertainment to train people is acknowledged, one must wonder if video games are training people to do good, moral or societally sustainable acts in the world? In order to shine a spotlight on one morally conscious game theme, let us think about one video game that is related to environmental issues. Games like this are created firstly to entertain, and therefore, the learning process is often a great way to have some laughs.

One of these games comes from the biggest video game publishing company in the world, EA (Electronic Arts). SimCity Societies allows players to build a digital city part by part. Choices between coal plants, nuclear plants, wind plants and solar plants in a player’s city will create major differences in the digital city. Coal plants will require the player to invest in more healthcare as people become sick. The pollution from the plant will also make any residential area or commercial area placed near the plant be less valuable, thereby lowering the tax revenues collected for the city’s virtual budget management.

People who play strategy games like SimCity Societies learn many true facts about environmentalism and economics through balancing and testing various functions of the game software. Check out the official website [simcitysocieties.ea.com] for the game and see if you can’t have some fun while you learn more about cities and nature.

Please write in comments if you have any knowledge of a video game that is related to environmentalism, we would be very curious to hear from you.