Earth 2100 (2009 TV Movie) User Reviews

A unique piece of both striking and picturesque science - the shock and awe type.

[jedi_dave · 8/10 · 16 November 2009]

When I first came across this title the rating was still well above 7. The more people votes, the lower it gets. Now, why is that, I wonder. But really, I think I already know the reason. And not to offend anyone, but respectfully, do you all actually must be so predictable. I mean, I'm sitting here and now, writing this comment, and I KNOW the reaction of most of you - 'Oh, yet another far-fetched, apocalyptic, designed to scare us (the question rises here - scare into what? going green?) production. One of the oh-so-many that have been made in the recent years. But I still live the way I used to, nothing changes, I'm good.'Good for you, then... for now at least. I believe there is a reason for such productions to proliferate like that - this problem IS real. And it IS, not MIGHT BE some day.

I shouldn't really get so criticizing and I apologize for that. But I believe it might add to the point I'm trying to make. Because after watching this documentary I can't say that there is a single flaw in its technical, cinematographic design that could explain this plummeting ranking. The film has everything a documentary needs: the issue, the vast background, the science, the prognoses, the hypotheses and conclusions that follow. It EVEN has a well-written narrative, thus a plot. It finally has the message and what a message it is. But how is met with? Well you all see the ranking. If it isn't the form that fails it has to be the content. So prejudice drives most of the people who watch it, prejudice towards this seemingly hackneyed topic.

I cannot expect everybody to be as moved as I was after watching Earth 2100. However I beg of you, when you visit here to vote, please consider this one thing - sure you can vote 3 for redundancy or triteness (which aren't even the case in this production, since it's quite a unique attempt at a documentary) or you can actually help the cause by encouraging others to watch this film with your positive, or at least adequate vote. After all, and let us be frank here, all of us 'imdbcomers' know that hardly anything below 7 is worth investing our time in. And it's definitely not the case with Earth 2100.

The bottom line here being - don't dismiss a good piece of movie- making just because the subject annoys you personally. Because there might others who would actually need or could use an inspiration (and motivation), which this documentary may well provide.

8 out of 10, but it's me being objective. Personally, it's a 'tenner' for me - the actual gem among the rock.

Uncomfortable subject matter, sensationalist presentation, sobering reality

[maxgates · 8/10 · 19 November 2009]

At this risk starting some kind of flame war as a film Earth 2100 is flawed, the excessive use of graphics and visual treatment tries to add dynamism to essentially a factual and interview based documentary. I must to agree with the comments about low scores for these reasons though personally I give this an eight. In relation to the debate about global warming however, for a US market its very hard to get the message across: its not just going to happen out there beyond your borders, you are definitely going to feel the effects at home and even if you manage to insulate yourselves from the worst and are lucky with the changes of climate where you live, a good 60% of the worlds population will not be. Resource wars, highly erratic weather patterns, natural disasters, famine and massive migration like the world has never seen before, will happen. Everyone shares the responsibility.

americo-centric and naif

[vernetto · 6/10 · 7 November 2014]

most of the speakers are highly qualified and very scholar, but the narrative around Lucy is very naif: they describe life in 2080 as technologically very similar to the present (gas-powered cars, internet, power grid...)... also, the director seems to believe that USA is sort of a "leading nation" with a duty to guide the rest of humanity out of this ecological predicament, while in reality USA is the nation who does the most to CREATE this predicament in the first place, with their absurd lifestyle and the aggressiveness of its corporation.... don't forget that the largest polluting entity on the planet is the USA army - but this is not even mentioned in the movie. The narrator also mentions people coming from "failed countries" as a big security threat (to Americans... the rest of the world doesn't really matter...), while forgetting to mention that USA itself is mostly responsible -with direct or indirect military, political or economical attacks - for the "failure" of these states. So on the whole this movie told me little I didn't already know (I have read all Jared Diamond books, they are excellent) and only annoyed me for its faith in Governments and americocentricity.

Poignant Prescience

[bjshop · 10/10 · 23 May 2010]

When viewing this film, I was not aware of the impressive group of scientists behind the theories proscribed, or the fact that it was based on a computerized worst case scenario. The animation at first did not appeal to me, but after awhile the heart warming story did grab my attention. I have been living in the same geographic area my entire life, so that has helped me to see many of these changes already occurring. This movie should appeal to your heart with the family story. The science behind it should appeal to those with an open and scientific mind. If you're close-minded and just want to rant and rate negatively, people will see through your motivations.

Don't bother watching this film.

[jhuni_x · 5/10 · 24 January 2010]

Global warming, flooding, droughts, natural disasters, diseases, over-population, refugees, peak oil, resource wars, why not throw all of these things together centered around a single character and then conclude the movie by saying that we need to create a green and environmental future?

This film does not establish a clear relation between each of these problems, it just jumps from one from issue to another, and it can be quite confusing along the way. Besides that, things are centered far too much on America and the life of this fictional character: Lucy. I don't think they mention Africa, South America, The Middle East, or Australia, much or at all. They talk about China and India a little: apparently they declared a resource war against one another, however, they don't go into it that much after that.

In addition to this, there have been oil shortages in the world before. See {The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil (2006)}. People would import lots of bicycles as the price of gasoline for cars goes up, they would start growing their own food as the price of food goes up, and so on. People wouldn't be senselessly driving in their cars to get super-expensive gas as is implied here. They over-dramatize every issue to a 'worst case scenario', especially the issue of peak oil.

How exactly did the population go to 9 billion and then down to 2.7 billion and where exactly were these population changes distributed? In order to support a larger population, such as one that has 9 billion people, you would undoubtedly need advances in agriculture and architecture, so that bigger buildings can be created and so that more food can be produced. Besides that there are things which are limiting factors to the expanse of the population, such as the birth control programs in China and AIDS in Africa.

Moving on, was there any good reason that those sea-barriers had to fail? I think they would have made all sorts of precautions to assure that they would work correctly, and they would predict the event before hand so that they could drop the sea-barriers without resistance. Furthermore, if they wanted to construct a modern green city, they most certainly wouldn't do it around New York, when New York is immediately threatened by the floods and diseases. Instead, they would most certainly create the city around Siberia or Canada, because in this future those areas would become warmer and more habitable, so they would make for an ideal place to create a "beacon of hope" for this post-apocalyptic society.

One thing that was really disturbing is the communications breakdown, and the idea that the scientific breakthroughs could be lost. One of the people interviewed for this show said "if it is some electronic based thing it could all be lost" considering modern storage capacities, you can store so much data that there is little threat to the ability to successfully store it. Sure a nuclear apocalypse, or a massive raise in the Earth's sea-levels could seriously threaten life and civilization as we know it, however, I do not think it poses much of any threat to digital data or our communications systems.

We could easily store all of our scientific breakthroughs/literature/videos/software on a couple of hard-drives and put them in spacecrafts/satellites that would be completely impervious to all Earthly matters, in addition to this these spacecrafts could send radio waves down to Earth. This could form the basis of a communication system used to reconstruct human society after such an apocalyptic event as the one this film depicts.

In conclusion, this movie recommends that people change their habits immediately in order to go green, to get solar panels, and wind power. These are things we have probably already heard many times before so this ending segment probably won't be interesting to most people. They actually pose no real solutions to most of the issues presented in this film: natural disasters, over-population, peak oil etc.

But we HAVE to think about it!

[Tom-464 · 9/10 · 22 February 2010]

One previous comment on this movie said "... can't bare (sic) to think about it." We HAVE to bear to think about it. Especially with the failure of the Copenhagen talks, we ARE going to be living in a world with a significantly changed climate. A person's only choice at this point is between sticking his head into the sand (and you know what that leaves sticking up and exposed) and facing the future so we can DO something about it.

This movie has the guts to paint an honest picture of the likely results of that head-in-the-sand approach, and it ain't pretty. I'm sure most people who watched it (or who saw a summary and chose not to watch it) also thought, "I can't bear to think about it." Those who did see it through, though, got a clear idea of why we have to do something now, and also some ideas of things we can do now to prevent, or at least mitigate, the things the movie shows. (That's at the very end - hence the "spoiler" note - but it IS there: stick it through and watch the hopeful part!)

There are movements out there working to mitigate the effects of the coming crisis. The Transition Movement is a major one; your favorite search engine can tell you where to find it. As the "can't bare" writer pointed out, seeing this movie is hard - honesty to that depth IS hard to watch - but the movie is a massively well depicted and presented view of our future if we choose to do nothing.

Grossly inaccurate

[eplanti · 4/10 · 30 March 2010]

Apparently someone wrote this to capitalize on the ever present environmentalism groups both nationally and internationally, in the hopes they would buy the DVD's show them at conventions, people's houses and try to force their friends to watch (actually pretty good plan).

However, 2100 makes us think that technology won't even progress beyond gasoline, which is a great fuel at 44,000 KJ/gallon but expensive rather than it's alternatives, coal and electricity. Most likely Li-ion batteries combined with either carbon nanotubes or silicon nanowires will be it's successor within the next decade (not kidding, google them please), Nuclear plants produce no Co2, but the film never mentions them, instead solar panels and wind for all, which i must mention are horribly inefficient at $.15/kwh vs coal's $.04 or nuclear's $.05.

The film takes us on an "emotional" story of how the earth got ruined by man apparently, and can be solved by signing a treaty which fixes everything. Rather than prove any point or focusing on a single issue as noted before, watchers are thrust into heartbroken character after heartbreaking character and forced to watch as poor framework and lackluster performances crawl agonizingly by. Again, a lot of the circumstances just won't happen with overpopulation in the countries noted due to drought, Aids etc. As you can see you get caught between the film's gross inaccuracy and the constant barrage of garbage that is the sidestories.

Additionally, the film never explores any other explanation of why some of the events happen, it simply claims "humans did it", there are very good reasons why quite a few people disagree with some of the proposals, see the topics "turbulent flow" "salt fingering" "shockwaves in a flow" "cloud formation" as all these are necessary to compute a successful climate model. No, I won't explain any of these.

Anyway as a film it's lackluster propaganda, I give it an E for effort.

deniers where are you now??

[suecaskey · 16 September 2015]

... since it's only 6 years since this movie was made, and already Lake Mead is falling toward 1/2 its normal capacity, and Hurricane Sandy flooded lower Manhattan, not to mention the Western wildfires... are you keeping score dudes?

You can see climate change coming soon in technicolor, to a denier's neighborhood whether he likes it or not.

"The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it." -- Neil DeGrasse Tyson

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." -- Aldous Huxley

interesting -lovely anime

[sljmyers · 8/10 · 11 October 2013]

I happened upon this show on H2 and thought it was well done and thought provoking - very Japanese anime. I have actually watched it more than once for the unique way this movie was filmed and presented. I did not gain any knowledge that I didn't already know as any human being would - if we do not take care of our planet and people, our planet will not take care of us. Simple truth that anyone would know. The way that you follow the family through the years and how NYC changes is actually sad and lovely at the same time. The soundtrack and animation is very interesting. I am planning on purchasing this movie and watching it with my family. I will watch it again and again.

American Propaganda at one of its finer moments

[seanpatrix · 5/10 · 17 November 2009]

I have to give a 5 rating just because I can't seem to balance the poor shady inconclusive dramatic rather successful attempt at sensationalizing facts and theories into such crap. From the aspect of the creation, editing, storyline, plot, artistic blah blah blah - well done - it is the subject matter that concerns me.

This apparently a documentary - and in my eyes a successful mock-umentary that never fully completes a possible fact, or concluding a theory. It Americanizes the climate change and inflates the idea that it is more harmful to Americans, than anyone else in the world, and swarms of people will be busting down borders. Yet in a moment before, America was drying up into a desert - so why would people wanna go there? The other big question, unanswered or rarely mentioned is that if the planet is warming up, places that are already low with moisture are just gonna dry up anyhow, and well, with all that moisture evaporating into the air system - well, it would clearly suggest it's gonna come back down somewhere else. So, if America is gonna dry up - big whoop, someplace else is gonna 'wet up'.

And if the world is going to go belly up - oh excuse me, the world will continue and move forward with or without human beings, and perhaps that won't be such a bad thing.

How sad. All we can do is wait for the Hammer.

[akrab · 8/10 · 9 March 2010]

After seeing this documentary I was left with one single question. If there is a single most important cause for this outcome, what would it be. There is only one understanding this reasonably rational human being can come to. As Lucy states, the human race is collapsing under its own weight. There are just to many of us for this "Blue Marble", we live on to support with out our destroying our home in order to feed, cloth, shelter, etc., such huge numbers.

What a sad commentary on our inability to say "NO", to procreation. I, myself, have chosen to not do so. Unfortunately, it might take something like ninety-nine out of a hundred to do the same in 1980, to make a difference by 2015. 2015, being the step over the edge into the abyss year, or close to it, from which this earth will not be able to recover for centuries. We humans are killing the very planet that gave us life in the first place.

How sad, when a self aware, sentient, god seeking being, is wondering if a single strand of RNA might be our salvation. Salvation for the human species being six billion dead. But would we just start all over again.

Crappy propaganda

[the_wolf_imdb · 2/10 · 24 November 2013]

First and foremost: The "apocalypse" shown in the movie is crazy one. The climate change may be very bad for people, yes, but historically it was mostly beneficial for the environment. The current "cold age" is abnormally cold, historically it was way way warmer, there was basically no ice on the poles, there was actually even polar forest! What is real problem is overpopulation, globalization (the transport of food around the world is really stupid), ecosystem destruction not short of genocide, production of toxic garbage and other waste. Please stop crying about flooded cities and the end of the civilization. You know, this has happened multiple times in the past and the impact was not that bad. The ruined cities were reused, especially in the Middle East. The oldest cities there have been "recycled" for thousands of years. And they will be recycled in the future as well.

The climate change is not the end of the world nor the nature. It is very unpleasant change for most people. But have no doubts that preventing the climate change would save us from overpopulation or new illnesses. It will not. If your city is in the path of destruction it is just simple to move the city than to try to change the nature. So deal with it and focus on more important issues like stopping the globalization that is the actual devil here - it is really outsourcing of the ecosystem destruction. Riding your bike will really not prevent China from apocalyptic destruction of forests in Africa and South America.

Humans will pay the price for not respecting the planet

[submale320 · 10/10 · 2 March 2012]

This show was great. In a very short time has proved humans with a advanced brain, stand upright, have thumbs and can speak has become the perfect destroying machine. Humans destroy everything they come in contact with. The best thing to happen to this plant is for the entire human species to be destroyed, this film was great as it shows mankind is no good for this planet. The world is 4.5 billion years old, if there is a God, why would he wait so long to put humans on the planet. Look what mankind has done in less then 300 years, what a joke, mankind was the worst thing to ever happen to earth. If there is a God, what a disappointment mankind must be to him, destroying his planet and having no regard what so ever for nature or the millions of creatures on this planet. Anyone who is in disagreement with this show and does not see what humans have done to this once so beautiful planet is in a fog as mankind deserves whatever ever nature throws at humans, we are all guilty of destroying this beautiful planet and it is all GREED driven.

A vision of ecocalypse and ecotopia, new age is a sad one

[tain-5 · 2/10 · 15 December 2012]

Nothing but pandering to the eco fanatics. Soon all kinds of catastrophes will descend upon us, from the moderately reasonable (change in animal migration patterns) to the wholly absurd apocalyptic images, and claims of all sorts of resources running out simultaneously. The police shooting protesters made me laugh, I admit, but they left out cannibalism. Fresh meat is the best source of protein after all. Ah, but then we are saved by creating an ecotopia where we put whole gardens and windmills on top of our skyscrapers and ride bicycles while wearing those stupid looking racer helmets, you know, for speed. Its nice to see that even in the future people remain hopelessly delusional when it comes to their newborns. And the part about their friends moving out of the city to start, what I can only presume by then will be a hyper-organic farm, had me rolling on the floor. How "conscious" of them, they're the new age saints.

This watches like one of those asinine rapture fantasies, and is not even liberal in the classical sense. Being a Marxist of the Trotskyist persuasion, who conserves electricity, but doesn't recycle (due to it being little more than a waste of time), I can't say that I found it the least bit appealing. Right-wingers can't pin this cinematic abortion on liberal politics.

These newly risen hordes of eco- and health- fanatics are similar to the religious ones in more ways than one, the most annoying being the claim to speak for a higher authority (be it god, earth or nature). Why don't we get rid of all of them once an for all. We can only hope that all those prophesied catastrophes will help.

Seven Years Later . . .

[joseph-argenio-622-182606 · 9/10 · 12 August 2016]

This film was made in 2010 but great to watch now. It presents a fictionalized worst-case scenario thru the eyes of "Lucy" who is born in 2009 and by 2100 is the oldest person alive in a dystopian world. Topics covered are peak oil (it gets wrong due to fracking), drought (it pretty much nails), heat-waves (accurate), the flooding of NYC and migrants (eerily prescient) and a host of other issues still too soon to determine such as tropical diseases popping up in temperate zones, sea-level rise, the arctic methane burp, melting of Greenland. The film is US-centric, so might be frustrating for people in other countries who are tired of seeing us place ourselves at the forefront all the time. But it does mention China, India and Mexico among others -- trying to show the global extent of the problems. The film also features impressive experts such as E.O. Wilson and Jared Diamond. The greatest weakness of this chilling and very important warning message is in the "solutions" presented at the end. Like most, it suggests using compact florescent bulbs and everyone just trying harder instead of specific policy, tax and economic reforms that would put in place the incentives and policy machinery needed for sustainable economic systems. In that regard, we could badly use a sequel/remake/revisiting of this crucial topic.

Leftist Propaganda Crap

[davidleequinn1950 · 1/10 · 7 August 2012]

I (unfortunately) stumbled on this crapola while I was watching "The History Channel" this morning. My first thought was "What the h%!! is a show about 100 years in the future doing on "The History Channel" in the first place? After I got past that I just sat there amazed at the stuff in the show that passed for facts. The show purported to be following this one person "Lucy" who was born in 2009 for 100 years. But in fact the whole show was just an excuse to try to shove green/liberal propaganda down America's throat. I will give you a couple of examples. In their liberal scenario, Lake Mead has completely dried up. Well I guess there goes Las Vegas. Further the whole northern part of Arizona is covered with solar panels. Was there not even one sane person around that said "Hey, you know what, we could produce much more electricity, at a lower cost, and use less land if we built a nuclear reactor"? To continue my story, this family motors from San Diego to New York City. While passing through Texas and Oklahoma, they notice thousands of people streaming away from Texas and Oklahoma due to water and food shortages. Has anyone noticed people streaming away from the Southwest lately? California, yes, Detroit, yes, any city in New Jersey, yes, but Texas, not so much. So the family arrives in New York City where the father finds work. My first thought was "If the people of Texas and Oklahoma (where there are millions of acres of rich farm land) are suffering a food shortage, who exactly is feeding the 12,000,000 people piled on top of each other in New York City. In fact, since there is now no gasoline, what is propelling the farm tractors in the first place? I mean can you envision a Chevy Volt pulling a plow? In conclusion, this show did not make me mad because it is 100% liberal propaganda, it made me mad because it is poorly done liberal propaganda. Anyone with an education above the 6th grade can see right through this crap.

What a crap production

[Seller7862 · 1/10 · 10 August 2011]

Seriously, this film's main recommendation would be gleefully received by Ted Kaczynski. Basically we must return to an agrarian society or we are all going to die. Was Al "I really am detached from reality and have been a spoiled tantrum throwing child all my life" Gore the ghostwriter for this trash? ABC/Disney have really lost their minds. Disney is trying to take political correctness and turn it into a 21st century Nazi-mind-control theology that is ruining their company and the planet along with it.

The people behind this project should be ashamed of themselves as they express their misanthropic self-hatred with every frame and word in this production.

Anyone who watches this more than once will probably get brain cancer from their mind's own attempt at fixing planet earth by killing it's one living devil: Mankind.

Would have been better if it had zombies.

[L_Duo · 3/10 · 14 May 2023]

I watched this "documentary" many years ago back in 2009 and was painful to watch. It was nothing more than eco-propaganda and way too preachy for me to actually enjoy it. The main character, Lucy, is insufferable at best and spending a whole hour with her was frustrating. How in the world she lived to be over 100 years old if modern medicine and technology collapsed, reverting society back to the middle ages?

The last segment was probably the most painful to watch, as the commentators kept pushing this "green" future, which in reality, what they really want is for us to live in cramped cities with few options for transportation in small little "eco" apartments. We all know the wealthy elites will never practice what they preach.

Overall, it was mediocre movie. It would have been better if it had zombies. At least I would be more entertained then.

Liberal Scary Movie

[eee2-925-311131 · 1/10 · 16 December 2010]

If you loved Al Gore's movie you will love this one too. Same propaganda, same doomsday scare. The planet will go down the tubes unless we turn over our money and control of our lives to a socialist government before 2015. If we wait longer than that we are all doomed.

The film is so one sided it's actually humorous. It also, typically, blames the United States for all that occurs. Even the failure of Social Security and bad flu seasons are blamed on global warming. If you add a touch of Mad Max to the Day After tomorrow, you start to get the idea.

Leni Riefenstahl would have been proud to have produced this film.

A good cause, but I can't bare to think about it.

[whlane92 · 4/10 · 27 December 2009]

I am a firm believer in global warming. This may be a good thing, except I also have an anxiety problem and will assume that the worst case scenario is the most likely.

Yes, this film states that this scenario will only happen if we do NOTHING, but that is little comfort. Simply reading about any post-apocolyptic story makes me very upset, and the fact that this setting is possible makes it even worse.

Yet that being said, my logical self is glad that you made this video. While I may be a firm believer, not everyone is.

Still, WHY? WHY? why does the future have to hold such potential for bad stuff?