Friday, June 27, 2008

Environmental documentary: Planet Earth (online watching)


  1. Planet Earth - BBC TV series

    Wikipedia: Planet Earth is an Emmy Award and Peabody Award-winning BBC nature documentary series narrated by David Attenborough and produced by Alastair Fothergill. It was first broadcast in the UK from 5 March 2006. The American version is narrated by Sigourney Weaver.

    The series was co-produced with Discovery Channel and the NHK in association with the CBC, and was described by its makers as "the definitive look at the diversity of our planet". It was also the first of its kind to be filmed entirely in high-definition.[1] The series was nominated for the Pioneer Audience Award for Best Programme at the 2007 BAFTA TV awards.



  2. CNN Environmental Coverage, Special Report - Planet in Peril

    In 2007, CNN took viewers around the world in "Planet in Peril," a four-hour documentary that examined our changing planet. This year, the worldwide investigation continues weekly on Anderson Cooper 360, culminating in a new special program in the fall, "Planet in Peril: Battle Lines," hosted by CNN's Anderson Cooper, chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta and National Geographic host and "The Oprah Winfrey Show" correspondent Lisa Ling.



  3. National Geographic: Strange Days on Planet Earth

    Around the globe, scientists are racing to solve a series of mysteries. Unsettling transformations are sweeping across the planet, and clue by clue, investigators around the world are assembling a new picture of Earth, discovering ways that seemingly disparate events are connected.

    Crumbling houses in New Orleans are linked to voracious creatures from southern China. Vanishing forests in Yellowstone are linked to the disappearance of wolves. An asthma epidemic in the Caribbean is linked to dust storms in Africa. Scientists suspect we have entered a time of global change swifter than any human being has ever witnessed. Where are we headed? What can we do to alter this course of events?

    National Geographic's Strange Days on Planet Earth, premiering in Spring 2005 on PBS, explores these questions. Drawing upon research being generated by a new discipline, Earth System Science (ESS), the series aims to create an innovative type of environmental awareness. By revealing a cause and effect relationship between what we as humans do to the Earth and what that in turn does to our environment and ecosystems, the series creates a new sense of environmental urgency. Award-winning actor, writer and director Edward Norton (Primal Fear, American History X, Italian Job) hosts the series. A dedicated environmental activist, Norton has a special interest in providing solar energy to low income families. Each of the four one-hour episodes is constructed as a high-tech detective story, with the fate of the planet at stake.