Environment Health is likely a vector that is difficult for many of us to relate to, at least relative to some of the others I think like Intellectual Health or Physical Health and I suspect that’s because it’s not so easy to gain instant gratification from our own efforts in these other areas. That’s kind of sad but I think there’s more truth to that than we’d like to think. I saw a review of this film a few months back and felt like maybe I could do my small part is sharing the message.

Racing Extinction is a 90 minute documentary from The Discovery Channel (I rented it on Amazon for $4.99) focused on bringing awareness to the facts around climate change and the extinction of species. It’s a followup movie to the Academy Award winning film The Cove and is described as an “eco-thriller” by director Louie Psihoyos.

I’ll admit I’m not a huge fan of documentaries, I mean I’ll watch something interesting if it’s on but I generally don’t go out of my way to find one, but after watching this one I do believe I’ll seek out a few more. It was very well done although, as one might expect, there were parts that were difficult to watch. There was even one part, a short section on Manta Ray fishing, where I just had to fast forward. I was fortunate enough to encounter a few Mantas while diving in the Kwajalein Islands and I will never forget it. It’s really impossible to describe the experience, swimming with something so large, so graceful right along with you. To watch a video of a fisherman with what looked like a 15 foot spear standing on the front of a small boat chasing a Manta and then jumping into the water thrusting the spear into the animal was just too much for me.

That said, the film was full of interesting facts and they were presented in a “captivating way”. I think I know now why it was called an “eco-thriller”. Several stories were told via undercover operations in China where the crew would go to various illegal markets to purchase endangered species. It was
exciting to watch. Near the end they setup a very professional projection station mounted in a Tesla provided by Elon Musk and showed all sorts of *extremely* cool projections on buildings in New York City. I won’t spoil the film but here are a few teasers that hopefully will get you interested in watching:

• In 100 years or so we could lose 50% of all species on earth
• Blue whales were hunted to just 2% of population, now being wiped out by shipping traffic
• There has been 5 major extinctions in the history of the planet, the sixth is expected to be called Anthropocene, destruction by humans
• Sharks have survived 4 mass extinctions on their own, but man has cut their population down by 90%
• Farm animals are to blame for more green house gases than the entire transportation sector
• Up to half of all frog species could be gone within just 20 years

This flick is well worth 90 minutes of your day. I encourage you to check it out…