About a year ago I was watching the news and struggling to understand the aftermath of the Copenhagen summit. It was obvious that it wasn’t a great success but I was missing the ‘why did this happen’ bit. Don’t world leaders worry about this, our only Planet?
I understood that it wasn’t the Copenhagen summit that failed but it was all the world leaders and the countries they represent. They failed to reach an accord and we were left to wonder for another who-knows-how-many-years. Then I realized that it was the governments and their own officials (fueled by their own agendas) who were at fault. Not the ordinary citizen. It wasn’t the fault of the citizens of any country as a whole, but rather their political leaders (which we hope in most cases were peacefully and democratically elected). This is when I decided that there had to be a channel on the net which uses all the tools available to us (provided by this recent web 2.0 phenomenon) to bring useful information to the common citizen so that locally and collectively the world can eventually make expensive summits like the one in Copenhagen redundant. Get as many people off the grid and living sustainably as quickly as possible. Knowledge is power, and if the right knowledge is spread through the world the results can startle even the strongest skeptic. The result of this ‘epiphany’ (if you can call it that…) was this website.
We aimed to create an “online repository of practical knowledge, a ‘how to’ guide for ordinary people tasked with setting-up functional, low-carbon societies. A place where people share high-quality knowledge on low-carbon living.” I knew I wasn’t alone on this. There are green blogs and environmental news sites a plenty, but the vast majority are either driven by specific non-profits or are in my eyes the total opposite, reporting any kind of ‘green’ related news just to improve search engine rankings and sell advertising. I hoped for something simpler, more to the point. Something that would benefit the entire planet through the spreading of collective knowledge across the net without caring about the precious SEO-improving keywords and poor confusing content. But it is a big net out there, and sorting the right kind of simple and useful information is a big task, and an even bigger task getting it out to the right people. Most of the world is off-line (only 8-10% are believed to have an internet connection) but its a start, and again, I am happy to see that I am not alone on this.
‘Coalition of the Willing’ is a collaborative animated film and web-based event about an online war against global warming in a ‘post Copenhagen’ world. A wonderful and informative piece of animation which explains far better than we could have ever hoped here at Sutmundo the principles behind a knowledge War against Global Warming. We recently asked renowned environmentalist and leading amazon expert Marc J. Dourojeanni - what was the most important thing we can do to protect the Amazon? and without question the answer was “…Education.” (read the full interview here)
The film offers a response to the major problem of our time: how to galvanize and enlist the global publics in the fight against global warming.
This optimistic and principled film explores how we could use new Internet technologies to leverage the powers of activists, experts, and ordinary citizens in collaborative ventures to combat climate change. Through analyses of swarm activity and social revolution, ‘Coalition of the Willing’ makes a compelling case for the new online activism and explains how to hand the fight against global warming to the people.
‘Coalition of the Willing’ has been Directed and produced by Knife Party, written by Tim Rayner and crafted by a network of 24 artists from around the world using varied and eclectic film making techniques. Collaborators include some of the world’s top moving image talent, such as Decoy, World Leaders and Parasol Island.
