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Two New Episodes Of "Journey To Planet Earth," The Acclaimed PBS Series, To Premiere In April 2005
Series Hosted By Matt Damon Explores The Fragile Relationship Between People And The World They Inhabit. In conjunction with the international celebration of Earth Day this April, PBS will present two new episodes in the JOURNEY TO PLANET EARTH series. Both hosted by Academy Award winner Matt Damon, the two new specials are THE STATE OF THE PLANET, airing on April 11th at 10 P.M. and FUTURE CONDITIONAL, airing the following week, on April 18th at 10 P.M. The series is presented by South Carolina ETV.
THE STATE OF THE PLANET (Monday, April 11 at 10 P.M.) First program to comprehensively examine the precarious state of the global environment Will we have enough food for our children? Are we running out of water? Global warming — false alarm or earth’s greatest challenge? “I think the earth is sending us distress signals and we need to understand what it is saying, what we are doing and how we can stop what we are doing. The point at which we see change it may be too late. You may not be able to stop those changes.” — Eugene Linden, author of The Future in Plain Sight For the first time ever, PBS will air an annual THE STATE OF THE PLANET special that will give viewers an up-to-date look at the current state of our environment. While celebrating the elegance of diversity and the rich tapestry of the natural world, this year’s special explores how population and economic pressures affect that world and its resources such as water and food. With filming on location from Israel to Iowa, Bangladesh to the Basins of the Rio Grande and the Amazon, Nairobi to Pennsylvania, THE STATE OF THE PLANET crisscrosses the globe to visit places where environmental successes have occurred as well as cities and villages where the quality of life continues to decline. As we learn in THE STATE OF THE PLANET, while animal species are becoming endangered or extinct at an alarming rate, the earth’s human population is booming. Unbelievable as it sounds, human population has grown more in the past fifty years than in the preceding four million, to its current population of 6.5 billion – with 78 million more a year. Although in some places such as Bangladesh, efforts to encourage family planning are slowing down the birthrate, population increases are creating tremendous stresses on the resources of the planet. Are we running out of water? “Perhaps the greatest failure of development in the 20th century, was our failure to provide clean water to meet basic human needs for water for everyone.” — Peter Gleick, The Pacific Institute THE STATE OF THE PLANET explores the current state of the earth’s water resources. As urban populations now outnumber rural, many cities are facing one of the many results of an inadequate water supply – disease. Each year, between 3 and 5 million people die from diseases related to unclean water. We see how the water crisis is affecting the poor of Nairobi and contrast it with Shanghai, which, because of its thriving economy, was able to reverse the pollution of a major river. While the poor of Haiti are forced to buy water from the gangs that rule its slums, a determined school principal in Zimbabwe builds a dam that supports local tomato farmers. THE STATE OF THE PLANET also takes us to the Rio Grande, to Louisiana to visit the Mississippi’s receding wetlands, and the Great Plains to see how increased demand has threatened the U.S. water supply. Can we feed the hungry? As we learn in THE STATE OF THE PLANET, the good news is that the earth’s current food production is enough to feed the planet — the problem is getting food to those who need it most in efficient and cost-effective ways. We visit China, where famine and hunger has been virtually eliminated. Early Warning Signals? Scientists feel that recent changes in weather and climate are warning signals from the planet. We explore the recent heat waves in Chicago, Paris, London, Calcutta and Melbourne that claimed over 100,000 lives. Scientists in the Arctic report melting glaciers and a sudden influx of new species of plants and animals. Huge swaths of the Louisiana coastline are being washed away each year by the Gulf of Mexico. And yet small victories and improvement still bring hope. THE STATE OF THE PLANET visits a Pennsylvania farmer, who, like 22% of American farmers, is reaping the benefits of no-till farming methods; an Israeli farmer whose drip irrigation system saves precious water; and Iowa scientists who are creating plants that can better withstand changing environmental conditions. Finally, viewers are invited to enroll in a new grassroots STATE OF THE PLANET initiative and be part of a worldwide tracking system, the results of which will be featured in upcoming THE STATE OF THE PLANET specials. Major funding provided by the National Science Foundation and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations. THE STATE OF THE PLANET CREDITS
* * * FUTURE CONDITIONAL (Monday, April 18 at 10 P.M.) Film examines how environmental health is a global concern What are the health consequences of the drying up of the Salton Sea for the people of Palm Springs, California? And what can we learn from an event that happened 7,000 miles and a world away from California in Uzbekistan? How were the citizens of San Diego’s Barrio Logan successful in fighting for environmental justice? And in Tijuana, thanks to NAFTA, foreign-owned factories provide nearly 140,000 jobs for the people. But at what cost to their health? “Polar bears are showing up with levels in their fat of certain toxic pollutants that would qualify them for burial in a hazardous waste site.” — Devra Davis, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Center “The Salton Sea, while it’s California’s largest lake, it’s in this corner of California that people don’t pay a lot of attention to. . . But when the Salton Sea starts affecting human health in the Coachella and Imperial Valleys, they’d better care.” — Tom Kirk, Salton Sea Authority FUTURE CONDITIONAL investigates the link between environmental change and the future health of our planet, a “future conditional” on how we cope with the spread of toxic pollution. Shot on location from the Arctic to Mexico, from Uzbekistan to Palm Springs, California, FUTURE CONDITIONAL shows that — in the end — the health of those living in far-reaching and vastly different geographic locations cannot be separated. In FUTURE CONDITIONAL, we first visit the Arctic, a pristine wilderness where animals and humans are suddenly plagued with rising levels of the world’s most hazardous chemicals — DDT, PCBs, dioxins and mercury. These toxic pollutants are riding the winds north from their origins in the U.S., Central America, and China. Another source of these chemicals is Mexico, where we see local communities who are suffering from disease and birth defects due to the toxic pollution caused by tariff-free factories along the U.S.-Mexican border. We then head up the coast to California, to Barrio Logan, a Latino neighborhood in San Diego that was under siege by encroaching industry. With one out of five of the community’s children suffering from asthma, they organized and managed to shut down a factory that had been poisoning their community. As they celebrate their victory, only 150 miles away, the people of Palm Springs are unaware that they may be living in the path of a toxic storm of dust from the slowly eroding nearby Salton Sea. We conclude our travels in Uzbekistan, where the Aral Sea has become the site of what the UN calls man’s great ecological disaster. A massive Soviet project in the 1960’s to turn the nearby desert into cotton fields has effectively destroyed the Sea, displacing nearby populations, spreading tuberculosis and leaving people with high levels of toxic metals and pollutants in their bodies. Though separated by distance and culture, FUTURE CONDITIONAL illustrates how the health of those living in places as diverse as the Arctic and Barrio Logan are vitally connected and impacted by those living in Mexico, Uzbekistan, Palm Springs and throughout the world. Major funding provided by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Science Foundation. FUTURE CONDITIONAL CREDITS
* * * The JOURNEY TO PLANET EARTH companion website features resources for educators, including a new grassroots initiative called Citizens for Planet Earth, an online interactive experience for families and individuals who wish to better understand their local environment. For more information, visit www.pbs.org/journeytoplanetearth. * * * About Screenscope, the Producers of JOURNEY TO PLANET EARTH Through their Washington, DC production company (Screenscope), Marilyn and Hal Weiner have produced, written and directed over 225 documentaries and four public television series (Journey To Planet Earth, Women At Work, Faces Of Man and The World Of Cooking). They have also produced three feature films (Family Business, The Imagemaker, and K2). The Weiners have won over 130 top international awards, including 39 CINE Golden Eagles. They have also won Emmy Awards for Earth Summit Pledge, commissioned by the United Nations to open the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, and Streets of Sorrow, an NBC documentary about a support group that helps people cope with the violent death of a family member. They are recipients of the National Academy of Television Arts and Science's 1998 Silver Circle Award for "outstanding contributions to the television industry." Marilyn Weiner is the winner of Women-In-Film's 1997 "Women of Vision Award" for creative excellence. In a contest sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, Hal Weiner won first prize at the 2002 Larry Neal Writers' Competition for his dramatic screenplay, The Jerusalem Syndrome. He also won first prize in the Washington, DC screenwriting contest for his screenplay, Shadows. Through the early 1980s, Marilyn & Hal Weiner produced over a dozen after-school dramas for PBS and documentaries for major corporations and non-profit organizations. During this period, the Weiners also established an international film distribution division. Overseeing a staff of twenty, including marketing and advertising specialists, they produced and acquired over 500 titles. In 1983 they sold their distribution subsidiary to Gulf & Western, enabling them to devote their full energies to producing feature films and high profile documentaries for prime-time television (primarily PBS and NBC). Their films have been shot on location in more than 30 countries on five continents, translated into numerous languages and broadcast throughout the world. Marilyn Weiner was appointed by Mayor Anthony Williams and currently serves as a DC Commissioner for the Arts and Humanities. She is on the Board of Directors of Washington's Filmfest DC. Ms. Weiner served on the Board of Directors of the Committee To Promote Washington, DC, the Washington Urban League, Women-In-Film and the Woolly Mammoth Theater Company. She has been President of the Washington Film Council, Vice-President of Women-In-Film, consultant to the National Commission on Working Women, Chairperson of the Advisory Committee to the Washington Office of Motion Picture Development, and Proposal Review Panelist for the National Science Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. About JOURNEY TO PLANET EARTH Host and Narrator, Matt Damon Matt
Damon is one of Hollywood’s most sought-after talents.
Audiences most recently saw Damon reprise his role as Jason
Bourne in the boxoffice hit THE BOURNE SUPREMACY, the second
installment in the series from Universal Pictures, following
THE BOURNE IDENTITY. In
1998, Damon won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay
with longtime friend Ben Affleck for the critically-acclaimed
drama GOOD WILL HUNTING, a coming-of-age story about a young
mathematical genius who, due to his upbringing in inner-city
Boston, can’t live up to his potential. Damon also
earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and he
and Affleck received a Golden Globe Award for their screenplay,
with Damon also garnering a Golden Globe nomination for his
performance. The film, directed by Gus Van Sant, received
seven additional Oscar nominations, including one for Best
Picture and a win for Robin Williams for Best Supporting
Actor. In 1998, Damon and Affleck partnered with GOOD WILL HUNTING Associate
Producer and longtime friend Chris Moore to form Pearl Street Productions,
now known as LivePlanet. This unique company created integrated media, a
new kind of entertainment experience that combines traditional media, new
media and the physical world. LivePlanet created and oversees “Project
Greenlight™” where filmmaking hopefuls submitted their original
scripts to Affleck, Damon and Moore via an Internet competition. A
13-episode documentary series chronicling the making of the “Project
Greenlight” independent feature film debuted on HBO in December 2001
and the film, STOLEN SUMMER, was released in 2002. The second Project
Greenlight film, THE BATTLE OF SHAKER HEIGHTS opened in select theatres in
2003 and was featured on HBO in a 13-episode documentary series chronicling
the making of the film. The third Project Greenlight is currently underway
with the film due for release from Dimension Films in 2005 and Bravo set
to chronicle the making of the film in a 9-episode series due to begin airing
in January 2005.
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