Summary The biosphere one priority campaign is a collective calling to our species to combat the catastrophic threat life faces as result of human induced climate change. The campaign consists of two main elements: a visually stunning short film that demonstrates just how tiny and fragile the Earth’s biosphere is, and an Earth manifesto constructed and chosen by the global community. The film uses photorealistic animations to simulate the biosphere layer being removed from Earth and it being condense it down into its true dimensions. We hope that by demonstrating the tiny size of the biosphere in relation to the vastness of space that it will become so obvious to humanity that the protection of the biosphere is essential to our survival. The Earth manifesto will challenge, empower and unite
our species. It will both declare a great paradigm shift and outline an effective plan to meet the threats we face with the force that is required. In support of this campaign, we have an academy award winning animator and world-class animation team involved. We are hopeful that one of the world’s greatest environmentalists, Dr David Suzuki, will join the campaign to narrate this film and introduce the historic Earth Manifesto to humanity. A bold and revolutionary statement is required to ensure that the Earth’s Biosphere becomes humanities number one priority.
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Note: The graphics and script in this proposed treatment are not representative of the final film. The animations will be photorealistic and the script improved upon.
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“Hello. My name is Dr David Suzuki. For over 40 years I have been educating people about science and the wonders of the living world. During this time it became clear that a number of human activities were having a detrimental effect on the natural world. As a result of my concern, I joined the global movement to protect the Earth’s living environment, otherwise known as the biosphere. The biosphere is the region of the Earth that is capable of supporting life. It is the living layer and it includes both the environments where life lives and also life itself. It is one dynamic interconnected system, where environments shape life and life shapes the environment.”
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“Life, since it first came into existence, has spent over 3.8 billion years through the natural process of evolution to create the wonderful level of complexity and biodiversity of the biosphere we have today. Even now opponents to the environmental movement claim that the Earth is far too big for humanity to impact the systems inherent in the biosphere that keeps it healthy for abundant life. Now let me show you something �
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Dr David Suzuki then reaches down into the Earth and starts the peel up the biosphere away from the planet. “I am now going to show you the extent of our biosphere - the totality of our life support system on planet Earth.�
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“The biosphere can be divided into 3 interconnected zones – these being the Atmosphere, Hydrosphere, and the Lithosphere. Now I must clarify in the name of scientific accuracy the biosphere has fuzzy edges, as fungal spores are found up in the high atmosphere and extremophile bacteria deep within the Earth. For this demonstration we will include only the area of the biosphere that contains complex multicelluar life.”
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“So if we look at the thickness of these layers, the atmosphere or gaseous section of the biosphere extends up to a maximum of 9km above sea level; the Hydrosphere or the liquid water element has an average depth of about 4km; and the Lithosphere which is the rocky land component is 1.5km deep. Included within these layers is the life that lives within them.“ As the biosphere peels up from the planet, descriptions of the section of the planets surface being peeled away will be given here.
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Example Script: “Here is Amazon rainforest with highest diversity of life species responsible for producing over 20% of the oxygen we breath. Here the ocean home to most of life on Earth and covering 75% of it surface. Here the Himalayas the highest mountain range on Earth – there goes Mt Everest “ (This can be modified according to the length of the animation)
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“Now if we condense the layer of the biosphere into one sphere comprising of all three zones this is what it looks like in relation to the rest of Earth This sphere is only 2285km in diameter – which is almost exactly the length of the Red Sea. This is the planet’s Biosphere. This tiny ball represents the totality of the planet that supports life. It symbolizes just how precious, small and fragile our stage is in the Universe is.“
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The camera zooms out from the Earth and biosphere through the planets and out to the solar system to the sun just becoming a single star in the blackness of the void of space. “It is a ridiculous and dangerous fantasy to delude ourselves that we could migrate to another planet, as Space is simply too vast for this to be a possibility. The fact is, this very thin layer, this tiny sphere of life, floating in the depths of the vacuum of deadly space, is all humanity has to support it. Earth’s Biosphere is where we make our stand to exist.”
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Camera transition between the blackness of space to the black sky with Dr David Suzuki standing on the Earth stripped of the biosphere. “Our scientists, who are our most knowledgeable and trusted source of information, are strongly warning us that we are detrimentally altering the life support systems of the biosphere. We are on course for a mass extinction event because of man-made catastrophic climate change. It is plain to see that the Earth is displaying significant signs of the damage we have collectively inflicted upon it. We are ignoring these signs and our scientist’s emergency pleas to our peril. We are collectively tipping the balance of life against us and our children and endangering not only our future as a species but also most other species of life on Earth. Many climate scientists believe that we are close to crossing a tipping point to a process known as “Runaway Climate Change. If this tipping point is passed, temperature rises will cause other planetary heating processes to kick in, thereby creating a feedback loop that increases the temperature even more. Once this process starts, the Earth will rapidly warm on its own accord and we will be powerless to stop it. Past this tipping point, humanity will be unable to control the effects of climate change and life as we know it on planet Earth will be doomed. Can’t we see what we are collectively doing and stop the madness of our species before it becomes too late.
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Earth is the only known place in the Universe that supports life. Its continued survival now rests with us. Humanity must urgently address this planetary emergency and fight to hold its place in the Universe. We must fight with everything we have to bring ourselves back from the brink of disaster. “
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“We must engage in a world war like effort to rapidly phase out fossil fuels and switch to clean safe energy alternatives. We have all the tools, we have all the technology, and we have the know how to achieve the greatest transition of our planet. Our species has the ability to think of and create new futures; we can transform and heal our beautiful home planet back into the haven for life that it wants to be. Earth is our home and it is up to us as species to fit with the laws of the Nature that govern it. WE are the biggest threat to life on our planet but WE also are life’s greatest hope. We will need to change the way we see ourselves and become globally a much wiser species. A rapid and significant shift from one form of culture to another must occur. We must work together as one planet, one people, and one global society. , We all must actively engage and take decisive action. We must collectively grow up together and restore the health of the life-support system of our planet - our Biosphere. The biosphere must be made our number one priority. The famous scientist Carl Sagan once said “We know who speaks for the nations; but who speaks for the human species? Who speaks for Earth? It is you who will speak for our species and it is you who will speak for Earth.” Mid shot of Dr David Suzuki’s head and this leads into the Montage of people speaking the Earth manifesto. ‘This leads into the Earth manifesto.’ “We the people... Page| 31
Final Scene is the camera pulls away up into space to reveal the Earth suspended in space.
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The Earth Manifesto We need a bold goal, a decisive plan. We need an Earth manifesto to define a great paradigm shift in our species. Manifestos have the power to bind humans into one purpose and it is clear that only a mass collective spearhead of action will be able to meet the catastrophic threat we face with the force that is required. For the first time in history, a Manifesto will be collaboratively generated by our planetary civilisation. By working directly with our top climate scientists, this Manifesto will be created in such a manner to ensure that it is the voice of wisdom, and that it represents the voice of the global community. The Manifesto will be free from the agendas of governments, nations, specialized groups and economic doctrines. The Manifesto will reflect only what is in the best interests of our planet and us as a species. The threat to our global civilisation is far too serious to delay action on this issue any longer. The danger is exponentially increasing with time. The laws of physics do not wait for decisions to be made or bend to the will of wishful thinking. Climate change is happening now
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and the threat is real and the danger is imminent. Real harm to much of life will be sustained and on such a devastating scale if we do not decisively act with an effort akin to that is expended in a global world war. We must act boldly for life, with or without our governments, as one global community. And we must act now.
The Process The process to create the Earth Manifesto can be broken up into two phases. The first is the generation of Manifestos for consideration. The second is a voting system to choose the best manifesto that is powerful enough to overcome the catastrophic threat we face and heal our planet.
Manifesto Generation The generation of Manifestos will involve both a system where people can collaboratively work on Manifestos together or generate their own.
To begin this process, the scientific community will be asked to give a true assessment of the threats we face. Scientists will inform the global community on the goals that need to be achieved in order to avert catastrophe. The global community using this information will be asked to create manifestos for Earth. Individuals or teams of people can submit video Manifestos of up to 25 mins in length or they can contribute to a collective process of Manifesto generation. The collective manifesto generation is based on democratic system that has shown to work well previously. The same system was used to generate the ‘Energise America’ policy. Energise America was a 24-point energy plan developed by a group of bloggers on the website Daily Kos. The website attracts over 300,000 people with a vast array of different talents, skills and expertise. A French energy expert introduced the idea to create an energy policy using this vast pool of minds and the voting mechanism of the website. He submitted an idea to the whole community that he wanted to create an energy policy using Daliy Kos. People were asked to put forward ideas and each person’s submission could be read and voted on by the other members. Each suggestion could
be voted a +1 if it was a good idea 0 if they were neutral and a -1 if was a bad idea. After running this process for a couple of months the best ideas naturally rose to the top. The top 24 ideas were chosen and resubmitted back to the community to be improved upon and to check their scientific validity. The resulting 24 point plan was known as Energise America and what they produced was astounding. This process of policy generation was an example of pure democracy. This process is also free of the influence of pressure groups and corruption. The Biosphere One Priority campaign will use a website similar to Daily Koz, but one that has been structured specifically for the task of generating an Earth Manifesto. Manifestos generated in this manner can then placed on the Biosphere One Priority website and contend against other solo or group submissions. To ensure that the submissions are of a high quality there will be a nonrefundable change of $10 US dollars to submit an Earth Manifesto. Once submissions have been verified to be legitimate they will be placed on the Biosphere One Priority website. From here, the climatic science community and global community can collectively select the best Earth Manifesto.
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Voting Mechanism The voting mechanism is designed to give a fair weighting to the experts in the field of climate science and also to the global community. This is how it will work: The climactic science community will have a rating system out of 100 that will included a number of key factors: • Validity: The effectiveness of the plan to combat the catastrophe we face. • Clarity: The ease of understanding to society at large. • Usage: It’s implementation into the global human society. A weighting between factors will be employed and an overall numerical rating out of 100 will be given to each Earth manifesto submission. The global public will have access to rate the submissions as decided by the climatic scientists. The public will also be able to vote but they will have a simpler voting mechanism that consists of a one vote system. The public will be allocated one vote per person, which will
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be symbolised as a star. They may place this star on any submission at any time during the voting process. If they find a submission they like better than a previous one they can place their star on the new selection and the system will automatically remove the star vote from the previously chosen video. The voting system therefore is a beautiful combination of both meritocracy and democracy. The winter solstice of 2015 in the Northern Hemisphere will be the date set that the final Earth Manifesto will be chosen.
Crowdfunding Although many people are working on this campaign for greatly reduced pay or for free, significant funding will still be required to facilitate a project of this magnitude. A crowdfunding campaign will be used to generate the funds needed to complete this project. Realistically, a production of this kind would cost close to a million dollars to produce. The photorealistic animation sequences will require huge computing power and computer render farms will need to be used to complete them. We estimate that we could complete this project for the cost of around $200,000.00
This ability is only in its infancy but we have had tantalizing glimpses of the power of the internet . Campagins like Occupy Movement, Kony Campaign and March in March would have been only possible with the internet. In many ways this shift is like when a teenagers prefrontal cortex wires up for the first time. There has never been a better time for our species to truely grow up. The time to launch such a paradigm shifting project is now .
Currently there are over 7 billion people on this planet and approximately 1/3 of the population has access to the internet, with initiatives like Google’s Project Loon, billions more will soon join us online. Humanity has the greatest tool at it hand with this increased ultra connectivity. Large sections of the global population can now coordinate behind a common cause easily with out the use of governments.
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Promotion To promote the Biosphere One Priority campaign we have a comprehensive marketing plan across the social media platforms Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, YouTube and Instagram. Poster packs for home printing will be available as a download.
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The Team
CHRISTOPHER LANSELL
NATHAN MULLIGAN
LEO BAKER
ANDREWÂ GRAHAM
WILLIAM GAMON
Christopher is the concept and project director for this project. He is a scientific communicator artist and film director. He completed his first major scientific artwork, the Melbourne Solar System - a one to one billion scale bronze and metal sculpture of the Solar System and nearest star Proxima Centauri.
Nathan is the concept and project co-director. Specialising in graphic design, storyboard conceptualisation, web design and social media. Nathan runs his own graphic design business Sigh Design, specialising in the areas of photo manipulation, corporate identity, and art direction.
Leo is the animation director for this project. Leo has won several awards for his work including an Academy award in 2011 for the best-animated short film. He is one of the world’s top animators and has worked for several years on international feature films as an animator and visual effects artist.
Andrew currently works at FX TD at Image Engine Design. He one of the world best animators specializing in fire fluid and particular animations. He has completed sequences for many Hollywood blockbuster films including The great Gatsby, The Hunger Games, Harry Potter.
William is the owner of Cumulus FX and is also one of the world best animators. He has worked on the Lord of the Rings, The last Samurai, Blood diamond and Mission Impossible and is a specialist in compositing. His showreel can be seen here. https://vimeo.com/42024920
http://youtu.be/ApEUrJpyF2E
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Final Word The threat to our global civilisation is far too serious to delay real action on this issue any longer. The danger only exponentially increases with time. The fact is the laws of physics do not wait for decisions to be made or bend to the will of wishful thinking. Real harm to much of life will be sustained and on such a devastating scale if we do not decisively act with an effort akin to that is expended in a global world war. We must act now boldly for life, with or with out our governments, as one global community.
biosphereonepriority.com biosphereonepriority@gmail.com
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