Documentary The 6th Extinction: Critical Review

Throughout civilization, 5 major extinctions have had its toll on life. These extinctions deal with drastic weather patterns, meteorites, and volcanos. On Earth now, civilization is living during the period of the 6th great extinction. This film succeeded in clarifying the threat our society faces. The film forces its viewers to take a serious look at themselves and asks them to decide whether they are problems or solutions. If we don’t change, we will end up like the millions of organisms that have gone extinct before us.

The majority of this film was negativity towards our generation. Many of the problems that could cause our extinction are not natural, they are human made. The problems are human made yet humans are doing very little to fix them. With the population continuing to increase, more natural resources are being drained. The documentary decided to spend a long time on the idea that humans are cutting down the forests and polluting the ocean. The rain forests and oceans are the two largest carbon sinks in our environment. Without them, we are surely doomed. There were some parts that could have been expanded on in the documentary. The delivery of the film was rather weak. The film seemed to only have a gloom atmosphere. A gloom atmosphere typically doesn’t encourage others to get on their feet and make changes. There should have been more positive outlooks described in this documentary. It felt like throughout the documentary that no matter what we did, extinction was coming. That is simply not true, climate change is caused by humans, and can be fixed by humans. Our generation has thrived for hundreds of thousands of years and if we adapt, we can continue to thrive in this environment. This film did thrive in showing all the ecosystems that were affected by humans. Some of the really cool parts of the film dealt with the coral reefs. That seems to be a forgotten part of climate change. Coral reefs are so important. They are home to many marine organisms, and they can protect the coast by shielding waves during storms. The films claims were all credible. They typically had sources backing up their main points. They also used video proof of trash floating in the ocean and trees being cut down by the thousands to back up their ideas.

Immediately in this film, the ideas that companies tend to hide their wrong doing form the public became apparent. Typically, we as human beings tend to look past where our product comes from. That product can be paper, food, and sometimes even our valuables. Companies don’t like to tell us because it can turn us away from their product. The, Smoke, Mirrors, and Hot Air, reading discussed these ideas. Exxon knew that the people wouldn’t like their product as much if they commonly told people that drilling for oil killed the environment. They instead became huge deniers of climate change. They hired scientists to promote their ideas using “facts”, they bought out politicians to push their agendas. All of this was just a ploy to keep their secrets from the people who may care. In this documentary, “The 6th Extinction”, the environment was obviously the potent issue. In the readings of the, Sustainable World Sourcebook, the second part also dealt with the environment. Both essentially carried the same message. The sourcebook relied more on the definitional aspect while the documentary relied on a visual aspect. Both have the ability to strike the heart of the reader or watcher. Biodiversity was prevalent in both the documentary and the books. All species have a right to be on this planet. We should not be able to decide which animals go extinct and which animals don’t solely based on human wants and needs. This deals with the animals on land and the animals in the ocean. Cutting down trees and destroying ecosystems harms the animals that rely on it to live. The same goes with marine organisms. Our environment resorts to throwing its trash in the oceans, streams, and lakes. The trash, if it doesn’t just sit there and decompose in the ocean, end up in the stomachs on the animals in the ocean. The trash decomposing can take hundreds of years and that is still better than the animals actually consuming it. By decomposing our waste in the ocean and destroying our rainforests, we are doing no justice to ourselves or our friendly animal neighbors. In our extinction period, which is the largest since the one that knocked out the dinosaurs, it is essential to protect all things living and not threaten animals that are or are close to being endangered.

Our generation today is blessed with so many technological inventions. Our country in general has some of the smartest scientists ever to walk this planet. We have had many politicians, many green activists but still, very little has been done about climate change. In the documentary, “The 6th Extinction”, the simple pictures and videos show how much we, as humans effect our environment. We ultimately have the choice whether to continue to do wrong to a world that has brought so much opportunity to us. This film should ultimately persuade the viewer to strive to be on the right side of history and solve this potential extinction.