At their annual shareholders meeting a few weeks ago, the CEO of Starbucks said that “classical economics has it all wrong. Starbucks has proven that ‘supply’ creates ‘demand’.”  Who would have believed that anyone could succeed by putting a coffee shop on every corner -- especially when there already were coffee shops on every corner, much less have people line up to pay $5.00 for a cup for it when they were paying .50 cents a cup.

Zero sum thinking makes no sense in world where Americans spend a half a billion dollars a year on BBQ Sauce!

So it’s all about “values” and “personal choices.”

We’re living in historic times.

We’re the first generation in human history that will not pass the world onto our grandchildren virtually intact. The past 50 years have been witness to environmental destruction and species extinction of unprecedented proportions.

·          Ninety percent of the world’s fisheries have collapsed.

·          Habitat losses are happening everywhere along with the loss of wildlife in them.

·          Water resources are being depleted around the world. Within the past ten years the Indus in Pakistan, the Rio Grande, the Yellow River and the Nile have all failed to reach the ocean – running dry hundreds of miles before their destination.

·          And we’re introducing thousands of new chemicals into our world every year, without any idea of the impacts.

·          The list goes on and on.

If you’re making media about wildlife and issues surrounding it, all this really matters.

But we have to be aware that we are in a “war of ideas.” And in that war we’re up against formidable opposition. Because today media and culture are inseparable.

Every year multi-national corporations spend tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars on messages which are antithetical to our shared goals and beliefs. Goals about…

·          Conservation

·          Preservation

·          and Sustainability.

And what do these corporate messages say? They say things like:

·          Consume constantly

·          Think only of yourself

·          Live for today

·          Vanity is the highest human endeavor

·          Forget consequences

·          You deserve to be decadent

·          And of course, “sex” is the most important thing -- all the time!

But where will these new methods come from?  To help answer that I’d like to turn to another famous film director – Charles Darwin.

If you ask most people about Charles Darwin, they’ll probably say “survival of the fittest.”

The only problem is – he never said that. What he said, to paraphrase him a bit, was that the “best adapted mutation will thrive.”

Now sometimes that favors “competition”, and sometimes that favors “cooperation and collaboration.”

I think we are heading into a time that favors “cooperation.”

Cooperation can produce new ideas, new kinds of partnerships and new strategies. And in a war of ideas, this can give us an important edge.

We see all this “expressing” itself through new technologies…new cooperative business models. But technology isn’t enough. We also have to examine our beliefs.

 

Einstein said:  "If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts."

What he meant by that was that we should challenge our assumptions… the so-called “facts.”  But I think he was talking about television ratings and focus groups.

I think ratings are the death of creativity. I think ratings are the death of the advancement of civilization. And they always lead us to the lowest common denominator.

But more importantly, ratings can only tell you about where you’ve been not where you’re going.

There’s a term in the technology world called “emergence.” It says that large groups of people can make better decisions and organize things better than small groups of experts.  And we’re examples of this phenomena in places like –

·          And in blogging -- a new form of journalism.

·          And web casting of media by companies like –

o         Undergroundfilm.org

o         Microcinema.com

o         Jaman.com – a server based pay per view service for independent filmmakers.

o         Blinkx.com

o         Submedia.com

o         Newgrounds.com

o         YouTube.com (* 150 million users in less than two years after launch)

Together these sites have hundreds of millions of participants.

·          And in “Anime” -- which is taking existing images and putting them to music. It’s estimated that as many as seventy five to one hundred million individuals are participating in this form of media, worldwide.

·          And cell phones, which may be the new network.

All these are forward looking…. They are the “Bleeding Edge.”

This is where the new audiences are. This is where future revenues will come from and the ways to “finance” it all.

I’d like to show you an example of this kind of new media…. A video clip. It’s called “Store Wars.”  Store Wars cost $35,000 to produce and it has been downloaded ten million times. Think of the leverage of that.

That means people chose to view it ten million times. They sought it out. There very few filmmakers here who can prove that their films have been viewed ten million times or even one million times. Unlike ratings, where a television may be on but we have no idea if anyone is actually watching, these are real numbers.

STORE WARS

To view the clip go to:  http://www.storewars.org/pressroom/

Store Wars was produced by Free Range Graphics and I want thank them for allowing me to show it here today.

These are the kinds of things Environmental Media Fund is working on.

Okay, so back to “Living in harmony”  -- the theme of this festival.

In the film Grizzly Man Werner Herzog said: “The common denominator of the universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility and murder.”

A real Pollyanna! 

But there’s truth in that.  If there’s any hope of “harmony”, we’re going to have to make it happen. And we need to do it before too much of our world is lost.

So, I guess, what my talk here today is about comes down to a simple request… a plea for “content”… the truth… the good news with the bad… whatever that may be.

Thank you.