mkivtt What a terribly poor documentary. The makers apparently couldn't decide whether to complain about capitalism, the environment, or Wall Street, and they jump back and forth without much of any cohesion. One good example is that after ~15 minutes of talking about progress, they jump to some guy in China, only to spend the next 15 minutes covering his tour guide business; something that has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on anything covered before or after. These guys sure have a thing or two to learn about editing and storyboarding.Oh, did I mention the entire film has nothing to do with progress? It's merely an anti-capitalist rant that says we should "forgive all debts" (as if private property rights didn't make this the greatest nation on earth), cut earth's population by two thirds (let me guess.. the socialist elite would of course be chosen to survive, right?) and that consumption is bad, bad, bad (the socialist elite will tell you what you're allowed to eat, do and own... and of course they themselves will be exempt).What a pathetic piece of garbage.

fitimh There are very many documentaries of this sort, where the goal of it is to convince the viewer of the message they're trying to convey. In so doing, we get a completely one sided argument, looking more as an indoctrination video, then as a informative source. But the message it tries to convey is so important, that every effort to bring this issue to the attention of the public, is needed if we're to avert a major catastrophe.The documentary starts by explaining how human nature is not designed to deal with the complexity of 21st century life. As the movie progresses it goes in more and more situations of how today's civilization (mainly the rich countries) is on a course to destroy our environment which may very well bring the end to our civilization.My main point of contention lies in the fact that the situation is presented as a scenario that requires total abandonment conventional approaches and when one is presented, the filmmakers present a counter argument based on nothing but an opinion. Having a science background I tend to look for supporting and opposing information for an issue before coming to a conclusion, whereas this movie presents only one sided biased point of view. Therein lies the problem, which is inherent of today's society, that is preventing any progress in developing a more sustainable way of life. Our society is completely ignorant of the dangers we're facing today, no matter how much one tries to inform, there seems to be a glitch with the way a human brain works that's renders it incapable to respond to pessimistic scenarios. Therefore if society is not willing to even wake up to the fact we're at a crossroads, its impossible for them to change completely the way of life the film is proposing. Whereas the film is not giving any room for any other solution then changing completely our way of life, there's other solutions.The film should have mentioned how the number of people earth could sustain, has increased where even in the 60's it was widely believed that the Earth could not sustain more then 4 billion. The very idea the movie dismissed (that of genetic engineering) has allowed for shift. Another issue I had a problem with is the issue with economics. It's true economics is not a science, but not because, as Dr. Suzuki puts it "view environmental impact as externality" but because economy is dependent on humans. Environmental concerns are constant, predictable, thus can be taken into account in a scientific sense. Human beings on the other hand, are unpredictable, reactionary, and utterly irrational, thus making any conclusions that would stand scientific inquiry impossible.This film is important because it can raise awareness, but fails on impartiality. So if a person with an opposing point of view, I believe will dismiss the whole thing as left wing propaganda, therefore it won't change anybodies misconceptions.

billcr12 A well made documentary, showing the basic problem of a planet of over seven billion people using the limited resources available to us, Surviving Progress is informative and uses interviews and some excellent photography to deliver its well intended message. At the start, we see monkeys in a room playing with Legos, and we are told that during an experiment, a human child, when challenged with a problem solving variation will ask why, which is seen as the major difference between us and the chimp, as we are otherwise genetically very similar. Our capacity for survival is what makes us unique. A segment dealing with the destruction of the rain forest is disheartening, as some environmental officers struggle in vain against workers just trying to make a living. Economists and scientists explain that we cannot continue to demand more and more modern conveniences without destroying the Earth. It is a simple and basic story, and it looks as if we are already past the point of no return; oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

ALB This liberal feel-good (or feel-bad) documentary, adapted from a book by Ronald Wright, makes the case that our society is a kind of bubble that may soon burst. Specifically, Wright argues that modern humans have fallen into a "progress trap." As with ancient hunters who became so adept at slaughtering mammoths that they killed off the source of their wealth, we have become so adept at exploiting natural resources that we are exceeding the capacity of Earth to regenerate them. He gives 1980 as the date when we began to do this on a global scale, although the film echoes people like Population Bomb author Paul Ehrlich, whose warnings of catastrophe began 40 years ago and proved, at least, premature. It's not quite clear why 1980 is the key date, but perhaps it's not coincidental that that's when Ronald Reagan was elected. That's also when the United States began to experience an increasing concentration of wealth that continues. The film implies, not entirely correctly, that this is a phenomenon everywhere. Economist Michael Hudson links wealth concentration to the fall of the Roman Empire and says "that's what's threatening to bring in the Dark Ages again."Only the fiercest anti-environmentalists would deny that the explosive growth in output and wasteful use of resources in the last decades brings challenges with it. But to declare, as the film does, that a phenomenon that has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty in Asia since 1980s is a "failed experiment" is at best premature and overstated. Geneticist David Suzuki broadly criticize economics, which is "not a science," for ignoring pollution and other societal costs. "Economists call these externalities…that's nuts." However, plenty of economists, including Nobel Prize-winner Paul Krugman, have written about the problems of externalities. Suzuki seems to disparage the profession for having created the very term. Repeatedly, the documentary argues by such assertion, rather than proof, wielding very little empirical data. A detour to Brazil provides some detail about deforestation, but, generally, I longed for more specificity.To be fair, proving such a bold thesis is well beyond the purview of a feature-length documentary. Wright's book, which I have not read, dwells more on past civilizations than our current one. Given that it's far easier to explain the past than predict the future, perhaps the directors, Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks, should have followed that path. Alternately, they might have deeply delved into some specific areas where the negative effects of human activity are undeniable. There's a lot of talent on hand here—the talking heads include Jane Goodall, Stephen and Hawking, and authors Robert Wright and Margaret Atwood—and building a film around any one of them might have been better than giving each a few sound bites. One participant, writer-engineer Colin Beavan, actually made his own film about his and his wife's experiment in non-consumption. Though based on a gimmick, Beavan's No Impact Man: The Documentary nonetheless seriously grapples with the idea of conservation in a more concrete (and entertaining) way.The positives of the film include some nifty time-lapse simulations and the opening and closing segments, in which gorillas trying to solve a logic problem. (This sort of ties into the idea that our brains have not evolved too far beyond that of apes, so we're lousy at anticipating long-term consequences.) But the most worthwhile portion of the documentary is the one about solutions, which includes the expected warnings (by Beavan and others) about the need to conserve but also interviews with geneticists, notably Craig Ventner, about the possibility of generating artificial organisms to repair damage or even improve upon human physiology. Like everything else here, it's quite speculative, but since the turf is less familiar, also fascinating.