The first of the 8-part series, Years of Living Dangerously, debuted this month to rave reviews.
Now there’s another program to mark on your calendars. On Earth Day – April 22 at 9PM – PBS is premiering American Masters: A Fierce Green Fire. If you miss it, check your listings for more showings.
PBS says the 1-hour documentary is the first big-picture exploration of the environmental
movement, spanning from the 1960s-2009.
The Conservation Movement: the focus is on the 1960s, when David Brower and the Sierra Club fought to stop dams from being built in the Grand Canyon (yes, we won that one!).
Pollution and Cleanup: narrated by Ashley Judd, this segment moves to the 1970s, highlighting efforts at Love Canal to regulate toxic waste.
Wildlife: famous campaigns on saving whales and baby harp seals (haven’t stopped these yet).
Global Resources: the struggle to save the Amazon rainforest in the 1980s.
Climate Change: the 25-year effort to address climate change.
PBS says the title, A Fierce Green Fire, comes from pioneering ecologist Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac (1949). He describes his awakening after he shot a wolf while working as a US Forest Service ranger: "We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes."
HOW SAD, that the US government has allowed 2000 wolves to be killed in the last two years, with 500 more to come if Idaho continues with its sickening plan. In Canada, the annual clubbing of baby harp seals is underway, even though countries around the world have banned its products.
"The environmental movement is the biggest movement the world has ever seen, yet so broad and diffuse that we lack a larger sense of what it was about," says producer and director Mark Kitchell. "A Fierce Green Fire is meant to take stock, explore the historical meaning, where we’ve come from and where we’re heading. A hugely ambitious undertaking, it has proved to be the greatest challenge of my career."
Watch the trailer:
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