Robert Stone (the filmmaker, not the author) has a new documentary out today, Earth Days: The Seeds of A Revolution. In it, Stone hits the rewind button, taking us back to a time when recycling (or heaping scorn on those who didn’t) wasn’t such a reflexive action. Days features plenty of talking head philosophizing from Original Greensters like Whole Earth founder Stewart Brand, and “Population Bomb” author Paul Ehrlich (who has, incidentally, a great interview over on Seed). But what, if anything, does it add up to? Salon‘s Andrew O’Hehir sums it all up:
There really isn’t a single message to be gleaned from Stone’s challenging, paradoxical film, but here’s one I came away with: Politics really does matter, and the American people have consistently chosen narcotic reassurance over realism. Ronald Reagan, of course, had those communistic solar panels removed; it was morning in America, and morning was powered by Saudi oil.