Movies Similar to Petrol Dollars for a Different Engine

Bright Green Lies(2021)

Bright Green Lies investigates the change in focus of the mainstream environmental movement, from its original concern with protecting nature, to its current obsession with powering an unsustainable way of life. The film exposes the lies behind the notion that solar, wind, hydro, biomass, or green consumerism will save the planet. Tackling the most pressing issues of our time will require us to look beyond the mainstream technological solutions and ask deeper questions about what needs to change.

5.8

Edward Abbey: A Voice in the Wilderness(1993)

When Edward Abbey died in 1989 at the age of sixty-two, the American West lost one of its most eloquent and passionate advocates. Through his novels, essays, letters and speeches, Edward Abbey consistently voiced the belief that the West was in danger of being developed to death, and that the only solution lay in the preservation of wilderness. Abbey authored twenty-one books in his lifetime, including Desert Solitaire, The Monkey Wrench Gang, The Brave Cowboy, and The Fool's Progress. His comic novel The Monkey Wrench Gang helped inspire a whole generation of environmental activism. A writer in the mold of Twain and Thoreau, Abbey was a larger-than-life figure as big as the West itself.

0.0

Go Further(2003)

"Go Further" explores the idea that the single individual is the key to large-scale transformational change. The film follows actor Woody Harrelson as he takes a small group of friends on a bio-fueled bus-ride down the Pacific Coast Highway. Their goal? To show the people they encounter that there are viable alternatives.

6.0

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The Smog of the Sea(2017)

The Smog of the Sea chronicles a 1-week journey through the remote waters of the Sargasso Sea. Marine scientist Marcus Eriksen invited onboard an unusual crew to help him study the sea: renowned surfers Keith & Dan Malloy, musician Jack Johnson, spearfisher woman Kimi Werner, and bodysurfer Mark Cunningham become citizen scientists on a mission to assess the fate of plastics in the world’s oceans. After years of hearing about the famous “garbage patches” in the ocean’s gyres, the crew is stunned to learn that the patches are a myth: the waters stretching to the horizon are clear blue, with no islands of trash in sight. But as the crew sieves the water and sorts through their haul, a more disturbing reality sets in: a fog of microplastics permeates the world’s oceans, trillions of nearly invisible plastic shards making their way up the marine food chain. You can clean up a garbage patch, but how do you stop a fog?

0.0

Sovereign Soil(2019)

Built on a layer of frozen earth, Dawson City, Yukon, Canada has subarctic winters where temperatures routinely drop below −40°C. Meet the four season food producers who engage in small-scale agriculture, and those who support their back-to-the-land movement. These resilient unassuming farmers have carved out small patches of fertile soil, in an otherwise unforgiving expanse of isolated wilderness, to make a living and a life.

7.0

Eating Animals(2018)

An examination of our dietary choices and the food we put in our bodies.

6.7

Free Energy - The Race to Zero Point(1997)

In this award-winning, feature length, two-hour broadcast-quality Documentary you will learn about the latest developments in the field of Free and Zero Point Energy from Tesla to Dennis Lee. Hosted by Bill Jenkins, formerly of ABC Radio, this comprehensive documentary features physicists and inventors who are challenging orthodox science to bring this non-polluting technology forward despite ridicule and suppression. See actual working prototypes that defy classical physics including phenomenal experiments in anti-gravity and the transmutation of metals.

6.0

If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front(2011)

Filmmaker Marshall Curry explores the inner workings of the Earth Liberation Front, a revolutionary movement devoted to crippling facilities involved in deforestation, while simultaneously offering a profile of Oregon ELF member Daniel McGowan, who was brought up on terrorism charges for his involvement with the radical group.

6.5

I Am Greta(2020)

Greta Thunberg, a 15-year-old student in Sweden, started a school strike for the climate as her question for adults was, if you don’t care about my future on earth, why should I care about my future in school? Within months, her strike evolved into a global movement as the quiet teenage girl on the autism spectrum becomes a world-famous activist.

5.8

Surviving Progress(2011)

Humanity’s ascent is often measured by the speed of progress. But what if progress is actually spiraling us downwards, towards collapse? Ronald Wright, whose best-seller, “A Short History Of Progress” inspired “Surviving Progress”, shows how past civilizations were destroyed by “progress traps”—alluring technologies and belief systems that serve immediate needs, but ransom the future. As pressure on the world’s resources accelerates and financial elites bankrupt nations, can our globally-entwined civilization escape a final, catastrophic progress trap? With potent images and illuminating insights from thinkers who have probed our genes, our brains, and our social behaviour, this requiem to progress-as-usual also poses a challenge: to prove that making apes smarter isn’t an evolutionary dead-end.

7.3

10 Billion: What's On Your Plate(2015)

How can we best meet every earth citizens need for healthy food facing our limited resources? Regarding the almost 10 billion humans living on earth by 2050, we have to decide now how we want to shape the future of agriculture.

6.7

Run to Be Visible(2021)

Lydia Jennings is a member of the Huichol (Wixaritari) and Pascua Yaqui (Yoeme) Nations and holds a doctorate in soil microbiology. Her work is dedicated to environmental science and the essential role of Indigenous communities in these spaces. Her hope is to create more inclusive academic and environmental landscapes. In place of her graduation, which was canceled as a result of the pandemic, Lydia instead celebrated by running 50 miles in honor of the Indigenous scientists and knowledge keepers who came before her. It’s a run to honor the past and present while looking towards the future.

0.0

Pursuing the Monarchs(2017)

The story of the Monarch butterfly: a symbol of American pride and the embodiment of the returning dead in Mexico. It would be a happy story, only, today they are dying. The monarch butterflies population has declined by up to 80% in the last decade. Who is to blame?

0.0

At the Edge of the World(2008)

At the Edge of the World chronicles the controversial Sea Shepherd Antarctic Campaign against a Japanese whaling fleet. The international volunteer crew, under-trained and under-equipped, develop a combination of bizarre and brilliant tactics with which to stop the whalers. But first they must find the Japanese ships, a far more difficult challenge than ever imagined - long-time activist Paul Watson and first-time captain Alex Cornelissen employ an array of strategies in the hopes of finding an elusive adversary in the vast expanse of the Ross Sea. With one ship (the Farley Mowat) too slow to chase down the whaling fleet, with their second ship (the Robert Hunter) unsuited for Antarctic ice conditions and with no country supporting their efforts to enforce international law, the situation becomes increasingly desperate. Against all odds, however, a real-life pirate tale unfolds - a modern-day "David vs. Goliath" adventure.

6.7

Water and the Dream of the Engineers(1983)

Documentary where rich social history frames a spirited debate on the development of water infrastructure throughout the USA.

0.0

The Weather Diaries(2020)

The flying foxes that soar across Sydney each evening face many challenges: impacted by heatwaves, evicted from urban parklands, struggling to survive an ongoing loss of habitat. Bat carers save a handful here and there, and ecologists document their struggles, as threats escalate. Filmed over six years, The Weather Diaries reaches its climax in 2020, as temperatures soar, bushfires rage, and flying fox pups die in record numbers. Drayton ruminates on our failure to value these essential pollinators and the forests they sustain, and reflects on the implications for her daughter Imogen, a girl long inspired by Studio Ghibli’s Princess Mononoke, who’s emerging from the classical confines of the Conservatorium High School to embark on a career as an electronic pop artist.

4.0

The Writing in the Sand(1991)

A richly lyrical documentary celebration of the vibrant beach life in the North East of England, constructed entirely out of Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen's black & white photographs.

10.0

No Ordinary Protest(2019)

Ted Hughes's 1993 novel The Iron Woman is the springboard for this multi-media project by Mikhail Karikis. The video section of the installation features seven-year-olds from Mayflower Primary School in East London discussing the novel's environmental themes.

0.0

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Wrenched(2014)

Activist/author Edward Abbey's legacy lives on in his best-selling books and now in director ML Lincoln's lively documentary. Lincoln pays tribute to Abbey and the environmental movement he inspired, reenacting his "monkeywrenching," and interviewing notable eco-warriors and present-day activists.

0.0

Pirate for the Sea(2008)

A documentary on Paul Watson, who takes the law into his own hands on the open seas, confronting, by any nonviolent means necessary, the hunters who indiscriminately slaughter whales, seals and sharks, along with complicit governments and environmental organizations. Written by Anonymous "Pirate for the Sea" is a biographical film of Captain Paul Watson, the youngest founding member of Greenpeace Canada. He organized early campaigns protesting the killing of seals, whales, and dolphins. Greenpeace ejected him for being too much of an activist. Starting his own organization, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, he went on to sink illegal whaling ships, stopped Canadian seal hunts for ten years, permanently halted sealing in British Isles, killing of dolphins on Iki Island, Japan, etc. This documentary witnesses his latest campaigns and explores the personal and environmental history of this controversial marine conservationist. Written by R.C.

5.0