Destroying Earth

Insects are dying out and scientists and environmentalists are sounding the alarm. Our film team meets entomologists, farmers, scientists, chemical companies and politicians in a bid to lay bare the causes of insect mortality. Insects aren’t really likeable. They sting, bite, transmit diseases and frighten children. But, on the other hand, they are also fascinating: 480 million years ago, insects were the first animals to learn to fly, and they took over the Earth. Even now, they are fundamental to life on Earth, and are at the beginning of the food chain on which all human beings are ultimately dependent. But insect numbers worldwide are dropping, creating a rupture of the food chain. Environmentalists and scientists are now extremely worried. Landscape ecology professor Alexandra-Maria Klein from Freiburg, for example, has been researching the effects of human interventions in natural environments for decades and has launched an experiment in a fruit plantation on Lake Constance: W...

Huge areas of tropical rainforest are being destroyed to make charcoal for barbecues. The global deforestation is leading to growing problems. Nigeria and the DRC Congo - two of Europe’s main charcoal suppliers - are also affected. Every year, Europeans use approximately 800,000 tons of charcoal for barbecuing. Seventy percent of the charcoal comes from outside the EU, and the bags often contain remnants of tropical woods. Officially, tropical woods are subject to strict import conditions. But when it comes to wood charcoal, these do not apply. Worldwide, 2.7 billion people cook and heat with wood or charcoal. The related emission of greenhouse gases is enormous. 55 percent of global wood is used as fuel per year, and much of it is cut illegally in Africa’s bush and tropical forests. Nigeria produces most of its charcoal for export. Especially during dry periods, local Nigerian farmers use coal production as a lifeline to make money and feed their families. At the same time, charcoal...

Living Soil: A Documentary. Now available with subtitles in more than 20 languages. Enable closed captions by clicking the 'CC' icon, then click the gear icon to select the subtitle language you want. Our soils support 95 percent of all food production, and by 2060, our soils will be asked to give us as much food as we have consumed in the last 500 years. They filter our water. They are one of our most cost-effective reservoirs for sequestering carbon. They are our foundation for biodiversity. And they are vibrantly alive, teeming with 10,000 pounds of biological life in every acre. Yet in the last 150 years, we’ve lost half of the basic building block that makes soil productive. The societal and environmental costs of soil loss and degradation in the United States alone are now estimated to be as high as $85 billion every single year. Like any relationship, our living soil needs our tenderness. It’s time we changed everything we thought we knew about soil. Let’s make this th...

Four Corners investigates the secret tactics used by global chemical giant Monsanto to protect its billion-dollar business and its star product — the weed killer, Roundup We work with the government..." This exactly the reason we have to doubt Monsanto's "scientific studies." For years the tobacco industry told us that smoking didn’t cause cancer and now they have health warnings on every packet of cigarettes. The problem Bayer Monsanto has is the lie they have been telling has become so big that they can’t stop telling it.

Australia's Great Barrier Reef is one of the world's greatest natural wonders - and it's under threat. In addition to climate change, the fragile ecosystem is now also facing pollution from the coal industry. Is there still time to save the Great Barrier Reef ? See fabulous documentary "Our Generation". Hear The Yolnu people, guardians of areas where rich mineral deposits lie! See how OZGOV treated them. WHY? To GET STUFF. Greed grinding and grabbing life as lived in respect for Natura. Sacred land 'leased' from local people FOR MINING. Shameful corruption and Plots. DON'T SLEEP THROUGH THIS ATROCITY. Big business doesn't care about nature, it's just something that gets in the way, and politicians have their hand in big businesses pocket.