Summary: The discovery of oil is often celebrated as a one-way ticket to wealth and economic growth. But in some developing countries, striking it rich has had the opposite effect-making oil more of a bane than a blessing for the poorest inhabitants. This program contrasts two cases: Ecuador, where the toxic environmental legacy of oil has sparked a landmark lawsuit over international corporate...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: While governments and industries reshape the world on a grand scale, countless individuals have pledged themselves to facilitating change at the grassroots level, one village at a time. This program interviews North American and European volunteers and the people in developing countries who are receiving their humanitarian and political assistance. By living together and sharing cultural...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: As globalization gains momentum, industrialized and developing countries are, to a greater or lesser extent, becoming increasingly similar, with middle-class luxury and abject poverty coexisting side by side. This program explores the repercussions of globalization as well as a growing resentment toward the G8 countries and nongovernmental organizations. Concerns over third-world debt,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Some conservatives paint the environmentalist movement as socialist or worse, but the key to reducing humanity's carbon footprint may actually appear in new manifestations of capitalism. From electric car technology to the production of ethanol out of waste products, fighting climate change is in fact creating new economic opportunities and could actually steer the planet away from a plunge in...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: This ambitious documentary follows the circuitous route of the 1,100-mile BTC Pipeline, a string of 150,000 steel pipes that links the cities of Baku, in Azerbaijan; Tbilisi, in Georgia; and Ceyhan, in Turkey. The pipeline will transport the rich, previously untapped energy reserves of the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean, from where it will flow into the global market, but its route makes many...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Faced with increasing cuts in government aid, grassroots organizations in the industrialized world are learning valuable lessons from their counterparts in developing countries. Never having had government funding, third-world assistance programs are showing them how to implement support-free community-based initiatives. This program demonstrates how "sweat equity" and other techniques are...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: As the industrialized world's desire for oil grows larger, so does the opposition from environmental groups intent on protecting the land. As demand increases, what restraints should be put on where oil companies drill? This documentary journey heads to the farthest reaches of Alaska and Canada, with a side trip to Washington, D.C. As the pressure for oil-and "energy security"-increases,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: In an age of globalization, companies are scrambling to blend the ideals of social justice with the concept of a free-market economy. Drawing on case studies from around the world, this program focuses on progressive efforts being made by businesses to unite profits and principles. Issues under consideration include the practice of social responsibility through ethical investment policies and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Transporting viewers to the year 2016, this program paints a disturbing picture of an oil-starved America and the socioeconomic upheaval that may accompany the death of the Oil Age. The film follows a middle-aged, Midwestern couple through violence at gas stations, conflicts with neighbors, and the loss of their livelihood; it also focuses on their daughter, an oil prospector determined to find...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Peak oil: the point at which oil-producing countries, faced with diminishing crude reserves, can no longer keep pace with growing demand. Has the world already reached it, or is the point of irrevocable decline still decades away? That is the slippery question that frames the narrative of this program as experts from around the world give their views on factors associated with escalating oil...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: Rosia Montana is a Romanian village that has existed since the days of ancient Rome. Now, as Gabriel Resources, a Canadian mining company, hopes to begin excavation there of the largest open-pit gold mine in Europe, mineral wealth and badly needed jobs compete with time-honored rural traditions and concerns about the potential for an environmental disaster. This Wide Angle report captures the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Controversial writer Johan Norberg argues forcefully for one side of the globalization debate. In this program he examines three developing countries and how they fit into that debate, building a case for deregulation, the abolishment of subsidies and tariffs, and a long-term view of industrialization. He frankly defends the use of sweatshop labor, through which Taiwan has cultivated a...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006