Making a television series is similar to aligning a company’s activities with climate science. It involves creating numerous “seasons,” each of which involves extensive preparation and includes interesting characters, stories, and plot twists. Netflix, on the other hand, is focusing on sustainability and how. They recently finished their second year and wrote about it as well.
“The Trailer: Climate science tells us this is the critical decade to avoid unmanageable climate change. So, we set two near-term climate targets aligned with consensus climate science measured in years, not decades: 1) to halve our emissions by 20301 and, 2) in support of global net zero goals, starting in 2022, to annually bring our remaining net carbon emissions to zero by restoring nature to capture carbon2. As we’ve shared previously, most of our emissions come from producing our films and series. The production industry is over a century old, and like most industries, it is traditionally powered by fossil fuels. Reducing these emissions is paramount and makes good business sense. We approach them using our OED framework: first Optimize energy use, then Electrify it, and Decarbonize the rest.” wrote Netflix in its blog.
Using this framework, they identified four main strategies: Energy Efficiency, Electrifying Vehicles, Clean Mobile Power (alternatives to diesel generators used universally across the entertainment industry), and Renewable Energy.
They stated in their 2017 report that their 2021 emissions were 10% lower than they otherwise would have been. They fulfilled their pledge to net all remaining emissions to zero by investing in nature’s ability to retain and capture carbon as a complement to this decarbonization work.
While they continue to spread sustainability, there are shows that are about nature and will help you see the world from a different angle.
Here are the five of them that are on Netflix-
Seaspiracy
A documentary called Seaspiracy examines how much marine life has been taken from the seas by humans. The majority of us are aware that the commercial fishing industry is reducing fish stocks to the point where they cannot recover, and the documentary emphasizes the impact of this fact by showing harrowing footage of whaling in the Faroe Islands, disease-ridden fish farms, and former slaves in the industry sharing stories of abuse and murder.
Seaspiracy urges people to stop eating fish and emphasizes the creation of shellfish and protein substitutes made from plants.
David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet
The 85-minute documentary, which serves as the “witness statement” of renowned naturalist David Attenborough, looks back on his 60-year career while demonstrating how the biodiversity of our planet has declined over his lifetime and makes ominous predictions about the future should humanity continue on its current course. In contrast to his usual nature documentaries, Attenborough adopts a harsher stance and criticizes how people handle the natural world in A Life on Our Planet.
This is one of the must-watch environmental Netflix movies because he does conclude it with a more upbeat message and emphasizes the ways that the world can restore biodiversity.
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My Octopus teacher
The emotional story and recording of an unlikely relationship between filmmaker and diver Craig Foster forging and a wild common octopus won this film the Oscar for Best Documentary in 2020. In the documentary My Octopus Teacher, which was shot in an underwater kelp forest in False Bay near Cape Town, South Africa, Foster gets close to an octopus as he follows her daily movements and observes how she protects herself from pajama sharks before ultimately dying after mating.
The stunning underwater imagery in this movie will compel viewers to care about and engage with an octopus they have never encountered.
Cowspiracy: The sustainability secret
The film Cowspiracy delves into the shockingly uncontested animal agriculture industry, which the creators of the film claim are the most destructive industry currently affecting the world. The documentary was one of the first to highlight the industry’s staggering greenhouse gas emissions, revealing that it is responsible for more emissions than the combined exhaust from all transportation. It also showed the effects of deforestation, water pollution, and topsoil erosion on the environment.
Since the film’s release, a number of studies on the industry’s role in climate change have been released, one of which found that 20 producers of beef and milk emit more carbon than Germany, France, or Britain.
Dancing with Birds
Dancing with Birds, a Netflix nature documentary series created by the same team that brought you the well-liked eight-part Our Planet is more than just a collection of amusing videos of strange mating dances performed by exotic birds. The male bird is the subject of this nature documentary, which introduces the viewer to various “characters” as they compete to impress nearby potential mates. We see both their triumphs and failures, which are portrayed in a way that is exclusively female.
This movie will undoubtedly make any spectator smile thanks to Stephen Fry’s warm narration and the colorful scenery.
Do watch these documentaries and let us know if there are any others that you would have watched!
