This is depressing and I apologize

There’s always talk about the world we’re going to leave our children 10, 20 years from now. The scientists never have anything positive to say about the plight of these future generations. But sometimes I look at the world that’s been given to me in this present reality and I feel like I am the child that’s always being talked about. I feel sold short. I feel I’ve been given a broken earth.

                This broken world is a direct product of the choices of my parents’ generation and the globalized world they produced. I’m angry. I’m so, so angry. I was born into a world driven by profit. Manufactured Landscapes depicted this reality. The images of the film give viewers an intimate look into the barren, ravaged, polluted landscapes of the world, of which the newspapers always talk but we often never see.

A mountaintop removal site in Kentucky, my home. These manufactured landscapes are near to very us. Mountaintop removal is a practice of coal mining in which a mountaintop is literally blown off and the coal below is reclaimed. The practice is devastating the land and culture of my home and of many others in the mountains of Appalachia. The Kentucky House of Representatives recently passed a bill that will strip the EPA and the Office of Surface Mining of their abilities to protect the public and the land from the disastrous effects of mountaintop removal. The Kentucky legislature is in bed with the coal companies responsible, just as the governments of the United States, Russia, China, and many others are in bed with energy companies across the world. It's time for a new world order in which the health of the people and the land are taken into higher priority than money. 

I appreciated this film and every ounce of bias it carried. Its bias is strong and captivating to viewers. I hope that its strength enraptures audience into action for change. I’m so tired of apathy and if a little more bias is all it takes to persuade people into action, then I’m all for it.

I’m only 18 and I’m already fed up with the apathy of the world. I don’t understand why profit should be more powerful than our environments, our interactions, our creative spirits, our lives, our everything. I don’t understand, and I shouldn’t feel like this. I shouldn’t feel like there’s absolutely nothing of significance I can do to reverse the choices that have already been made. You’re saying to yourself, “Wow, Erin’s really pessimistic.” But you’re wrong. You’re just letting yourself forget about the extreme depths of crap that is our current reality. America loves to forget. We all love to forget. But Manufactured Landscapes brings us back to the mindset we all need to be in to save this world: reality.

Optimism of the will, pessimism of the mind. Optimism of the will, pessimism of the mind. Optimism of the will, pessimism of the mind. Optimism of the will, pessimism of the mind. It’s the mantra I live by. It runs through my veins through and through and keeps me sane. I can know that government and corporate interests will strip this world of its own sanity, but I can keep my own by always living counter to their profitable interests. I will work for a more wholesome, mindful planet even if I know I these actions cannot change much. I was born into a manufactured planet. But I will not let this status quo stand. I will fight until the last tree has fallen and the last river has been polluted and the last landscape has been raked of its beauty. And as the old saying goes, “Only then will they realize that money cannot be eaten.”