"Six Degrees Could Change the World" premiers 2/10

Los Angeles Times

I'm generally not a fan of the enviro-documentaries that take the "doom-and-gloom with a few minutes of optimism at the end" format, but National Geographic’s "Six Degrees Could Change the World" almost makes me wish I had cable.

Why? Perhaps I'm too easily enamored by webby features, but the "Six Degrees" website has an interactive world map that lets you look at the changes that could take place with each degree of global warming. The site also has six short video previews -- one per degree Celcius of global warming -- of what our world could look like in the future.

The scenarios are astounding -- though not all sound horrible, at least when removed from the overall monstrosity of the situation. If the earth warms by 4 degrees Celsius, the Scandinavian beach could be the next tourism hotspot, for example. Of course, Bangladesh would be washed away and New York suffering from rising seas and super storms....


The program's based on Mark Lyman's book "Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet." Why six degrees? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says the earth will warm up between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. By looking at the effects of each degree, we get a look at the best and worst scenarios, as well as the in betweens.

Greenguide"Six Degrees" premiers tomorrow, Sunday Feb. 10 on the National Geographic channel. Don't have that channel? Get the book or the eco-packaged DVD.

National Geographic's really been keeping busy these days. In addition to the Six Degrees site, NG's put together "Preserve our Planet," an ezine of sorts with environmental news and features, as well as a more consumer-action oriented site called Green Guide, for which Lyman served as editor this week. In addition, a new quarterly print magazine -- conveniently also dubbed Green Guide -- hits newsstands March 4.

Images courtesy of National Geographic