With the plastic industry expanding like never before, and the crisis of ocean pollution growing, FRONTLINE and NPR investigate the fight over the future of plastics.
With the plastic industry expanding like never before, and the crisis of ocean pollution growing, FRONTLINE and NPR investigate the fight over the future of plastics.
2020 • Environment
James May asks the big questions about the weather, including what is a cloud?
S1E3 • James May's Things You Need to Know • 2011 • Environment
Craig Reucassel investigates our transport emissions, which are the second major contributor to our total carbon emissions. He explores how we can make the move from petrol guzzlers to electric vehicles.
S1E2 • Fight For Planet A: Our Climate Challenge • 2020 • Environment
The disaster began during a routine systems test at reactor number four of the Chernobyl plant located near the town of Pripyat, on April 26, 1986. After a power surge, an emergency shutdown was attempted and after a subsequent power spike, there was a reactor vessel rupture and a series of steam explosions. The cascading course of events led to exposing the graphite moderator of the reactor to the air, causing it to catch fire. This sent a plume of highly radioactive fallout into the atmosphere. The fallout from Chernobyl prompted mass evacuations as it drifted over an extensive geographical area, including the western Soviet Union and Europe. Over 350,000 people were resettled from contaminated areas of Belarus, Russia, and the Ukraine. Thirty-one deaths are directly attributed to the accident, and all the deaths were among reactor staff and emergency workers. This is the kind of atmosphere Nelson and Ochota are investigating on Life After: Chernobyl as they attempt to determine how the radiation continues to impact the affected areas. They are allowed to stay for as long as they need to in order to conduct their ground-breaking research, but the duo must also be sure to take the necessary safety precautions. Broadway World noted in their Life After: Chernobyl article that by staying in the area for too long, the radiation exposure could reach dangerously high levels in their bodies, and they must always monitor the radiation levels.
2014 • Environment
In 2018, two volcanoes unleashed terror on their communities, but in very different ways. Fuego, the Volcano of Fire in Guatemala, sent boiling clouds of gas, ash, and rock down the volcano's slopes and into villages, killing hundreds. In Hawaii, Kilauea spewed out over four billion cubic feet of lava, razing estates, destroying roads, and changing the landscape. Using the latest scientific evidence, we explore what made the eruptions unique, why they were so hard to predict, and whether or not these two catastrophes were somehow connected.
2018 • Environment
Filmmakers travel to six continents and 20 countries to document the impact humans have made on the planet.
2018 • Environment
Professor Iain Stewart uncovers clues hidden within the New York skyline, the anatomy of American alligators and inside Bolivian silver mines, to reconstruct how North and South America were created. We call these two continents the New World, and in a geological sense they are indeed new worlds, torn from the heart of an ancient supercontinent - the Old World of Pangaea.
3/4 • Rise of the Continents • Environment