Bill Moyers Reports: Earth On Edge

Tuesday, June 19 at 8 - 10 pm, in LA KCET Ch 28 & KVCR Ch 24

(In other cities, check your local listings for time)

Acclaimed journalist Bill Moyers and an award-winning team of producers reveal recent scientific evidence that Earth is approaching a key environmental threshold. Bill Moyers Reports: Earth On Edge showcases new data depicting the scale of human impact on the planet's life-support systems. The two-hour program explores one of the most important questions of the new century: What is happening to Earth's capacity to support nature and civilization?

The documentary coincides with the launch of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, an international effort to gauge the health of the world's forests, grasslands, coastal and freshwater areas. Preliminary findings were featured in the World Resources Institute's (WRI) World Resources 2000-2001: People and Ecosystems: The Fraying Web of Life. The statistics from their preliminary findings are staggering: half the world's wetlands lost in one century, half the world's forests chopped down, 70 percent of the world's major marine fisheries depleted, the world's reefs at risk.

But Earth On Edge pushes well past the numbers. Moyers and his team also take viewers on a journey of hope to meet people from the American Midwest to Mongolia who are pioneering sustainable solutions to ecological

problems. Each story takes place in one of five major ecosystems: forest, agriculture, coastal, grassland, and fresh water. Reports from Kansas, British Columbia, Brazil, South Africa, and Mongolia illuminate the ways in

which human demands over the past century have been wearing holes in the fabric of life. The program profiles individuals who are confronting the challenge head on, people who understand how their lives depend on Earth's

ecosystems, and how their own energy and dedication might help restore them.