These programmes have been designed to provide a context for understanding the pressures on key natural resources such as oil, forests and fisheries – the topical issues of our time - although the implications are not restricted to just those three areas.

Help your audiences to understand:

• Resource depletion
• The need for energy conservation
• Our oil economy
• Principles of sustainability

Each video draws extensively on archive footage to paint the stark reality of a trajectory towards a near future that will leave us without many of the essential resources we take for granted.

It’s Easy with Hindsight contains 8 programmes designed to help energise your audiences. Each trigger video can be used with or without the presenter’s introductory comments, so if you prefer, you can substitute your own introductions, learning points and summaries.

These programmes are designed to be used individually or according to the needs of the audience.
Some of these videos will provoke laughter because of the naive and unintentional camp humour. Some of the content also appears somewhat bizarre such as the (very serious) claims by the ‘scientists’ in one of the 1930s films that they hoped to produce engines that would do 300mpg, grow rocking chairs on farms and produce wool from cheese!

Why is hindsight important in environmental training?

Imagine you are lost in the fog and trying to find a way to your destination. You could keep following the road ahead, or turn right or left occasionally, but without any knowledge of where you’d come from you could be driving in circles ... until the fuel runs out. There may be the occasional feeling of deja vu as you pass a junction but no real indicators of where you are at any one time. To know where we’re going, we need to know where we are and to know that, we need to know where we’re coming from. Suddenly history becomes a very important subject. Because most of us have become divorced from the natural world it’s a bit like driving in the fog we don’t see the forest loss, the declining fisheries or the emptying oil wells. And because of that, it’s difficult to change people’s behaviour - they just keep driving in circles.

This suite of videos will help you create an understanding of the direction we’re travelling, by looking back with hindsight at the mistakes and decisions we’ve made in the past, in order to make better decisions about the future.

Environmental training will have little use unless you can create behaviour change and win the commitment of the audience.

This new addition to the environmental trainer’s toolbox will help you challenge cynicism and harness enthusiasm.

What subjects are included in the videos?

Oil
The year of peak oil is very close but how did we get here and have we been here before?
6 trigger videos to help explore this issue. Very topical

Forests
See how the great redwood forests - many with trees up to 4,000 years old were destroyed with little more than hand axes and saws. Now we have powerful machines to do the job and we continue the destruction across the world – what’s the alternative?
1 video of redwood destruction.

Fisheries
The Alaskan salmon fisheries almost collapsed, so how come we now take twice as many fish as we used to do (2 million a year) and know it’s sustainable?
1 video to answer the question.

How can this resource be used?

• Environmental awareness training – for ISO 14001 or EMAS
• Training in sustainable development
• Strategic planning workshops
• Introduction to waste minimisation workshops
• Reinforcement prompts on your Intranet (licence required)
• Conference presentations
• Within academic courses

Don’t ignore the drivers of personal commitment. Not all your staff will be interested in company cost savings but they will be interested in what directly affects their lives and future.

Who should use this toolkit?

• Environmental Trainers
• Workshops facilitators
• Lecturers
• Conference presenters
• Change managers
• Consultants

Who should see these videos?
Just about everyone!

Some trainers’ headaches - do they ring a bell?
“I run the courses but the result is often the same: cynicism, lack of motivation and the voicing of petty objections to change.”

“I’ll come back to the site six months later and it’s just the same as I left it.”

“If people are in a state of denial how do you get them to face the realities?”

“The paper work is great from a ‘systems’ point of view but the overflow is still leaking, all the lights are still on and the flu tubes are still going in the general waste skip – I’m talking but no one is listening!”

There’s no simple single answer, the problems are urgent but change won’t happen overnight.

• Revisit the Training Needs Analysis, is it adequate?
• Get the CEO to reaffirm commitment, make sure the board understand that the word commitment equals resources. Ask them: do they want to play lip service or push for real change?
• Emphasise the positives - make sure you are promoting success stories and the gains you have made.
• Look again at the targets that are being set – are they realistic?
• Are the ‘rules’ of the game enforced or does everyone in the hierarchy just turn a blind eye?

Use these videos to focus a discussion on the issues and create a new dynamism and sense of urgency.

Features

• Short - useful in any training timetable
• Flexible – easily modified for your audience
• Rare archive footage – they won’t have seen this before
• Includes slides for your PowerPoint
• Trainer’s Notes – includes helpful hints and suggestions for use
• Option of 8 trigger videos in different versions – putting the trainer in control

All the videos make extensive use of rare archive footage to tell each story using an original period voice over, with an introduction and summary from a host presenter. They include graphics to aid comprehension. The running time of varies between approximately 3 and 7 minutes, extended slightly longer where presenter comments are included.

A version of each video is included without the presenter comments and summary to allow trainers to substitute their own interpretation or learning points. The graphics used in the videos and screen grabs from each video are included for insertion into PowerPoint presentations such as the Shot in the Dark “Green Weaver” awareness programme.

Content
Videos 1 to 5 trace the development of our oil economy from the 1930s to the 1970s oil embargo.
The summary section briefly explains the coming of ‘peak oil’ and the need to develop renewable alternatives.

Video 7 covers the logging of the Californian Redwoods in 1930s, the general deforestation of the lower 48 states of the US and the UK and then asks why we are making the same mistakes on a global scale. The summary suggests the purchase of timber from sustainable sources. This video is breathtaking when we consider the big picture – thousands of years of growth felled in days. We see many giant trees fall while the loggers run for safety.

Video 8 looks at Alaskan salmon fishing including the over- fishing during the 1930s that led to declining catches and near extinction. However, this situation was reversed so successfully that catches can now reach almost double what they were in the thirties through sustainable practices. The video is summarised with the view that the success with Alaskan salmon is a rare case and as fish stocks around the world begin to plummet we need to be buying fish that are certified from sustainable sources.

“Great for the graveyard slot”

“Packed with learning content”

“Seriously funny, absurdly provocative – must be seen”

“These videos show we’ve been dreaming and we’re only just waking up to the nightmare”

Available on DVD or VHS with Trainer’s Notes on accompanying CD.