environment

A KQED Truly CA documentary narrated by John Waters about the Salton Sea, a once-glamorous California vacation spot now home to an eccentric community. It covers the area's economic, political and environmental problems and features Salvation Mountain.

Chai Jing's 104-minute documentary on China's smog, with full English subtitles. A former TV anchor, she investigates what smog is, where it comes from and what can be done, prompted by her daughter's health problems.

A FRONTLINE documentary on whether efforts to fix plastic pollution made it worse. It looks at the battle over plastics and recycling and how little plastic is actually recycled.

DW Documentary on the roughly 6,300 ships sunk in World War II that are now rusting and leaking oil into the seas. Scientists investigate contamination and the risk of a huge oil spill.

Dominion is a two-hour documentary using drones and hidden cameras to expose conditions in animal agriculture, including food, clothing, entertainment and research. It questions humanity's dominion over animals.

A short film from Agenda Gotsch introducing syntropic agriculture and Ernst Gotsch's agroforestry methods, made for COP21. It shows degraded land regenerated into productive forest farms.

Fools & Dreamers is a 30-minute documentary about Hinewai Nature Reserve in New Zealand, where botanist Hugh Wilson let gorse grow as a nurse canopy to regenerate native forest. It shows the results after 30 years and the local skepticism he faced.

Kirsten Dirksen visits retired mailman Russ Finch in Alliance, Nebraska, who grows oranges, figs and pomegranates in a backyard greenhouse without paying for heat. The greenhouse uses the stable temperature of the earth, with underground earth tubes, to heat and cool itself.

Permaculture instructor Andrew Millison visits the chinampas, the floating gardens of Xochimilco in Mexico City. He looks at this ancient Aztec agricultural system and the project restoring it.

Veritasium investigates PFAS forever chemicals, from Teflon's history to pollution of the global water system and their presence in the US population. It covers the corporate cover-up and the host's own blood tests.

A Business Insider investigation into the US boom in AI data centers, mapping where they are, who owns them, and how much power and water they consume. It looks at the costs borne by communities, with a focus on Virginia.

Permaculture instructor Andrew Millison visits the village of Garavadi in Maharashtra, India, which took part in the Paani Foundation's Water Cup competition. It shows the water harvesting structures the villagers built in 45 days and how they restored groundwater and the local economy.

Geoff Lawton documents a permaculture project that turned barren Jordanian desert into green, productive land. It covers the techniques he used.

An 8-minute National Geographic short film about David Bamberger, who bought 5,500 overgrazed acres in the Texas Hill Country and restored the land and its aquifers over about 50 years.

Permaculture instructor Andrew Millison travels with the UN World Food Programme to Niger to see land recovery within the Great Green Wall, where rainwater harvesting is boosting food security and restoring the ecosystem.

A short documentary about Eric Maundu's Arduino-controlled aquaponics setup in West Oakland, where contaminated soil rules out ordinary farming. Fish and circulating water grow plants without soil.

A Motherboard documentary episode from Nebraska about farmers and mechanics fighting manufacturers like John Deere over access to the diagnostic software needed to repair modern tractors. It shows how software locks have taken away farmers' traditional self-reliance.

A VPRO documentary following ecologist and cameraman John D. Liu. He documents the regreening of China's Loess Plateau and other efforts to restore deserts and biodiversity around the world.

A documentary on the 1972 Club of Rome study Limits to Growth, which questioned the pursuit of endless economic growth. It covers the study's findings and whether anyone acted on them.

Veritasium's long documentary on the history of Monsanto's herbicides, including glyphosate, and how patented seeds prevent farmers from replanting. It covers agricultural chemistry, litigation and corporate practices.

A short documentary about Jadav Payeng, who since the 1970s has planted a forest larger than Central Park on India's Majuli island, turning barren land into a lush oasis.

Al Baydha project co-founder Neal Spackman gives a final update nine years in, explaining how desertification followed the loss of indigenous land management and how the land has changed since inputs stopped in 2016. It lists which species worked best.

A 47-minute documentary on Allan Savory and how he used Holistic Management to restore degraded land in Zimbabwe. It covers rotational grazing, soil health and regenerative agriculture.

Josef Holzer walks through his family's Krameterhof, one of Europe's oldest permaculture farms in the Austrian mountains, with fish ponds, terraces, fruit trees and grazing animals. It showcases water management and microclimates.

A short film about the Dervaes family, who grow over 6,000 pounds of food a year on a tenth of an acre near downtown Los Angeles. They grow more than 400 plant species, keep chickens and ducks, and get most of their food from the plot.

A short tour of a UK materials recycling facility showing how mixed recyclables are mechanically and optically sorted. Aluminum, ferrous metal, glass, paper, and trash come out as separate streams.

A Radio Free Asia report from its China food safety series on how "gutter oil" is recovered from sewers and waste and sold on to cheap restaurants and street vendors.

A documentary from Swan Bitcoin exploring Bitcoin's relationship with energy, featuring Lyn Alden and others, and arguing that mining is a net positive for the environment and not wasteful.

Planet of the Humans, a full documentary by Jeff Gibbs presented by Michael Moore, arguing that the green movement has been co-opted by corporate and wealthy interests and that techno-fixes are not enough.

A 2007 Channel 4 documentary by Martin Durkin arguing that human-caused global warming is overstated or a scam. It features contrarian scientists such as Richard Lindzen and promotes sunspot and cosmic-ray explanations for temperature change. Its claims are rejected by mainstream climate science.

A 52-minute short version of the documentary The End of Suburbia, about peak oil and the end of cheap energy. It argues that American suburbs depend on cheap oil and may become the slums of the future.

A short documentary about the 1980 Lake Peigneur accident in Louisiana, where an oil rig drilled into a salt mine beneath the lake. The lake drained into the mine, creating a whirlpool that swallowed barges.

An animated short on limits to growth, covering oil formation, peak oil, energy, economic growth and resource depletion. Its central section deals with exponential growth, and the author notes some statistics are dated.

A VICE documentary that visits Agafia Lykova, last surviving member of the Lykov family of Old Believers who fled into the Siberian taiga in 1936. It shows how she lives in remote isolation and the outside world encroaching on it.

A Dartmouth-produced documentary on how professors John Kemeny and Tom Kurtz, with a group of undergraduates, invented the BASIC language. It covers the creation of BASIC and the early time-sharing environment at Dartmouth.

ILM shows how The Mandalorian season one used a large curved LED wall to display interactive 3D environments in camera. The video covers the virtual production setup replacing location shoots.