Times Union.com Oct 2008:

There’s a lot of environmental films out there that while not painting a rosy picture still want us to feel a sense of “hey things will still be ok” not so with Blind Spot. Director Adolfo Doring has, along with many of the scientists, economists and other experts, wisely decided that the time for coddling us is past, perhaps even too long past. This absolutely beautifully shot ode to the end of our world as we have known it doesn’t even bother to try and convince us. Either you see the visual beauty of this world, city and country, and want to save it or you don’t. Either you hear and heed the wisdom of the cadre of experts he presents or you don’t. There is no panic in this film just an absolute and stark reality that we either choose to face or not. Either way the film tells us it’s coming and as one environmental advocate quotes nature as saying (and I paraphrase) either you do it or I will and if I do it I’ll remove things and most of them will be you.

Essay on Blind Spot by Kemp Scales

Grim stuff. I don’t think we'll see this film on network TV. It challenges too directly fundamental assumptions on which the continuance of our corporate economy and our consumer culture is based – in particular, the unquestioned assumption that growth is good, that “expansion is tantamount to progress.”

“Blind Spot” makes no attempt to soften or sweeten its message in order to make it palatable to a wider audience. The people interviewed are blunt about the seriousness of the problems we face: peak oil; climate change; population overshoot. These problems are getting worse, as whatever temporary progress we make in curbing this growth is quickly nullified by a growing population combined with the “Jevons Paradox” – the fact that increased technological efficiency in the use of a resource tends to increase (rather than decrease) the rate at which that resource is consumed. (Cars becoming more fuel-efficient means we can drive more miles for the same cost, and so we do.) These problems have potentially catastrophic consequences for the entire human species; indeed, we run the risk that positive feedback loops will develop that take matters completely outside our control. And we’ve largely squandered the last forty years, precious time that we desperately needed to plan for these imminent crises.

Other Quotes

“If we lived in a rational world, inhabited by rational human beings, viewing Blind Spot would be a mandatory prerequisite to taking any federal oath of office in the coming year. Were that to happen, there might be hope that the USA would resume world leadership and our renewed influence would be used to redirect ourselves and the world away from the unsustainable path upon which we plummeted along throughout the 20th century, mistakenly regarding the adventure as unmitigated progress.”
-William R. Catton
author of ‘OVERSHOOT’

“Blind Spot rides currents of beauty and sadness, ultimately landing with a catharsis that comes when truth has been told.”
-Jason Bradford

“The next few decades aren’t going to look like the last few - not at all. And the sooner we come to terms with that, the better. This documentary is a good place to start.”
-Bill McKibben
author of ‘The End of Nature’