In 100 seconds, see the impact of humans on planet Earth
Each second of filmmaker Daniel Raven-Ellison's short film represents one percent of the Earth's surface. Only eight seconds show intact forest.
A lone man walks across an expanse of ice; a mottled tundra; desert badlands. The single human figure becomes a focal point as images from Earth’s diverse ecosystems change underfoot.
In this visual lies a metaphor: Human footprints have made their way across the entire planet, but how have they actually shaped the land?
That question drives Earth in 100 Seconds, a short film by geography educator and National Geographic Explorer Daniel Raven-Ellison. The project translates hard data on global land use into a storytelling device: a walk across the world, where each second represents one percent of Earth’s land surface. The result reveals how more space is taken up by activities like ranching and farming than the parks and wild places that provide ample habitat for wildlife.
“We need to get a grip of how we're using land,” says Raven-Ellison. “The problem is, nobody really knows what Earth looks like. It’s just too big for us to see and get our heads around.”
Supplying cities
Around halfway through the video, a blink-and-you-miss-it image of a city street appears to show how urban areas occupy only one to two percent of Earth's surface. Despite taking up only a fraction of land, these cities cast a long shadow. Just over half the world’s people live in urban areas, but studies suggest they’re responsible for about 70 percent of the world’s carbon emissions.
“I think we need to reimagine cities as not just being houses, roads, and factories, but all of the environments that they consume around them,” says Raven-Ellison.
In contrast to the brief city scene, the video spends 53 seconds on farmland, pastures, and forests grown for timber production. In total, we use around 71 percent of Earth’s land. Only eight seconds of the video comprises intact and truly wild forests. And many of the other wild places seen in the video are difficult to access and minimally used by people.
The data in Raven-Ellison’s video comes from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2019 report on climate impacts and solutions. The panel is made of some of the world’s leading climate scientists and regularly publishes reports outlining the scientific consensus on climate change.
Visualizing charts and graphs
Raven-Ellison’s filmmaking has ranged from “The UK in 100 seconds” as well as other films for the Netherlands and the U.K.’s national parks.
When making “Earth in 100 Seconds,” Raven-Ellison first considered how most people are used to walking distances, counting in seconds and using percentages. By combining those metrics, he hoped people might understand how we use land on Earth.
“By seeing someone walking we can relate to the person and places through story, which is a richer and more emotional experience than a sterile chart, graph, or table.”
His shots were intentionally chosen as very ordinary and “everyday” examples of different types of land use. In most of the video, Raven-Ellison himself is featured walking across these landscapes, seen from above by a drone.
By transforming data into a journey on foot, the film allows the audience to put images of real places to numbers. Raven-Ellison challenges us to imagine a future where we make more room for nature.
