Twenty-nine years ago this Earth Day, a short film called Connect: A New Ecological Paradigm aired on MTV. At that time M-TV was a big deal. The film featured a gathering of young environmentalists and asked a simple question: what if we organized civilization around life instead of against it?
The world wasn’t ready. It might be now.
Something has shifted in the last few weeks. Hungary — a country whose democratic machinery had been systematically dismantled over 16 years — produced nearly 80% voter turnout and swept its authoritarian government out of power. Not through revolution. Through collective decision. Millions of people who had stopped believing change was possible decided, in the same moment, that it was.
Palestinians and Iranians have more support in the US than the Israeli government – in spite of the massive Israeli propaganda machine. And we’re seeing greater public engagement here in the states.
The question Earth Day has always been circling — how do we build a world that supports life instead of extracting from it — requires exactly that kind of collective change of heart. Not a policy, a shift in what people believe is possible.
The tools exist. We’ve been building them since the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970.
Henry Ford built a car from bioplastics including soybeans and hemp in 1941 — lighter than steel, safer in impacts, made from the earth and returnable to it. The petrochemical industry buried the story. A documentary now in production at fordlostcar.com is bringing it back.
Hemp — one of the most regenerative crops on the planet — is finally finding its economic infrastructure through cooperative marketplaces like Hempopolis.net. Bioplastics, combining industry with agriculture (a Henry Ford dream), free energy, organic food – all ignored in favor of a consumptive lifestyle that profits the elites and makes our lives and that of the Earth poorer.
The knowledge was never the problem. The will to replace the old has always been the issue, especially as we threaten archaic industries like oil. Curiously, the war in Iran is doing more to move the needle away from fossil fuels than all the NGOs and protests over the years.
World 5.0 is the name for what comes next — a civilization built on three simple truths: that reality is complete in this moment, that intent is the animating force of any living system (including we humans), and that only love — not fear, not stress, not hate— makes us genuinely happy.
Earth Day named the wound. The moment to heal it may finally be here. There are clear signs the old system is failing. The formerly hidden network of elites controlling money and politics is being revealed through the Epstein saga. New, regenerative energy and food systems are coming online. We, the people of Earth are awakening like never before. I’m hopeful the 2027 Earthday shows us incredible change toward a positive future.
[Watch Connect: A New Ecological Paradigm — Earth Day 1997]
Jim Prues is a Cincinnati filmmaker, author, and founder of World 5.0. Learn more at world5.org.