Shooting Diary

A new culture shock – where Bangladesh has one aspirin, America has twenty-five of them… or the like. You inevitably start to ask yourself questions: How much consumption can humans tolerate? At what point does materialism begin to make people unhappy? In spite of the high hopes associated with the election of Barack Obama as the new president, people in the US – compared to the earlier stations of the shooting – seemed rather depressive and fearful!

Our first stop: San Carlos, California. Not far away from Stanford University or from the famous Silicon Valley, where the biggest names of the IT business reside side by side: Google, eBay, Facebook, Adobe, Microsoft, Apple, Intel, Nvidia, to name but a few.

What do Jeff Skoll and George Clooney have in common? An electrical car called Tesla Roadster. From zero to a hundred km/h in less than four seconds – the Roadster accelerates faster than a Porsche, and the design is just as polished! This vehicle demonstrates that the traffic of the future can get by without petrol – without sacrificing the fun of driving. Elon Musk, the 37-year-old CEO of Tesla Motors, a multi-millionaire since the sale of his startup PayPal, wants to establish Tesla as a brand which will play the same role for cars that the iPod plays for mp3 players. Once electrical cars have become in, everybody will want to drive one…

The next place to go to is Los Angeles. After having shot wonderful pictures of a highway at sunset and of a cab ride through Downtown L.A. – which devours an unbelievable amount of energy – we have an appointment at the University of California: A lecture by Hermann Scheer. His solution to the most important problems of our time: Energy autonomy – not just as an answer to climate change and to oil resources running dry, but as an answer to the current financial crisis as well! With his scenario of a quick and thorough transition to a sustainable way of life, giving a strong boost to the economy, he succeeds in planting hope at least in the minds of his audience at UCLA.