It is nice to live in Langley, as a relatively small municipality on the rural-urban fringe. It is not exactly the “middle-of-nowhere” although it might seem like that to some Vancouverites.

When Langley was founded 150 years ago, the pioneers could live here fairly unconnected with the rest of the world. This is no longer true.

I thought about this the other night as I watched Up the Yangtze which documents the flooding of the Yangtze River for the Three Gorges Dam in China. These scenes from the other side of the planet seemed like a faraway dream, but…

The electricity produced by the Three Gorges Dam helps to produce the Chinese products lining the shelves of our stores. The trains we see streaming westward bear Canadian coal that also fuels Chinese industry.

As well as the made-in-China products, we get made-in-China air.

Satellite images are able to track a plume of pollution created by coal-fired plants in Asia as it projects eastward, occasionally even reaching North America. We are also impacted by climate change due to carbon dioxide from the burning of these fossil fuels.

However, it is not about “us vs. them” as watching Up the Yangtze makes abundantly clear.

The young Chinese subjects of the documentary are being trained to pander to North American tourists riding a luxury cruise ship that plies the Yangtze River to showcase the dam as an emerging technological wonder.

The poignant portrait of the Yangtze cruise-boat trainees in the film illustrates how much the Chinese are longing to better themselves by adopting North American cultural trappings.

Meanwhile, the viewer watches as the farm home of one of the trainees, Yu Shui (Cindy) is literally flooded by this “progress,” and her parents are forced to find a new, less idyllic livelihood.

We cannot fault people in other nations for pursuing the “American dream.”

Yet the American dream becomes a nightmare for the planet if economic growth is pursued without thinking about the environment.

We in Langley are clearly connected to China via the global atmosphere, but political and cultural walls tend to block us from working together on these issues.

I was appalled by the measures required to curb pollution around the Beijing Olympics but Up the Yangtze helped me to see I was part of the problem. Can we move beyond pointing fingers? Can we work collectively across cultures to dream new and greener dreams?

David Clements is a professor of biology and environmental studies at Trinity Western University.