TREATMENT

FOR AN ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY SERIES

TITLE: ‘OXY-MORONS’.

GENRE
75 minute ‘Living History’ feature or (3 x 30) minute documentary series.

LOGLINE
Soon, our concerns as parents will move away from the diets of our children to the amount of
oxygen they are getting from the air.

LOCATION FILMING
Filming and interviews within the higher altitude communities of Colorado, the
administration centers of NASA and the US Airforce & Navy, small biosphere communities in
the States, residents and professionals in the city of Ulaanbaator in Mongolia, locations and a
coroner’s interview in London, England.

UNDERLYING MATERIAL (IP)

The story, treatment, chain of title and license rests with (TBC).

INTRODUCTION

Living on a marginal planet, near a peripheral star, in just one of billions of galaxies, we are
not the centre of the universe but we may be the only ones breathing oxygen.

Oxygen is the life in the blood on which so much of life depends. We can’t begin to describe a
world without oxygen, we can’t really imagine it not being around. However, this
documentary series starts us down that imaginative path.

Everything on earth starts with the simple notion that we are natural creatures on a natural
world. You and I are simply oxygen breathing bi-peds, after all. The Great Oxygenation Event
about three billion years ago saw the introduction of free oxygen into our atmosphere for the
first time and now it’s starting to deplete.

As we shall see, the earth is limited in size and form but we act like it isn’t. Stable oxygen
levels should be a primary concern. An essence which we depend on and can’t be separated
from. So, what is the state of our oxygen today? We don’t run on any other kind of oil and the
issues that are raised in this series, have everything to do with what is now happening to our
bodies. Four case studies will tell us exactly where we are.

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In each study, we are seen as just a component of a whole, part of a set of other chemical
interactions that are taking place because of pollution and climate change.

There is no mystery to oxygen and it’s easily measured. A natural phenomenon in its own
right. Oxygen is here to remind us of our impermanence because life simply wouldn’t exist
without it.

In this series we will only lightly touch on the theme of pollution as just one of a number of
factors and we do so whilst putting data to one side, focussing on stories. Bottom line? We do
not realise the extent of damage being done to us from all directions. We think of damage to
the ‘world’ but not to ‘us’. If you know there is a bomb buried beneath your feet, do you leave
it there because you think: ‘it might not explode?’ This is where we are. The series does not shy
away from the reality of earth’s depleting oxygen levels and in that sense, we are all the ‘Oxy-
Morons’ of the documentary title, because the bomb below is about to go off.

The irony of it all. When Galileo asked, ‘do objects of different weights fall at the same speed?’ He
understood little about the key elements that make up our air. Aristotle understood something
because he wrote that things fall at different speeds in our world because of the air. The great
Galileo could be pardoned for not considering something that he couldn’t see.

In the same way that today, we all take our oxygen for granted.

We are experiencing an accelerated degree of warming because we see increased human

numbers and activities, but what’s happening to our oxygen? And what happens when our
breathable oxygen drops to dangerous levels? Anyway, what is a dangerous level?

Air has gained a bad reputation and that’s unfair. The fault lies in the oxygen, not the nitrogen
it contains and increasingly, there is less of the former and too much of the latter. What
explains our blindness to the problem of depletion? This documentary gets to the heart of the
matter with tangible case studies and examples, moving the lens throughout the States and
ending in Asia. It also explores the obstacles in the way. Is it the cultural universe in which we
live? Or is it the simple horror of how it is affecting our children that is too much to bear?

There has been a rupture of the earth’s delicate eco-balance and we are reminded of it in the
outer reaches of the earth, travelling with US Air Force pilots in the stratosphere as well as
down here on the ground with altitude communities in Colorado. What is clear is that a
radical restructuring of thought needs to take place and the documentary seeks out those who
can contribute to this narrative.

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We search for a solution that borders different cultures, individuals and peoples. We need to
mix, not keep this subject separate, for the simple reason that we all breathe the oxygen.

We know about the philosophical effect of a butterfly’s wing, but what about butterflies
themselves? How come the migration patterns of the Blue Icarus keep changing over time as
they follow the alternating temperatures of the trade winds? And why is there an increased
incidence of American Air Force pilots collapsing with hypoxia at high altitudes? The
investigation begins.

STUDY ONE: THE CASE OF THE FEINTING PILOTS

You don’t have to rise too many hundreds of feet to know when your body starts to
protest for the lack of oxygen. As a pilot you are bound to notice this effect more than
others.

We are just beginning to understand the upper limits of our atmosphere because
oxygen doesn’t expand deep into the cosmos. It has limits. That unreliable edge
between us and a lifeless solar system, is narrow. If you are in the US Air Force, this is
your territory and as a pilot, you will often find yourself climbing to the outermost
reaches of our atmosphere. The earth has a definite atmospheric border where all life
suddenly ends, that border is also a test bed for the quality of our oxygen.

Our present knowledge about this pitifully narrow band of life enhancing air, is today
revealing disturbing facts, contradictions and unresolved tensions for the life that lives
within it. Our first investigation starts at this very edge. News clips introduce us to the
disturbing incidence of fighter jets that are crashing at random with new research from
the US Air Force that is struggling to understand its root causes. Intimate interviews
with surviving pilots anchor the case study:

“I flew the F-16 for over six years, I’ve had feelings I have never felt flying jets before, a lot of
coughing after flying, the inability to take full breaths, couldn’t inhale, couldn’t get the air in. I
couldn’t even effectively exercise…”

We take a rounded journalistic approach to the problem, expanding the interviews with
engineers, medical personnel, meteorologists from the National Weather Service, all
establishing a clear reasoning path for the viewer - because something is clearly
‘happening up there.’ Excerpts from an Armed Services Sub-Committee investigation of
the issue, which demonstrates the depth of the problem, as it threatens the armed
readiness of the United States:

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“There have been twenty-nine physiological episodes to date on top of thirteen A-10 aircraft that
have been grounded due to problems with the oxygen systems and just last week, the Air Force
grounded all of its T6 training aircraft in six operating locations due to increasing, unexplained,
physiological episodes.”

The Air Force and Navy are sure about one thing. All reports are anchored in issues
surrounding oxygen, with all pilots suffering from hypoxia-like symptoms before
passing out and in some cases, crashing. Our interviews reveal baseline information on
how the human body responds to oxygen depletion in the atmosphere, even in aircraft
as sophisticated as the F/A-18A/B Hornet and F-15D Eagle.

We are taken through a routine where pilots are fitted with a VigiLOX oxygen
monitoring system, connected to their normal oxygen masks. This system starts to
pump out data in real time about what we already know. All the data points to
pollution and oxygen depletion. An interview with a NASA engineer clarifies the point
for us:

“So, the question is, what does that pollution do to the human body, when you have a corruption
of oxygen?” That is the kind of work we’re doing. The AOG Study Panel came to the view that
the hypoxia-like incidents were being caused by the F-22 life support system either delivering a
lower amount of oxygen to the pilot than necessary to support normal performance, and the
system was failing to filter toxic compounds in the breathable air. In the case of either
hypothesis, the result would be hypoxia-like symptoms that are threatening flight safety.”

From the skies, we slowly descend to continue our investigations with the high-altitude
communities living in Colorado.

STUDY TWO: RUNNING DOWN THE MOUNTAINS

Historically, oxygen levels have been dropping from a high in the Carboniferous period
of 35% to current levels of around 20% and in many cities as we’ll see, it’s now lower
than that.

In our second study, we travel to a community in Colorado and a set piece interview
with one if its sixty-five-year-old residents. ‘Gail’ moved two years ago to a lower
altitude after suffering years of depleted oxygen levels to the point where today, she is
hooked to an oxygen supply.

Interviews with doctors explore this phenomenon in Colorado as people slowly

descend from the areas of higher altitude. We talk to doctors at local community
hospitals in an investigative mode, asking: ‘Have you seen an increase in supplemented
oxygen to your patients?’

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The lens here extends further as we invite the companies supplying the oxygen to
discuss sales of their valuable commodity, is there something special to learn here? The
producers think so.

What is clear at this stage, is that unlike our past or pre-history, it will become
increasingly harder for humans to live at higher altitudes. We’re already playing a long
hypothetical game of survival. Of course, none of us want to live in a game called
‘Survivor,’ although asthma sufferers today would contend that they already are.

A spokesperson from the FDA drives the point home, revealing that it is funding a
project that seeks to improve the ability of sheep to graze at high altitudes - largely
because it may become the only place left for them to graze.

In short, people are moving down the mountains, sheep are moving up. Dr Woteki who
is in charge of the sheep grazing project, discusses scientist’s response to the fact that a
quarter of the arable land around the world is degraded, the base reason for the
experiment. We touch on the ancillary subject of how the changing climate is bringing
new risks of food borne diseases with pathogens influenced by increased humidity.

At this stage, as the audience begins to wonder where there are more suitable
environments for oxygen, we introduce the idea of the ‘Biosphere.’

STUDY THREE: THE CASE OF THE ‘BIOSPHERIANS’

Dreams are not inconceivable, and certainly, the idea of creating our own enclosed
atmospheres could become a reality. Yet, even here the discoveries we have made
speak volumes about our inability to maintain sufficient oxygen levels to live, let alone
thrive.

Our aim should be to conquer our own world first but the drive to produce viable
biospheres goes on and, in most cases, have failed spectacularly. In this chapter of the
documentary, we revisit an infamous short-lived experiment that came crashing down,
consigned to oblivion in 1993.

Biospheres are an attempt to artificially create the enclosed conditions of an idealized

life on earth. To set them up and gather data to improve the model environment. For
our purposes, we focus on the specific lessons learned about how the human body
responded to the precarious oxygen levels in these environments.

The dream of the biosphere also suggests the creation of a new kind of world.
Biospheres after all, are places without armies, poverty, with no competitive struggles
or nationalisms. And as it also turns out, less and less oxygen.

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Through a series of interviews with ex-Biospherians and scientists, the documentary
charts the findings of this great experiment. Its plausibility melting like the snow
because of a lack of sufficient oxygen levels created within them. Proving how
precarious and unstable the oxygen element can be.

The interviews touch on a second stark reality, that whilst Biospherians were being
stressed over insufficient oxygen levels, there was conspicuous success for the insects
who thrived with little oxygen, promoting the idea of insects as the true inheritors of
the earth.

Covid-19 attacks the lungs and lack of oxygen lies at the heart of many fatalities. We
touch lightly on this theme in interviews because it proves how poorly equipped our
hospitals are to deal with ‘mass’ population issues with breathing.

As a result, we do not need to imagine what a world without oxygen will be like,
because the findings of the Biosphere Projects lay this out for us. Eight people lived for
two years in this sealed environment where the oxygen levels dropped to the
dangerous level of only 14% after 18 months, forcing scientists to break with the spirit
of the experiment by pumping pure Oxygen in to the Biosphere from the outside.

Hardly an Eden, the Biosphere created a kind of “…atmospheric hell” that choked its
Biopsherians. Not dissimilar, the documentary suggests, to parts of the world today,
where the air is also choking inhabitants with high temperatures and high levels of
carbon dioxide, the principal agents of global warming.

In the experiment, some organisms struggled whilst others like the katydids,
cockroaches and ants actually thrived and had found their own insect Eden. Interviews
with ex-Biospherians and scientists from Colombia University conclude the grim tale:

''We watched one Biospherian drop in weight from 260 to 150 pounds. Not only did oxygen
levels plummet from 21 to 14 percent, barely sufficient to keep the Biospherians alive, but carbon
dioxide skyrocketed along with nitrous oxide, or laughing gas. Its strength was sufficient to
reduce vitamin B12 synthesis to a level that damages the brain.''

Our total and complete reliance upon oxygen is still being unravelled. Including the
stark fact that some insects can survive long periods without it. Was it futile to have
dreamed? Not really. The failure has promoted an appreciation of the world in which
we now live, with a renewed ambition to protect it.

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 STUDY FOUR: LUNGS LIKE A PURRING CAT

Fuel. Such a nice word, such a dangerous commodity. As we close in to the final case
study of the documentary, we are clear that all the indicators surrounding our
depleting oxygen levels, point to issues of climate, pollution and the delicate nature of
the oxygen element. Clearly, the relationship between oxygen and climate change is
inextricably bound.

And we know this because bottled oxygen is now becoming a feature of several cities in
the world where bodily stresses due to lack of oxygen has forced governments to
respond.

In the poorer regions of the world, depleting oxygen levels go hand in hand with
poverty. The bodily stresses that our US Air Force pilots are experiencing at the very
edges of our atmosphere, are even more pronounced down here on ground zero,
testing our oxygen bearing red cells to their limits. We don’t need to travel far to
understand how bad the issue of low oxygen levels can be for us and we now sky hook
the whole documentary and descend into the smog and city of Ulaanbaator.

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia has just over one million residents, but has become the most
polluted capital city in the world, surpassing Beijing and New Delhi, which both have
more than twenty times the number of citizens.

We follow inhabitants of this environmentally oppressive city, passing from oxygen

station to oxygen station. What is causing this appalling vision of Hades? Coal. The
New York Times estimates that a single Mongolian family can burn through more than
2,000 pounds of coal every month. Since the average temperatures are below freezing
for seven months of the year, the population is in effect, signing its own death warrant.
In a tear-jerking response, we interview smog-choked residents who are turning to
alternative methods of getting their oxygen, drinking a very dubious oxygen cocktail, a
kind of “lung tea,” as the local inhabitants describe it.

We interview one mother ‘Chantsal’ who came close to losing her son to a respiratory
infection. In December 2019, her 6-year-old, ‘Altanshagai’ was diagnosed with double
pneumonia. Doctors blamed it on the air pollution. Sitting close to his mother,
Altanshagai also recounts that time, his pain and his feelings. His mother continues the
story:

"When he was sick, his lungs sounded just like a cat. Both lungs were filled with fluid. To the
human ear, it sounded like a kind of purring.”

Altanshagai barely recovered but many children do not. Kids might be able to eat dirt
but they can’t live without oxygen and pneumonia is now the second leading cause of
death in children under the age of five. We interview a UNICEF representative who
identifies this as a "child health crisis."

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In the past decade, the incidence of respiratory illness across Ulaanbaatar and indeed
throughout the world, has increased relentlessly with unborn children affected too. An
interview with a local doctor underlines the sorry tale of the increasing number of
miscarriages in the wider Mongolian community. All due to the depleted oxygen
levels.

And just in case the audience imagine that distance provides immunity, we end the
segement in London, England with the sad story of Ella Kissi-Debra, a nine-year-old
girl who died in 2020 as a result of asthma worsened by exposure to excessive
air pollution. The first person in the world to have air pollution listed as a cause
of death in a landmark coroner's ruling.

DOCUMENTARY CONCLUSION

To shut one’s eyes to scientific knowledge is one thing, but being unable to breathe is
another. One way of tackling the subject of life without oxygen is to simply scan the
stories we have shared in this documentary.

Many of the key problems in our loss of oxygen around the world, are shown to be
accompanied by the transformation of key chemical substances in the air that we breathe
today. Between pilots and communities, between Mongolia and London, the oxygen space
we all share is measured from the seat of the oceans to beyond the highest mountains and is
only 16 km thick. It’s called our troposphere. In a strange quirk of biology, we would in
many ways be better off breathing our oxygen through water, because there’s more of it.

Oxygen is ‘the’ key element for living tissues and because of our narrow band of
breathable air, we have become ground-hugging creatures. Which is just as well,
because at height, our oxygen is getting thinner and thinner and today as we have
shown, we’re having to fly lower and climb down our mountains to try and breathe it.

The challenges of this documentary are left squarely at the feet of the viewer.

Who will fight for our oxygen? Who will ensure we sustain a healthy level of 21% as we
experience cities with less than 16%? And where is the measured sense of outrage as
our basic right to breathable air is being stolen from underneath our very noses?

***