Who’d ever have thought that listening to Al Gore give a slide show presentation could make and entertaining movie? I didn’t, but I was wrong. An Inconvenient Truth turned out to be another really great documentary. I thought going in that there wouldn’t be anything new since I felt I had done a bit of research on climate change – wrong again. There was plenty of interesting new information, and it was presented very, very well. I’m amazed at the amount of work that Al Gore has done on this topic: visiting both poles, giving 1000 presentations on the topic, visiting heads of countries to discuss the issue, and much more.
While I still maintain that global warming is by no means ‘proven’ in a strictly scientific sense or understood, the correlations and possibility of even half of the consequences being true are convincing enough that I believe immediate action should be taken to prevent this crisis, both by individuals and even more importantly by our own goverment. The overall climate is too complex to be accurately modeled, but enough intelligent people have done enough research to make a pretty strong case. I went looking for people who refute global warming, and they weren’t hard to find, but most of their motives were awfully suspect. One major site called JunkScience claims global warming to be just that, but the fact that the site’s author Steven Milloy isn’t any kind of scientific expert on the subject with no published peer reviewed papers, is an adjunct scholar for the Cato Institute, a paid advocate for Phillip Morris and Exxon Mobil, and a columnist for the trash that is Fox News pretty much discredits everything he might say in my mind. It’s a pain in the ass finding good info on global warming because it’s such an emotional and complex issue, so looking at the motives of people trying to persuade one way are the other have been most helpful.
Anyway, the movie was very energizing and motivating and got me thinking about what I could do to make a difference. Some things the film lists include basic energy conservation, which I try to do including turning down the thermostat and using energy efficient light bulbs. One things I haven’t done but am going to start doing is buying Seattle Green Power to show my preference for renewable energy sources. I’m trying to eating a vegetarian diet. Aside from the health and moral benefits of vegetarianism, the environmental impact of meat production is a major reason for changing the way we eat. Finally, even though it sounds cliche, I’m writing my representatives. Even though my actions as an individual can help, real change in the government are necessary to tackle a problem this big, and it’s important to include local representatives as a target for writing since changes really percolate from local governments up (besides, what good is a letter to the current federal adminstration gonna do when they don’t seem to care about approval ratings or science). Even though the United States hasn’t ratified the Kyoto protocol, individual states have and Washington isn’t one of them – yet.
I would love for global warming to be a myth so that we could all go about our lives without worrying, but even if it is the proposed solutions to this problem are also solutions to incredible number of other problems. Biking reduces traffic congestion and is a good form of exercise in an obese country. Energy conservation is a no brainer for economic reasons. Reducing air pollution can obviously improve health, not to mention visibility in some of our more crowded cities. Vegetarianism is a more humane and healthy way of eating.