I have never actually watched this movie. At this point it is quite possible that I never will. Nonetheless I am glad that it was made.
I think I have read a fairly broad swath of the source materials for this movie. I have watched the more recent animation describing the tipping point concept. I believe that human activity does impact the climate.
Here is an interesting paragraph from Roger Ebert:
Gore says that although there is “100 percent agreement” among scientists, a database search of newspaper and magazine articles shows that 57 percent question the fact of global warming, while 43 percent support it. These figures are the result, he says, of a disinformation campaign started in the 1990s by the energy industries to “reposition global warming as a debate.” It is the same strategy used for years by the defenders of tobacco. My father was a Luckys smoker who died of lung cancer in 1960, and 20 years later it was still “debatable” that there was a link between smoking and lung cancer. Now we are talking about the death of the future, starting in the lives of those now living.
The importance of other issues has occasionally made me question the importance of having a blog about reducing plastic waste. I have read comments from people suggesting that tiny green choices like buying a canvas shopping bag relieve average consumers (or more importantly producers of waste in all its forms) of their guilt and allow them to continue living in a grossly unsustainable fashion thinking that they are doing their bit to ’save the planet’.
I stopped at the curb to let a car pass before crossing the street today. This car had one of those fancy advertising graphic finishes (these are plastic BTW). It was advertising the local brand of bottled water and the French words on the doors said that you should drink at least 1.5 liters per day. They sell water in 1.5 liter containers. There are 90,000 people living in this town. I tried to picture 90,000 water bottles. The 5 bottles that I am NOT buying every day don’t really make much of a difference. I guess writing about them can only increase their impact.
July 9th, 2009 at 2:21 am
I haven’t watched it either, though I do believe that man-made global warming is almost definitely occurring and poses a serious threat.
However, I think sometimes people focus too much on the numbers debating how many feet the oceans will rise or when we will have (or did) reach the point of no return or how many scientists have to agree about global warming for it to be considered a fact. Those specific numbers are too uncertain and open to debate. An important topic, yes, but not the one we should focus our attention on, in my humble opinion.
What we should be screaming about — and hopefully everyone can agree about — is that we shouldn’t be filling our air with chemicals we shouldn’t breath, nor our water with chemicals we shouldn’t drink. And who could argue with such common sense? (O.k. there still are some out there, but I think the number would be much lower if they had to stick to those issues.)
And of course, fixing those things also helps fix global warming in the process.
July 9th, 2009 at 8:26 am
The elephant in the room during any serious discussion about these issues is overpopulation. Up until recently, I thought that helping the rest of the world to surpass the point of development where birthrates drop was a viable solution. Several facts made me change my opinion. I don’t have a solution, I just know that any ‘natural’ adjustment is not going to be pretty.