An Inconvenient Truth
I saw Al Gore’s sobering climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth last night as part of the Wellington International Film Festival.
It’s very, very scary and very, very good. The simulations showing how water levels are predicted to change with polar ice melt are particularly terrifying.
Obviously, being a greenie frog, I’m already well aware of the problem of climate change and its implications, but this film still hit home in a new and scary way. The film concludes on a hopeful note with suggestions of what individuals can do to help combat the problem, but is nevertheless pretty grim watching. It’s also grim to think about how different things might have been if Al Gore was in the White House right now.
It’s an interesting thing that Gore is trying to do - start a grass roots political movement to raise awareness and get people to take action against global warming by giving a compelling powerpoint presentation to one lecture theatre at a time, all over the country and world. The film, which is essentially the presentation, with a few extras, will certainly help to speed this process, and to that end, I’d highly recommend seeing this movie, and also visiting its site: www.climatecrisis.net.
July 27th, 2006 at 10:23 pm
When does it come to Christchurch (land of the log-burner, in-fill housing and car on lawn)?
Henry
July 28th, 2006 at 11:29 am
I had the same feeling when I watched “March of the Penguins” a while ago - this film may show the last seasons when life in Antartica carries on in it’s regular format, and we don’t do enough to protect that environment from the destruction that climate change will bring.
Displace the defrosted mass of the polar icecaps across the rest of the seas and oceans of the world, and there are major effects in relation to desalination of oceans, raising shorelines and vanishing islands, and the thermal effects of the loss of a major coolant and reflectant effect of polar icecaps.
The fact that this is accelerating beyond most “mainstream” populations’ abilities to do the maths/physics involved, or have the inclination to try, is causing the panic - how did this happen so fast? Well, if you’d been istening for the past 30 years, it didn’t happen fast, you just ignored the warnings.
Until people take a personal approach to the effects of global warming on their own lives, and learn to do sustainable practices such as reducing energy reliance, creating a subsistance garden and learning how to grow food (urban populations: some 80% are illiterate in terms of being able to grow an edible plant…) and thinking before the switch is thrown, can I do this without using elecricity? Switch off and save is the strongest message if we want to see survival of more than just the really rich. ( and probably the unfittest…)
Hey, and walking saves fuel, plus gym fees, and you get to look at your own neighbourhood into the bargain!!
cheers, katie
July 28th, 2006 at 12:53 pm
Thanks Katie
your comments are always interesting to read, so much better than the libertarian rantings which have crowded out the intelligent comments on this blog lately.
Cheers
July 30th, 2006 at 3:48 am
Hello,
Make no illusions about Al Gore. On the surface he’s radical. But like the majority, he also believes we can manage and at the same time save our life stles. This is what I wrote to the algore.org:
Hi,
Just read an article about his film, the very respected German weekly, Der Spiegel.
Mr. Gore, however, is no exception to the rule that many activists hint at the problems but are overly optimistic about the option we have to deal with the devastating envionmental developments.
For instance, Mr. Gore
- supports the Kyoto protocol, which is, however, counterproductive to its aims. Because the Kyoto goals are only 1 percent of what is needed, its mechanisms will not work, and therefore any Kyoto effort gives us a good feeling although something much more drastic is urgently required.
- believes that we can still maintain and even increase our levels of wellfare (consumption, luxuries) although it’s exactly our level of consumption that is depleting and despoiling our planet till there’s nothing left for our own living children.
- says that we have ten years left before the climate catastrophe will start destroying humanity. But at the same time he believes we will master the crisis and he speaks of many changes being needed in a very short time. This, however, in incoherent with his business-as-usual attitude which speaks out of his opinion that we can clean up the environment, raise salaries and create jobs, all at the same time. as if resources are still endless.
- gives no sign of understanding that we have dramatically overshot the carrying capacity of our planet and that the very first thing we have to do is abolishing our suicidal growth ideology and then reduce our impact by changing our consumption patterns.
Actually I believe that we are absoloutely doomed and lost because too many - probably hundreds of thousands - “sustainable development” activists fail to see the hard facts and still believe in growth and development, which is one and the same thing.
We are 6.5 billion people whereas the Earth can probably only sustainably support 1 billion.
A sustainable level of consumption will be equivalent to lifestyles of before the industrial era, being before 1765.
Whilst writing my evaluation of our options, I get more and more convinced that we have no chance. So I will continue to enjoy the nice and cosy atmosphere in an air-conditioned library in Geneva, Switzerland, as long as it lasts. I’m 64. I have two children and three grandchildren too many. They will probably perish in the die-off that will take place when the combined effects of climate change, resource scarcities, pollution will reult in upheaval and wars. The cities will be abandoned, its populations will invade the surrounding countrysides and reap and destroy our agricultural sustenance. something like “The Utimate Warrior” (The film is set in 2012 in a New York City that was decimated by a biological plague a couple of decades earlier that has created a world in which nothing grows. Now in the decaying city Baron (Max Von Sydow), leads a group that has barricaded a street against a rival gang of thugs, run by Carrot (William Smith).)
Finally, please be sure that I have carefully weigh every one of my words. I am an environmental scientist who bases his evaluations on hard facts.
Kind regards … Helmut LUBBERS
http://ecoglobe.org helmut at ecoglobe dot ch
July 30th, 2006 at 10:58 am
Helmut - I suspect we can manage 2 B, but that’s a quibble. You are correct that a lot of people will have to die before we achieve balance, and they will not go without a struggle.
The problem however, is not likely to be what Gore believes or doesn’t believe. He and we are smart enough to be quite pessimistic. However, it is a human condition to hope… and for the politically aware, we know denying that hope leads to a premature failure of any call to act. Gore is a political realist as well as a proponent of actions to mitigate the disaster we all expect.
So while you are likely correct in many respects, you may be drawing an incorrect conclusion about the actual beliefs and knowledge of many of the public leaders of the ecology movement.
Telling people how bad we think it REALLY is doesn’t move the marker forward. We will NOT act wisely if hope is destroyed.
Moreover, despite your pessimism there is still the chance that we will manage something dramatic “outside the box” like cheap access to space. Not a “climate” issue, but it would give us the ability to modify climate results, energy collection and overuse of the planet.
respectfully
BJ
July 30th, 2006 at 5:05 pm
Henry,
Per http://www.nzff.telecom.co.nz
ChCh screenings, all at Rialto:
6th Aug 15:15
8th Aug 11:45
8th Aug 18:15
July 31st, 2006 at 12:48 am
Hello bjchip.
Thanks for your comments. I think I am an optimist, not a pessimist. Otherwise I would not continue to struggle, like the one frog that fell into the cream ( http://ecoglobe.org/scenarios/e/twofrogs.htm ).
Hope is nice to remain motivated. But false hopes lead to avoid taking the hard decisions that are required by the stark realities. One doesn’t treat cancer with niceties.
“something dramatic “outside the boxâ€? like cheap access to space”.
The human predicament doen’t lie in a lack of energy but a surplus of temporarily easily available energy, hence our “overshoot”. Compare http://www.ecoglobe.ch/overshoot/e/over-11.htm and chapter 2 http://www.ecoglobe.ch/overshoot/e/over-2.htm .
My argument is not about optimism and pessimism but rather realism and illusions. The leaders I know are either illusionists or they lack the courage to tell us their real views, for whatever reason.
The previous Swiss minister for the economy gave it in writing to me, that he believes we can and must grow forever (http://www.ecoglobe.ch/politics/d/deis4217.htm ).
And Mr. Joseph Deiss is by no means an exception.
Those people must be exposed with their disastous beliefs and policies. I have nothing to lose, am responsible to myself and to my children and grandchildren. We will not act wisely if we let us be guided by irrealistic hopes and chance. We can only work with the knowledge and means and technology that we do have - not with what we may or may not get in the future.
Kind regards … Helmut Lubbers
July 31st, 2006 at 7:13 am
Helmut
The economists are right and wrong.
Wrong because thermodynamics is a science that gives the lie to their attempts to call what they do “science”. Right because there is a word we use for an organism that ceases to grow.
“Dead”
Which is why I pointed at “Cheap Access to Space”.
That doesn’t mean that we are doing anything wise by burning everything burnable and consuming our planet all at once, just that sooner or later no matter WHAT we do, we have to grow as a society. We may do this by growing wiser and more efficient but we can’t stop completely.
As long as the people want to be “fooled” there will be politicians willing to treat them as fools. I’ve learned that science and engineering are given short respect in political circles, and I understand the reason. The general population is still willing to be fooled, and will not accept that there is danger in their fatuous acceptance of political happy talk.
“In the long run we’re all dead” is the economist’s refrain. It is a favored quotation of the shrub (little bush) as well. As a meme it is a mortal sin, but it is common.
So we fight them as best we can in the places we can reach them. However we are IMHO, more likely to get CATS, than we are to get an informed electorate to demand the truth.
respectfully
BJ
July 31st, 2006 at 7:02 pm
Dear bjchip.
The economists are simply wrong. Growth is not sustainable and as a policy it amounts to planned societal suiccide.
An “organism that ceases to grow” is not “Dead”. By no means. Humans normally cease to grow at adulthood but die much later.
Society is not an organism but an organisation of interdependent living beings, i.e. a society. Societies survive because members die and are replaced by newborn. This guarantees, ceteris paribus (all other things equal), their balance with and within their natural environment. In nature - and we are also part of nature - growth is always limited by the avilability of resources, be it food or space or both. Humans are no exception. Declarations like “we can’t stop” are irrelevant and wrong. Primitive societies and we, until 1765, have lived more or less sustainably for many thousands of years. Human societies that disappeared have probably overused their environment in one way or another and then collapsed. “We have to grow as a society” is scientifically wrong and physically impossible. Immaterial growth is a fake notion, introduced by economists who don’t understand that every dollar of economic growth represents a counter-value of material resources.
I beg to differ: People don’t “want to be fooled”. You are blaming the victim. My experience is that non-academics understand that one and one makes two and that we’ll have to stop growing. The higher up the academic and career ladder, the more people are used to command, lose the faculty of listening and become narrowly restrained within their own area of “expertise”. They frequently have a pre-cooked reply on everything and refuse to consider other meaningful aspects of the environmental questions. Those people have learned to reproduce the school curriculum in order to pass exams and to say aye to their bosses to make promotion. These people fool themselves unwittingly.
I believe the general population will accept the existence of environmental dangers and urgency, when these are explained in clear speech. Then they will reject the happy talk of fatuous so-called “leaders”. If I would give up on the intelligence of normal folks and also have to discard the fake intelligence of present societal leaders, who would there be to help saving this planet?
“In the long run we’re all dead” is a quote from John Maynard Keynes, whose theory was that the government should actively intervene in the economy to manage the level of demand (in the short run). I don’t think this is linked to a lack of interest in long-term developments, nor that this is common. Most people do care for the long term future.
I consider Richard Dawkins’ “memes” as non-explanatory (genetic)reductionism. I prefer referring to “ideas” and “beliefs” and these must be brought in line we hard realities.
“Fighting the leaders as best as we canâ€?. Yes. Expose their fallacies in unmistaken language. What is “CATS”? The main villain of the video game Zero Wing? (I don’t play video games.) Your opinion of the general electorate is really low and pessimistic.
We don’t have to “get an informed electorate to demand the truth”. Such an aim would maintain our dependency upon those leaders. Informed people will reject the present leaders. But for that we’ll have to trust the general electorate, consider and treat them as equals. We are part of “them”.
I’m giving up on nobody. Given the right information, people - even the leaders - will understand. Then they can react by becoming proactive or repress the knowledge if they find it too hard to digest. The facts must be presented as they are, simultaneously always maintaining that we do have a chance if we act now and cut down drastically on our luxuries.
I would call that maintaining hope in face of a seemingly hopeless outlook.
Kind regards … Helmut
November 15th, 2006 at 6:21 am
An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
Trailer
Review
Al Gore used a humorous presentation to make us pay more attention on our environment. What did we do to Earth? What will be happened in next decades? And why will we have those consequences? What choices do we have now?
Thought
Some…
October 13th, 2007 at 11:12 am
Applaud all effort at recycling - cutting our carbons (they’re carcinogenic too).
Consider how much one jet engine does in an hour? More than a thousand of us could ever save.
The real culprits can be swapped for better alternatives.
I grew up in a World where Nuclear Air-Burst Tests were commonplace.
Lots of them.
Fallout was thought to be limited to a few miles.
Radiation Cloud was a term never heard.
The word electromagnet hardly existed.
Well, we all learned enough to stop that harm (thanx Henri).
Not unreasonable that those effects are still settling.
The Right efforts will work.
Oil is not unsustainable (a marketing notion), just undesireable. When we are permitted to convert solar energy properly - replace rock oil with ethanol, water…all that technology sits on the shelf just waiting for us to vote right.
Those taxes are your money Ralph