Friday 13 April 2007

An Inconvenient Truth

I'm a healthy cynic. About 5 years ago when the whole global warming things starting humming in my ear I went and did my only little research project. Among other things I read The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg which had me convinced that a large part of the global warming warnings were scare tactics and that many of the statistics I was reading about were skewed so as to misinform and scare the living daylights out of me. The book was published in 2001 and additional scientific data has proved that whilst a debate needed to be had, Bjorn was wrong and Global Warming is indeed melting the planet. OK, so now I am scared.

The humming has become shouting and my mild concern has turn to an active fear bordering on paranoia. I felt it was time I revisited the data and turned this fear into an action plan I could believe and participate in. This is particularly relevant because I work for the largest energy/utility company in the UK. I believe the energy & utility companies are in the unique position to do the most to stop the trends which could avoid the catastrophic events possibly in our life and most certainly in my children's life.

The first action on my plan was to watch An Inconvenient Truth which is the documentary film featuring the PowerPoint presentation by Al Gore the former US Presidential candidate. (He's the one that should have been president in 2000 since he won the popular vote but the US Supreme Court broke the law and intervened in an election result and the most powerful country in the world had a fixed election (just like they do in 3rd world countries like Uganda) but that is the topic of another post.

Please, everyone who is reading this, promise me you will give this a go and watch this. If at the end you are still unconvinced well so be it. But at least listen to this side of the story. Now, if you believe what he has to say then get busy and change the way you live and encourage our political leaders to change the way they regulate and encourage the businesses you do business with to change the way they use and abuse the scarce resources our planet has to offer. It is not too late. The evidence of this in the film is when Mr. Gore talks about how individuals, government and businesses working together changed the damage that was being done to the ozone layer and eliminated this threat to our planet. We can do the same with global warming. We have got to take action now!

Go to www.climatecrisis.net for inspiration.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hard to believe in global warming
when the first half of April was
the second coldest on record.
My feeling is that we are causing
the warming by covering so much of
our buitiful green earth with concrete.
Sue

Janell said...

okay. For you, I will read An Inconvenient Truth as soon as I can get it at the library.
JC

Janell said...

Or the movie - whichever is avilable first.

Anonymous said...

Movie was great and global warming is indeed happening..Pretty scarry, for my grandchildren and great grandchildren...Grandma Wink

Myrnagj said...

YES! I don't care how much they make fun of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, He is one of my heros.
Sort of connected www.lowimpactman.com

LaDawn said...

Agree with Sue. They did a research project here in London because we are having trouble with flooding but still have draughts. What is happening is the front gardens are being concreted over to park the cars and so there is no place for the rain to absorb into the water table. So it all runs off into the rivers and we flood.

Thanks Janell! Watch the leopard spots change......:-)

Anonymous said...

We saw the smaller glaciers in Alaska and heard about the shrinking ones in the Antarctic, plus see the declining fish population. It's frightening for our grandchildren
Hugs, Clare

LaDawn said...

Sue -
Global Warming is causing the extremes in temperatures...not just hot but also cold and too much rain and not enough rain. The DVD explains it so much better than me.
-LaDawn