When I was evangelizing “An Inconvenient Truth” to colleagues at work, some people were genuinely interested and made a commitment to go watch the movie. Others found research and articles to contradict Al Gore’s reasoning, and thus, discount his entire documentary. Some presented back to me research explaining why global warming was actually a glacially slow process, and the human impact on global warming is minimal and trivial. That global warming would take place regardless of the amount of CO2 that is released into the atmosphere by humans.
For about 2 seconds, I felt like I had been one of those people who sends some lame forwards to people… and a recipient checks snopes.com and proceeds to lambast the sender and everyone else on the distribution list. Then I came to my senses.
These Rush Limbaugh listening, Neil Cavuto watching, Ann Coulter reading disciples are missing dang near the entire point.
Whether macro- global warming happens or not is important and central to the debate, sure. But has anyone looked around lately? How on earth can you elicit a positive response from people and provoke them to action without presenting climate change as having dire repercussions that may doom us all one day? I’m sorry, but documentaries with dramatically apocalyptic endings are the only day you’re going to get my peers off their couch playing grand theft auto and rallying for environmental justice.
OK, OK, they say, we’ll do something for the environment, just as soon as we “eradicate terrorism”.. “Environmental protection is dramatically more expensive than other initiatives that we currently have going on.” Fair enough. At the very MINIMUM, please stop pumping subsidies to car manufacturers that are completely reliant on oil.. stop BUILDING ROADS for the express use of the LOGGING industry… Because *clearly* these subsidies are not going towards innovating new products that are better for our country in the long run.
If you don’t believe in macro level climate change, that’s okay. However, you cannot discount the fact that environmental inequality is a fact of live in our world today. A recent study done at my alma mater suggests that new distance based algorithms to measuring racial and socioeconomic disparities around the nation’s hazardous waste facilities show that these are far greater than ever. (Previous studies were zip code based). These are factual.. Unable to be discounted. If you don’t *care* that environmental injustice exists, that is one thing. But please do not misconstrue the information and paint your own rosy picture prematurely. Factories and hazardous waste facilities that produce effluent that is harmful to the local inhabitants (often times employees of the facility!) have limited incentive to clean up their act. Their constituency, marginalized and destitute are suffering from a vast array of health problems. And, hark ye right wing sympathizers: their health problem is YOUR ECONOMIC problem. (Sorry, you looked like you were starting to fall asleep there, I had to find something that would stir you).
Hang on, I didn’t say I was done yet: He who connotes the “environment” as merely a standalone issue is absurdly closing his eyes on the larger point here. Our reliance on oil for energy is a tremendous security risk. “Blah blah, everyone knows that”. Stop subsidizing oil then! By the way, this all gets amplified when you learn the rates that China and India are growing. Their energy needs may very soon eclipse the U.S.’s.. A scary fact that many fail to consider. Also, did you know that with the massive strides being made in wind energy, scientists and economists have found that wind can easily supply the US with its energy needs quite easily and inexpensively? Note, I didn’t say “electricity needs”. I said ENERGY NEEDS. The price point is getting very close to fossil fuels, and if you include the cost of pollution, wind energy is *already* cheaper than fossil fuels.
So, Al Gore’s movie was a little sensational and *maybe* overstated the impacts of global warming (Though if you ask me, the writing is on the wall). But, you guys have known for long that unless news is sensational, the masses won’t turn it on. Isn’t that the premise for FOX News Channel?
Sorry, I am guilty of turning this into a political issue.. but this is largely because I think people have done just that already. They’re not watching the movie, and thus perpetuating environmental injustice, for the sole reason that the creator of the documentary is a former democratic VP of our country.
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