An Inconvenient Truth

Last night I went to see An Inconvenient Truth, the Al Gore movie about Catastrophic Climate Change. I saw it with a group of friends and we went out afterward for dinner.

Go see the movie. Every American should see this movie. You cannot watch it and wonder how things would be different if Mr. Gore had faught a little harder after the election of 2000. But that aside, seeing images of the Katrina Aftermath made me cry, literally. I could not watch it. I had a dream last night about the movie, in which I was moved to tears by the facts laid out so eloquently by Mr. Gore.

Seeing the Katrina aftermath, galciers melting, ice sheets disintegrating… George Bush and other members of the administration should be in jail. If their criminal neglect during Katrina does not rise to the level of High Crimes (let alone misdemeanors), I don’t know what does. Their ignorance to the facts around climate change are reason enough to impeach in my opinion.

The animations of major landmasses being overrun by water, time lapse photography of bodies of water drying up, glaciers receding, video of ice shelves crumbling… It is all enough to drive you to despair, but can also energize us to unite around attainable goals for conservation.

Go to ClimateCrisis.net, see what you can do. Watch the movie. Change some lightbulbs to Compact Flourescent. Lower your thermostat in the winter and raise it in the summer. Drive less, walk more. Buy some Trees for the Future (I have bought a grove of 1000 so far which will pull 25 tons of carbon out of the atmospher each year for 40 years, I plan to buy another 1000 every year for the next 4).

Register to vote, call you elected officials, tell them how you feel about the environment, our president and catastrophic climate change. No drilling for oil. No subsidies for fossile fuels. We need leadership around renewable energy sources, green building, conservation. Kick the oil and auto lobby out of Washington. And at the same time, NIMBYists who don’t want offshore wind farms should think about where see level will be if we don’t find some alternatives.

It is not yet time to move to higher ground, but if we don’t start doing something, our children will certainly have to.