An Inconvenient Truth

I saw the movie last night. Everyone needs to see it. Everyone. It brings into clear focus the one, true threat to the future of the earth. And it makes it plain to see that the threat is immanent and not distant.

The problem with global warming news is that it competes with all the other news; and the other news, like Iraq, Darfur, New Orleans seems more immediate. What's the melting of another glacier or a report about rising global temperatures compared to war, genocide, and hurricanes.

But to see all the evidence put together... The pictures all over the world of the receding glaciers and ice shields, the temperature charts that show the clear trends and the recent rapid increase, the change in ocean currents, and on and on. It was overwhelming and quite frankly disheartening.

Why disheartening? Because of the disinformation campaign by energy companies and politicians to discredit the science, and the complicity of the media in reporting garbage over fact because it creates controversy and sells news.

Out of thousands of peer reviewed scientific studies and articles over the last decades on global warming, how many dissenting voices are there on the facts and perils of global warming? None. Not one. But over half of the American says they doubt the science.

Organized religion shares some of the blame for this, too. Historically, for not seeing care of the earth as a central component of spirituality. But recently, its the right-wing religious effort to cast doubt on the validity of science in the face of perceived threats to the biblical narrative. Many of the same people who doubt the science of global warming also doubt the science that tells us we are part of an ancient earth and an even more ancient universe, and that we are the product of an evolutionary process. They believe that science is suspect, fabricated, an assault on their faith.

Is it too late to save the earth? Gore said at one point in the movie that for many people there is a danger in moving from long-held doubt about global warming to outright despair as the reality finally forces itself onto the frontpages of our consciousness. But he said there is a place in between doubt and despair where we see the truth and believe we have time to act. That is where he is and why he made the movie. It is not too late if we each begin to take personal responsibility to curb our own carbon emmisions and then begin to put issue first among the many important issues that need our attention and action. I agree.

See the movie. Visit the website here. Change the way we think and live.