Do you take any steps to help prevent Global Warming?
The other night Steve and I watched "An Inconvenient Truth" which was quite frightening, really. By the end of the film (despite it being sappy and manipulative and not a real documentary at all in that it had a definite agenda and left out what is probably a lot of relevent data and had lots of sappy music and showed pictures of cows) I wanted to go out and do something to stop global warming. Right away. I wanted to fix the problem. Or at least do whatever it was that I could do.
Mr. Gore went on and on talking about the EFFECTS of global warming. He had slides. Scary slides. They showed flim of ice shelves crmbling and falling into the ocean. They showed computer generated projections of what the earth would look like, what California and Florida would look like after so many years of global warming - specks in the ocean. Or just.. ocean. And also one memorable computer generated image of a drowning polar bear.
I didn't actually need convincing of anything. Despite all the compelling data, Mr. Gore actually had me at "Hello!" and I waited patiently until the end of the film to hear what Mr. Gore had to say about WHAT I COULD DO. I was looking for something practical, something within my power, such as "grow tomatoes - tomatoes help stop global warming." Or even "stop eating beef - beef causes global warming!" You know. Some step I could take today, or tomorrow, or in the immediate future, to help our environment.
Mr. Gore said there were 3 contributors to global warming. The first was population. I interpreted this to mean one of the things I could do to help our environment would be to not have children. Too Late for That. However, in my maternally soaked brain, which has been marinading in motherhood hormones for over three years now, I think killing off a bunch of OTHER random people (rapists and child molesters) would be a more practical and preferred solution than telling me my children were unwanted. Which, when I think about it, he wasn't implying anything like that at all, though. He was just saying population was a factor. Besides, if the responsible people all stopped having kids, the only kids left would belong to the irresponsible people, and I just don't see how that helps.
I missed the second contributing factor because I was up with a screaming child and trying to put him back to sleep. But the third factor, I'm pretty sure, was fuels. Fossil Fuels. And this is where Mr. Gore's non-political campaign became absolutely political, because he mentioned that treaty we won't sign... Kyoto. He said how important it was for us to sign this treaty. It is apparently a matter of life or death that we sign this treaty. BUT HE NEVER EXPLAINED IT!
Which brings be back to yesterday's post. WHAT DOES THIS TREATY SAY? WHY IS IT SO GOOD? OR BAD? Why is it supported? Why is it opposed? Would someone put some actual content into their hot air? And is it really the only way? Why do we need a treaty to stop global warming anyway? Since when do these things depend only on paper? WHY DOES EVERYTHING HAVE TO BE SO STUPIDLY COMPLICATED?
Personally, I'm never sure what it is I'm doing to help Global Warming (I mean help stop it) and what I'm doing to be kind to other parts of our environment. I am going to start a compost in the spring. I am going to keep recycling my cans, bottles, and papers. I don't wash anything unless it's dirty. We're getting those special light bulbs for the three hundred light fixtures in our house.
2 comments:
You can stop global warming in its tracks just by getting your parents to turn off lights!! EVERY single light is ABLAZE in EVERY ROOM all hours of the DAY & NIGHT(don't tell them I said this)!
O, you can also convert every one of your gas powered vehicles to something that runs on cast-off vegetable oil -- you can pick it up at fast-foood restaurants...but that's an entirely different problem for another time.
The Kyoto agreement is about reducing carbon emissions, in a small and rather limited way. It's a good step, but it's not enough, which is why the US's opting out is so galling.
Anyway, no point ranting here.
As to what you can do, energy saving light blubs, turning down heating, doing things to make more efficient use of power. All of which have the additional direct benefit to yourself of reducing your fuel bills. You could also switch to a green energy supplier (are there any of those in the US?). Clearly, the power coming out of your plug socket is the same, whoever your supplier is, it's just an accounting exercise, but your money would be going to finance cleaner ways of producing energy (like wind farms, tidal power) rather than C02 producing power stations.
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