talktooloose | The Fact Is...

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The Fact Is...

The fact is that, four days after seeing An Inconvenient Truth, I'm not all that okay. The documentary was just superb. Complex ideas were made clear, ridiculous myths were elegantly shredded and Gore presented a message of hope including listing successes we've made when we've confronted past environmental problems.

I was particularly impressed when he said that we have a tendency to jump from denial to despair without stopping in the middle in the place where we might take action.

But since the high I felt in the wake of the movie, I have been particularly vulnerable to the wretched stupidity of the human race. Yesterday, the lead-off news items were the people of Nunavut fighting the federal governement for the rights to the oil reserves off their coast and a giant oil fire in Sarnia, Ontario.

The arctic and antarctic are receiving by the far the most extreme climate change effects (ones that threaten us all and very soon) so now they want the right to exploit fossil fuels? To help their economy? And then there's that giant oil fire in Sarnia.

I think the message of hope is vitally important, but I'm panicking more and more as the week goes on.

My carbon footprint, btw, seems to be about 2 tonnes per year compared to the Ontario average of 5.29 tonnes. That's a start; wonder if I can do better?

lol. this is the closest I have to an enviro-icon.

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I would totally vote Tom Welling's ass for President of Green Peace. He'd just have to bend over, and unlimited ammounts of clean energy would come flying outta his beautiful hole.

Also, yah, I went through exactly the same thing when I first saw the movie. :P

Some kinda wonderful, ain't it?

It is absolutely clear that we will have to wait for apalling and obvious catastrophe (not just 35000 dead Europeans in a heat wave or, say, Katrina) and then hope that there is still time to prevent the final devastation of our society.

I don't know where to put these feelings.

Put them in a severe, intense letter to the government.
Put them in a donation envelope to a pro-environment lobby group you trust.
Put them in you joining demonstrations.

You have tons of options.

I already did some of that by helping vote Olivia Chow into office. I exercise all the options I can. I get hung up on wishing I could make others exercise theirs.

Yeah. I know what you mean. I had a fight with one of my roommates a couple weeks ago because he's been leaving lights on when he leaves the house lately. It pisses me off because if we were paying for utils, he'd be all about not leaving the lights on.

*sighs*

Anyway, he smartened up. Ish.

I have a friend who shall remain nameless who, when I said as we left her place, "shall I turn out this light?" replied. "No, MOM! Don't tell me what to turn off in my apartment." There you go! Sacrifice the environment to your little sense of frustrated autonomy. Go ahead! Coal-fired power is our friend!

*headdesk*

I really should go out and see that movie, eh? :-P

It's out on DVD as of two weeks ago. Yes, see it.

There's an awesome Storm fic in there, I'm telling you.

Heh heh. That would be great. You know, I think Storm was my first favourite X-man. Punk-goth-leather-mohawk Storm. She was hot.

We just started watching a British mystery series and there is an actress who IS Emma. I must find you some pics.

Yes, yes you must!!

And while you're at it, send 'em over here. Read chapt 1 of your fic'. Must remember to print chapt 2 for overnight this week.

Awesome. At some point I would love some feedback. Pathetically, I realize that I am looking for confirmation of my basic writing ability from you.

I'll take it as a compliment to my acumen with the language rather than evidence that you are pathetic.

Humanity is really good at two things: fucking shit up, and fixing it.

It seems more and more clear to me that things really are changing. They're changing slowly, and I'm surprised Katrina didn't have a bigger effect than it did. But I do believe that whenever it is we finally kick our butts into gear, we'll be able to finally make the right changes. I doubt it will be "too late", but I don't doubt whatever it is that happens is gonna be frikken big.

Agreed, agreed.

I believe that in the past year, general public discourse has gone from "human-caused climate change may be happening" to "Yup, it's really happening." That step should not be underestimated.

Also, "too late" is a useless term. There are a many degrees of "too late" and "just in time". As of this week, we're already too late for the special dolphins that lived in the Yangste River. Maybe we'll be too late to save some coastal cities from drowning. Maybe lots of too lates, but if we can survive without losing the best of our civilization, I will be pleased. And of that I'm hopeful.

No not the freshwater river dolphin! Those things were cute :(

Fuck, I can't wait till we can re-engineer all our extinct species back.

Did you not see Jurassic Park?

Dude, we obviously wouldn't re-engineer the ones with teeth the size of our head. I mean, that was just stupid. Think of how much fun Dodo Park would be though?? Walking around amongst 3 foot tall idoit birds, an' kickin' them in the head??

Now THAT'S a superior species. Create things, JUST to kick 'em.

It's okay, though! We can ALWAYS MAKE MORE!

Sad linky (http://edition.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/12/13/china.dolphin.ap/index.html).

I love the skinny dipping icon but the least he could have done was to turn around. :)

Al Gore did a phenomenal job on the documentary. I wish more people could/would see it.

That's Tom Welling (Smallville) in a scene cut from the first season. We need Superhelp to fight climate change. Preferably naked Superhelp.

Have heart, I've just heard that they have discovered some 50 "googly eyed" species (prob a kind term for slimy and butt ugly) in the deep ocean trenches off Japan. These species are supposed to be resilient to pollution and high toxicity.

So there will always be someTHING that survives whatever the climate turns out to be if the rest of us don't.

I'm just wondering how these "googly eyed" things are gonna taste when I'm 60 and the codfish are all dead :/

yes, great movie by Al Gore (of all people). This environmental degradation is just - to me - the slow realization of all the cynical, dire predictions my Environmental Studies profs made in my undergrad 20 years ago.

So, I don't tend to despair as long as the inevitble decay remains morbidly predictable.

Cynical Cody

I'm not terribly worried about the survival of the planet and life itself. I even think we might avoid out own extinction. I would just like to so and save the fruits of civilization we have fought so hard for. I don't want to be blasted back to the stonge age.

Yes, Al Gore is officially invited to any future parties, but I still haven't forgiven Tipper.

And why should she be forgiven? Also, someone being politically aware & a good marketer does NOT necessarily make them fun at a party.

True. But he might have some good Clinton/Monica anecdotes.

heh, i've bee struggling hard with this. someday we should go for a beer, talk about this a bit, and then move on to pretty boys as a chaser :)

that movie is finally #2 in my netflix queue, so i'll get to see what all the ballyhoo is about. are you going to start supporting those carbon charities? they smell scammish to me.

You mean the ones for offsetting your carbon use? Like any charity, I would want to see that they are open and effective and they would have to be check on regularly. Our company is pretty good at due dilligence and we use one to offset our airflight.

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The Fact Is...

this is the closest I have to an enviro-icon.

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I want a pet baiji

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