The Real Inconvenient Truth
Al Gore was elected president.
by Alan Bisbort - June 8, 2006
STAFF PHOTO ILLUSTRATION
How long until we all fry?
The World This Week
Denying global warming at this point is the moral equivalent of denying the Holocaust--worse in some ways, because those who deny the Holocaust can, through that weird mental jujitsu at which Americans are particularly skilled, beg out of any connection to it, or to any sins of their fathers and forefathers ("Hey, I didn't kill any Jews, I didn't enslave any blacks, I didn't steal any land from the Indians, etc.").
However, to deny global warming, with the preponderance of evidence and its impacts accelerating at a rate that frightens even the scientists who study it, is to have a hand in the result. An inconvenient truth: the level of CO2 (carbon dioxide) in the atmosphere will double in our lifetimes. At the rate we're going, weather patterns will change so dramatically in the next 50 years that entire ways of life will be destroyed. Agriculture in India, Africa and South America is particularly vulnerable to the added heat and lower rainfalls being projected. If the millions of people who die in these densely populated regions as a result are not "Holocaust victims," it is only because "nature" dealt the death blow.
As for all other species, it only makes sense that they will try to adapt to the changes or, conversely, fail to adapt and meet with extinction. Corporate propaganda has it that global warming is "natural" and that it has "historical precedent," that this is all normal, nothing to fear here, move along, get back to the mall, back on the couch with the remote. However, Yale ecology professor Oswald Schmitz told me that these changes have taken place just in the past 150 years, a veritable blink in the evolutionary process. He said, "The problem is that the flux rates are much faster now. Animal and plant species don't have enough evolutionary time to adapt. People are not thinking about the world their grandchildren will inherit. That's the time scale we need to think about."
The steps needed to redress this situation are so patently obvious that it's baffling there would be any surprise over the facts, figures and proposals offered by Al Gore in his new documentary about global warming, An Inconvenient Truth , which premiered this week in New York. But the backlash to the film makes a kind of perverse sense within the coloring-book reality of our media. To them, it's not so much the message, it's that Al Gore is the messenger. The Rude Pundit put it best, after attending the film's opening where Gore spoke: "Gore was, as you've heard, loose, funny and smart. Goddamn, so fuckin' smart. Every time he opened his mouth to discuss some aspect of melting ice caps or fuel efficiency, you just wanted to weep, thinking, "Jesus Christ, he won. Motherfucker won. He should be our president right now, not that inarticulate, shit-tossing baboon hunched in the ditch next to Tony Blair '"
Yes, the most powerful person on the planet is a global-warming denier. Actually, this man Bush is in denial about a lot of things, some dating back to his days of drink, but it's the global warming denial that may be his most harmful legacy. How is it that one man can have so much power for destruction and yet so few of our elected officials will call him on it? The real inconvenient truth: Bush stole this power. Twice. (See Greg Palast for 2000 election coverage; see Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Rolling Stone cover story, "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?".) To get at the root of what that means, to really face and redress the fact that our leader is illegitimate, may require more from us as a people than we're willing to give.
One final inconvenient truth: hurricane season officially started this week, the same week that FEMA sent Gulf Coast volunteers home despite the fact that the levees have only been cosmetically repaired and very little has been done to prevent future death and destruction along the coast. Our government, as it's now construed, does not care about us. We are the ultimate inconvenience.
Link Here
by Alan Bisbort - June 8, 2006
STAFF PHOTO ILLUSTRATION
How long until we all fry?
The World This Week
Denying global warming at this point is the moral equivalent of denying the Holocaust--worse in some ways, because those who deny the Holocaust can, through that weird mental jujitsu at which Americans are particularly skilled, beg out of any connection to it, or to any sins of their fathers and forefathers ("Hey, I didn't kill any Jews, I didn't enslave any blacks, I didn't steal any land from the Indians, etc.").
However, to deny global warming, with the preponderance of evidence and its impacts accelerating at a rate that frightens even the scientists who study it, is to have a hand in the result. An inconvenient truth: the level of CO2 (carbon dioxide) in the atmosphere will double in our lifetimes. At the rate we're going, weather patterns will change so dramatically in the next 50 years that entire ways of life will be destroyed. Agriculture in India, Africa and South America is particularly vulnerable to the added heat and lower rainfalls being projected. If the millions of people who die in these densely populated regions as a result are not "Holocaust victims," it is only because "nature" dealt the death blow.
As for all other species, it only makes sense that they will try to adapt to the changes or, conversely, fail to adapt and meet with extinction. Corporate propaganda has it that global warming is "natural" and that it has "historical precedent," that this is all normal, nothing to fear here, move along, get back to the mall, back on the couch with the remote. However, Yale ecology professor Oswald Schmitz told me that these changes have taken place just in the past 150 years, a veritable blink in the evolutionary process. He said, "The problem is that the flux rates are much faster now. Animal and plant species don't have enough evolutionary time to adapt. People are not thinking about the world their grandchildren will inherit. That's the time scale we need to think about."
The steps needed to redress this situation are so patently obvious that it's baffling there would be any surprise over the facts, figures and proposals offered by Al Gore in his new documentary about global warming, An Inconvenient Truth , which premiered this week in New York. But the backlash to the film makes a kind of perverse sense within the coloring-book reality of our media. To them, it's not so much the message, it's that Al Gore is the messenger. The Rude Pundit put it best, after attending the film's opening where Gore spoke: "Gore was, as you've heard, loose, funny and smart. Goddamn, so fuckin' smart. Every time he opened his mouth to discuss some aspect of melting ice caps or fuel efficiency, you just wanted to weep, thinking, "Jesus Christ, he won. Motherfucker won. He should be our president right now, not that inarticulate, shit-tossing baboon hunched in the ditch next to Tony Blair '"
Yes, the most powerful person on the planet is a global-warming denier. Actually, this man Bush is in denial about a lot of things, some dating back to his days of drink, but it's the global warming denial that may be his most harmful legacy. How is it that one man can have so much power for destruction and yet so few of our elected officials will call him on it? The real inconvenient truth: Bush stole this power. Twice. (See Greg Palast for 2000 election coverage; see Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Rolling Stone cover story, "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?".) To get at the root of what that means, to really face and redress the fact that our leader is illegitimate, may require more from us as a people than we're willing to give.
One final inconvenient truth: hurricane season officially started this week, the same week that FEMA sent Gulf Coast volunteers home despite the fact that the levees have only been cosmetically repaired and very little has been done to prevent future death and destruction along the coast. Our government, as it's now construed, does not care about us. We are the ultimate inconvenience.
Link Here
posted by Kangaroo Brisbane Australia at 6:30 PM
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