There are many kinds of truth as there are lies. I believe we mould our truths depending on our perspective — philosophical, scientific, mathematical, semantic, political, cultural, religious, personal — and our choice to look and see the world around and inside us. Our perspectives almost always overlap and we choose to see or not see things differently from time to time, but I’m sure that no one will deny that to face the truth is all at once painful and liberating — although the latter may not be as obvious at the onset. At the very least, to be confronted with the truth, is inconvenient.
This was just one of the many things I felt while watching ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. Although fear and anger were on the list, so too were inspiration and hope. ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ is a documentary film about climate change and global warming starring former United States Vice President — and the one who used to be the next US President — Al Gore. This documentary is based largely on a multimedia presentation that Gore developed over many years as part of an educational campaign on global warming. He also wrote a companion book of the same title, which reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller lists.
Personal events in the life of Al Gore that led him to this mission are interjected in the documentary giving it an intimate and personal touch. However, this doesn’t lessen the gravity of his message when he places the issue of global warming in the heart of the moral arena.
The global view
Gore, while presenting the politics and economics of global warming, manages to steer the plot back to the moral realm. He argues that both government and individuals have a moral obligation to face this issue as it cuts across all layers and dimensions of life and society as we know it. It is, simply put, a matter of life and death. Not just of groups of peoples, countries or nations, but of the planet Earth. Of humanity itself.
What is global warming, or “greenhouse effect” and how does it really impact our lives? Below are some straightforward facts from climatecrisis.net (http://www.climatecrisis.net/):
Carbon dioxide and other gases warm the surface of the planet naturally by
trapping solar heat in the atmosphere. This is a good thing because it keeps our
planet habitable. However, by burning fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil and
clearing forests we have dramatically increased the amount of carbon dioxide in
the Earth’s atmosphere and temperatures are rising.
This has resulted — and continues to result —in the increase in the average temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans in recent decades. And the effects are happening as we speak:
– Glaciers are melting, plants and animals are being forced from their habitat, and the number of severe storms and droughts is increasing.
– The number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has almost doubled in the last 30 years.
– Malaria has spread to higher altitudes in places like the Colombian Andes, 7,000 feet above sea level (partly because glaciers are melting and the areas around it are getting warmer).
– The flow of ice from glaciers in Greenland has more than doubled over the past decade.
– At least 279 species of plants and animals are already responding to global warming, moving closer to the poles.
If the warming continues, we can expect catastrophic consequences.
– Deaths from global warming will double in just 25 years — to 300,000 people a year.
– Global sea levels could rise by more than 20 feet with the loss of shelf ice in Greenland and Antarctica, devastating coastal areas worldwide. (Imagine the impact of this for countries like the Netherlands. The sea will claim back what originally was hers.)
– Heat waves will be more frequent and more intense.
– Droughts and wildfires will occur more often.
– The Arctic Ocean could be ice free in summer by 2050.
– More than a million species worldwide could be driven to extinction by 2050.
The vast majority of scientists agree that global warming is real, and that it is the result of our activities and not a natural occurrence. But although the evidence is overwhelming and undeniable, countries like Australia and the USA have yet to ratify the “Kyoto Protocol”.
The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is an amendment to the international treaty on climate change, assigning mandatory targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to signatory nations. As of October 2006, a total of 166 countries (including the Philippines) and other governmental entities have ratified the agreement. Australia and the USA have signed it, but currently refuse to ratify it.
Not really surprising if you look back at what George Bush once said about Al Gore: “This guy is so far out in the environmental extreme, we’ll be up to our neck in owls and outta work for every American. He is way out, far out, man.”
How the plight of a whole planet can be ‘far-out’ escapes me. Using the economy versus environment angle is also an old dirty trick. Making the two as separate entities is flawed. It’s like saying that fishing using high-tech machines that kill even fry and stimulate over-fishing is more important than the source of livelihood – the fish itself. It argues that creating industries that pollute water and air is ok as long as it creates jobs, even if it means it will make the earth less and less inhabitable for future generations.
It reminds me of the very famous doomsday scenario painted by pro-bases advocates in the Philippines more than a decade ago. They predicted that Subic and Clark will crumble; the Philippines will be in shambles if we reject the US bases. You can’t eat sovereignty, they said. Look at Subic and Clark now.
Cowboy economics
Mark Twain once said: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
This is the problem with many people and governments. Ignorance, lack of knowledge and insights on certain issues is bad enough, but believing that what we know is sufficient — that our judgement is correct and our view is the only worthwhile perspective to the truth— is tragic.
It’s not so much about people and governments not knowing the serious consequences that global climate change will produce if the amount of human-generated greenhouse gases is not significantly reduced in the very near future. It’s believing that they can put it aside and address it later. It’s thinking too much in the short-term and the here-and-now without realising that the future is actually one long now. It’s convincing ourselves that global warming is not our problem because we won’t live long enough to really suffer the consequences.
These values reflect the ‘cowboy economy’, a term coined by noted economist Kenneth Boulding, which describes the American ethic employed when land was plentiful and the plains offered unlimited resources. The cowboy is a metaphor for the “illimitable plains” and the “reckless and exploitative” behavior of American economic activity. This frontier mentality have destroyed lots of American cities especially those cities formed in the 1800s around economies that allowed strip mining, overgrazing, and woodland clear cutting. After the resources were depleted, the cities were discarded by the corporate cowboys as they moved on to greener pastures elsewhere.
Nowadays there’s an abundance of corporate and government cowboys, whose ethics are destroying our planet. They employ the kind of development approach that actually de-develops countries by providing only short-term alleviation to the poor, instead of empowering them and making them stewards of their environment. They sacrifice natural resources in the name of profit (for the few) without investing in renewability and sustainability. Societies in the world continue to adopt more frontier attitudes and a way of thinking that promotes hunger for material goods and wanton disregard for nature. We buy, we use, we throw away.
We are in serious need of a paradigm shift in our political, cultural and social lives as individuals and as a nation. All major global ecosystems are in decline. We need more of “spaceship ethics” that recognises the fact that we’re living in a closed system and have to recycle and sustain our resources. We can’t continue to act as if global warming will not catch up with us. Because it is already catching up. Who among us hasn’t experienced the change in weather in the last 10 years? The top 10 hottest temperatures on record all fall within the last 10 years.
We are the first generations who had the chance to see our planet from outside; to see the remarkable photos taken from space showing how small we really are, how beautiful our planet is, and how we are but a flicker of light in the vastness of the universe. It’s sad to think that even with this knowledge and the technology we now have, we fail to appreciate our relationship with the earth. You’d think that images like these would blow away the corporate and government cowboys’ mind and move them to invest in the health of our planet.
Unfortunately, if cowboys continue to run the show, the writing on the wall will likely come true: THE FUTURE IS CANCELLED DUE TO LACK OF INTEREST.
That would be, at the very least, inconvenient.
Leave a Reply