I should have been listening to every word you said

I went to see An Inconvenient Truth yesterday. If you haven't heard about it, it's Al Gore's documentary on global warming. I think that everybody ought to see this movie, regardless of political affiliations. Of course that's not going to happen, conservatives are going to see that it's Al Gore's movie and immediately dismiss it as rubbish. That's too bad, because it could actually open up some eyes about the state our world is in right now, and the direction we seem to be heading. I like to believe that it's not too late to make some changes, but it will be if we don't start acting soon.

Anyway, it got me thinking about the following. Some of this comes from the movie, some of it is just me, but I'm not going to go to the trouble to distinguish that as I ramble on here. If you really want to know, go see the movie ;-)

One of the major things to think about is the exponential increase in the number of people living on our planet. The number has reached approximately 6.5 billion, nearly triple what it was 50 years ago. Along with that comes an increasing demand for natural resources, some of which are renewable, others of which are not. The scary part about that is that once the non-renewable ones are gone, they're gone for good (I know I've said it before, but it warrants mentioning again). I mentioned a few days ago that people generally try to push the limits of what they can get away with, and that seems to be exactly what we're doing with our dependence on such things (i.e. oil). As the world population continues to grow exponentially, these resources are going to be used exponentially. Especially given the fact that many third world countries are starting to become more developed. The thing about exponential growth is that it will double with each passing time period. As E. O. Wilson points out in his book Consilience, that means that the "day" before we run out of a resource we will still have half of it left. If people aren't thinking about this sort of thing, then they won't spring into action until it's too late.

The frustrating thing is that the technology for alternative energy sources is out there. Why isn't there more of a push for solar energy these days? Take a place like Las Vegas for example. When I first moved here I was told that the only difference in the seasons are that you either get sunny and hot, or sunny and cold. It's always sunny! If that doesn't sound like a good place to start implementing solar panels, I don't know what does. I know that it's expensive to equip a home with solar panels. I think it's around $10,000, and that extra cost might be enough to prevent a lot of people from being able to afford a home. But what about the casinos? There's more money funneling through those places than a guy like me can even fathom. And in each one's quest to be the biggest/newest/best they keep bringing in more and more fancy stuff. The money it would take to place solar panels on the rooftops of those would be a mere drop in the bucket compared to what they spend on other furnishings.

I won't even get into all the problems with the accelerated extinction rates of species here, but believe me, things are dying off. The problem with that is, nobody seems to care, unless it's something that's going to affect mankind. If you're one of these types of people just stop and think about this: How much would it cost to build machines that can provide all the services that nature already does for free in the event that the things that do them start dropping off the face of the earth? We in the United States are the worst in the world when it comes to thinking about this stuff. Our consumption of the world's resources far exceeds our proportion of the world's populations. One would think since we have been a world leader in many things for so long, that we would be when it comes to the environment as well. It's no secret that our automobile industry is lagging behind those of other nations when it comes to automobile emissions. Gore talks about how California has just recently passed legislation to require automobiles to have lower emissions over the next decade or so. The state has since been sued by the automobile industry claiming that it's too hard for them to meet those restrictions in such little time. The irony with that is other countries are already there. Why should it take the manufacturers in the U.S. a full decade to get where these other countries (including China) are today? Is that really an unrealistic expectation? It makes no sense to me. Maybe we just need some different people in charge, starting with our president (have I mentioned how much I hate the current one?).

Speaking of presidents, it kind of all boils down to politics. I don't understand why, but somewhere along the line 'environmentalist' became a dirty word. The point this movie brings up is that it really shouldn't be a partisan issue. After all, we're all stuck here on the same planet with no real option of going elsewhere (despite what Stephen Hawking has recently said about colonizing the moon). You'd think we'd all want it to last as long as possible.

The thing that people always talk about when it comes to conservation related topics is that it will ruin the economy if we don't let people do what they've always done. I understand that it would be a big deal if that happened, but people tend to be fairly resilient, and if someone loses a job because one technology becomes obsolete, they are generally able to get training to do something else instead. Who knows, maybe it could be one of the new jobs that the new technology is bound to be offering up. All in all, I think the 'it will ruin the economy' argument is pretty weak. The thing that ought to strike people the most is that if the earth is gone, the economy is going to be the least of our concerns.

In case you're still reading (doubtful) and want to know more about the movie or what you can do to help do your part, here's a site you can visit:

http://www.climatecrisis.org/

(sorry, but the link icon isn't working correctly and every time I use it, half of my post gets erased)