Beyond 'An Inconvenient Truth:' When Is the Ten Year Deadline to Save the Planet?
Brock A. Shaver
December 25, 2006
Perhaps the most disturbing detail from Al Gore's global warming documentary, 'An Inconvenient Truth,' is the amount of time we have to save the planet for humans.
The movie was released in 2005. Is 2015 our 'drop dead' date? Or from when the DVD was released, 2016?
The Kyoto Accord set CO2 emissions standards for 2012. Is that the date? Five years from today?
But then Kyoto was signed in 1997. That makes the New Year the tenth anniversary.
This rolling deadline is quite a concern. It is an effective tool to make us feel that we can actually stop climate change if we act fast. As the movie states, we must guard against despair.
It was so easy during the Cold War to control the end of the world. We just had to worry about one thing, the Bomb. And we delegated the responsibility to the military and government. There were only two parties involved, the U.S. and Soviet Union.
With global warming, we have to act fast on a planetary scale, involving close to 200 countries. As well, we are dependent on individuals fully participating in altering their lifestyles, their economic demands, and thus a massive economic shift that involves people's jobs, habits, comforts and security.
Can this massive task be coordinated and accomplished by, say, 2016? Are there any signs of this happening on the scale that it needs, to move six billion humans in the opposite direction?
The Iraq war and hurricane Katrina has shown that the government of the biggest polluter is not even on the right page yet. The European Union is a bureaucratic nightmare. Russia is increasingly falling back into its traditional non-democratic politics. How does Communist China alter its massive economic growth that is creating huge political instabilities in the countryside?
Every major block has their political priorities. Everyone wants to maintain their economic hopes as the environmental question starts to itch more.
And Canada, of all countries, has pretty much opted out of Kyoto with a bold plan to return the country to 2003 levels of pollution by the year 2050. That quantity is 50% higher than when Canada signed on to Kyoto in 1997!
Combining this real politik with the scientific realities pointed to in 'An Inconvenient Truth,' it is even more disconcerting realizing the energy tremors coming from the Iraqi political black hole. It is starting to suck Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia into its vortex.
America's energy future is dependent on the Canadian tar sands of Alberta. That enterprise will be the biggest single CO2 producer in the world in a few years.
And the giant oil companies are spending more on climate change disinformation, than pumping record profits into saving the planet.
Does the ten year deadline really matter anymore? 2007 or 2016? The median point, ironically enough, is 2012, the year the ancient Mayans prophesied as a turning point in the fortunes of mankind.
Either way, the scientists need to set up a clock like they had during the Cold War, telling us how close to 'midnight' we are. Midnight then was 'nuclear winter.' Now it is the 'carbon barbeque.'
Either way, the ten-year deadline needs a countdown. We won't take it seriously until we do.
The movie was released in 2005. Is 2015 our 'drop dead' date? Or from when the DVD was released, 2016?
The Kyoto Accord set CO2 emissions standards for 2012. Is that the date? Five years from today?
But then Kyoto was signed in 1997. That makes the New Year the tenth anniversary.
This rolling deadline is quite a concern. It is an effective tool to make us feel that we can actually stop climate change if we act fast. As the movie states, we must guard against despair.
It was so easy during the Cold War to control the end of the world. We just had to worry about one thing, the Bomb. And we delegated the responsibility to the military and government. There were only two parties involved, the U.S. and Soviet Union.
With global warming, we have to act fast on a planetary scale, involving close to 200 countries. As well, we are dependent on individuals fully participating in altering their lifestyles, their economic demands, and thus a massive economic shift that involves people's jobs, habits, comforts and security.
Can this massive task be coordinated and accomplished by, say, 2016? Are there any signs of this happening on the scale that it needs, to move six billion humans in the opposite direction?
The Iraq war and hurricane Katrina has shown that the government of the biggest polluter is not even on the right page yet. The European Union is a bureaucratic nightmare. Russia is increasingly falling back into its traditional non-democratic politics. How does Communist China alter its massive economic growth that is creating huge political instabilities in the countryside?
Every major block has their political priorities. Everyone wants to maintain their economic hopes as the environmental question starts to itch more.
And Canada, of all countries, has pretty much opted out of Kyoto with a bold plan to return the country to 2003 levels of pollution by the year 2050. That quantity is 50% higher than when Canada signed on to Kyoto in 1997!
Combining this real politik with the scientific realities pointed to in 'An Inconvenient Truth,' it is even more disconcerting realizing the energy tremors coming from the Iraqi political black hole. It is starting to suck Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia into its vortex.
America's energy future is dependent on the Canadian tar sands of Alberta. That enterprise will be the biggest single CO2 producer in the world in a few years.
And the giant oil companies are spending more on climate change disinformation, than pumping record profits into saving the planet.
Does the ten year deadline really matter anymore? 2007 or 2016? The median point, ironically enough, is 2012, the year the ancient Mayans prophesied as a turning point in the fortunes of mankind.
Either way, the scientists need to set up a clock like they had during the Cold War, telling us how close to 'midnight' we are. Midnight then was 'nuclear winter.' Now it is the 'carbon barbeque.'
Either way, the ten-year deadline needs a countdown. We won't take it seriously until we do.
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