A Convenient Movie
What changed for me, after seeing An Inconvenient Truth with Al Gore, was perhaps a sense of urgency that I’d never felt before. Although I follow climate change and related issues quite closely, I suppose I had never been presented with the seriousness of our predicament in such a compelling and terrifying way.
But to dismiss Al Gore as a sensationalist or a zealot is maybe what some people might say to make themselves feel better – to make the problem go away. Well, as the World Wildlife Fund’s new television commercial illustrates – if we don’t acknowledge the problem now and take steps to fix it, it will be us that goes away.
Perhaps the time for communicating this very real problem in a nice way is over. I tend to agree with Gore that every day that goes by is a missed opportunity to do something to avert a very real disaster. A disaster that is unfolding now as entire ice fields drop into the Antarctic Ocean a century earlier than scientists thought they would.
And yet, even with a lump in my throat, I am optimistic that we have the ability to solve the problem (renewable energy sources are a good start). But the problem is not a technology problem – it is a people problem. And it is people that will have to change and adapt, not the planet.