An Inconvenient Truth

Director David Guggenheim rightfully took an Oscar home last weekend for his documentary An Inconvenient Truth. The main character is Al Gore, former Vice President and avid environmentalist. The latter was a real surprise to me - I had no idea that Al Gore had been traveling the world, giving his presentation on Global Warming over 1000 times!

If you haven't seen this movie yet, please go and see it! It is inconvenient but it also suggests solutions and, most of all, it has the power to motivate us to take environmental issues more serious.



I would like to highlight the two most important points that I took home after watching it:

1. The current climate change is not within the limits of normal fluctuation. Carbon dioxide levels are off the charts, at levels not seen in the last 500.000 years and more.
2. The movie describes a sudden melting of ice on the South Pole, that scientists had expected to take decades, within just 36 hours. If such an event were to occur on a larger scale, say Greenland or the Polar Caps, it would lead to sudden and devastating changes in the world, raising water levels by 7 feet, resulting in the loss of land occupied by hundreds of millions of people.
   

The second point is really important, because it stresses something that we rarely observe with environmental issues - there might be a tipping point that could lead to a significant change of the world as we know it. The chief science adviser to Tony Blair has been quoted saying that global warming 'will redraw the map of the world'.

I can not express, how much the movie has resonated with me, but for what it's worth, this may well be the longest blog post that I've ever written.

The movie website also offers very suggestions on how to take action and help reduce global warming. Here is the top ten list - check the website for more!

Change a light
Replacing one regular light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb will save 150 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.

Drive less
Walk, bike, carpool or take mass transit more often. You’ll save one pound of carbon dioxide for every mile you don’t drive.

Recycle more
You can save 2,400 pounds of carbon dioxide per year by recycling just half of your household waste.

Check your tires
Keeping your tires inflated properly can improve gas mileage by more than 3 percent. Every gallon of gasoline saved keeps 20 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

Use less hot water
It takes a lot of energy to heat water. Installing a low flow shower head (350 pounds of carbon dioxide saved per year) and washing your clothes in cold or warm water (500 pounds saved per year).

Avoid products with a lot of packaging
You can save 1,200 pounds of carbon dioxide if you cut down your garbage by 10 percent.

Adjust your thermostat
Moving your thermostat down just 2 degrees in winter and up 2 degrees in summer could save about 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.

Plant a tree
A single tree will absorb one ton of carbon dioxide during its lifetime.

Turn off electronic devices
Simply turning off your television, DVD player, stereo and computer when you’re not using them will save you thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide a year.

Going through this list, some changes will be quite easy to make. I will try and only use fluorescent light bulbs in our new place. (As a side remark: A lot of people don't know that fluorescent light bulbs contain small amounts of mercury and need to be properly recycled. So please do not just dump broken bulbs!). I will strive to check my tires more frequently and reduce the amount of hot water that I'm using. I'm not sure about driving less, but I do try to carpool whenever possible and I might try and use the lightrail to get to work more frequently.