May 24, 2006 marks the release of the documentary film, Inconvenient Truth. The film documented Al Gore’s decades long campaign to increase awareness on global warming. It was appropriately titled. Climate change or global warming wasn’t the headline news at least in 2006. See link below on the film.
Al Gore is an unabashed environmental activist since he was elected to Congress at the age of 28. At age 73, Gore is still hard at work raising awareness and pro-actively supporting cooperation. Being pro-active, meaning heeding clear warning signs of impending disasters and taking appropriate actions. Some should take note of the recent Surfside condominium collapse of a good example of the cost of inaction until disaster comes.
“No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change” is from Obama’s State of the Union address in 2015. The statement was immediately ridiculed on Fox News. CNN reported, “His statement was met with scattered, muted applause.” President Barack Obama described as the greatest threat to future generations was neither terrorism nor ISIS. It wasn’t nuclear weapons in rogue states either.
Nobody needs to convince the residents of California or Oregon that climate change effects can be life threatening as temperatures soared above 100 degrees. Bloomberg reports: “In the past week alone, 380,000 people have been evacuated due to floods in China’s Henan province, 30 villages in Uganda were affected as rivers overflowed and 25 people died in landslides after Mumbai was hit by big storms that also inundated regions surrounding the megacity. Temperatures in Turkey and North Africa approached 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit), while South Africa and Brazil froze. Siberia is battling wildfires again.”
“The global climate is out of balance” as stated in the Bloomberg link below. It will take enormous international cooperation to bring down global carbon emissions. We have finally a president who will work with world leaders on cutting emissions. But unfortunately, Congress is less committed, and they hold the purse strings.
Even worse, is the defiant President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, who seems in locked in the mentality of last century, where there was zero appreciation of the impact of carbon emissions our climate, and complete deference to industrial development. See the last link of this blog, where the federal government is accelerating the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, for profit.
Yes, Gore got it right from the get go, so did Obama. Biden is on the right track. China. India and the EU will work with the international groups. Brazil? Some really get it.
See links below.
Stay tuned,
Dave
Links:
Environmental Activism of Al Gore
Obama: No greater threat to future than climate change
Why the weather is so weird (Bloomberg Green)
(Note the events cited are just in the last week)
The Amazon Is Fast Approaching a Point of No Return
Brazil’s rainforest is being stolen and cleared at an accelerating pace, and the Bolsonaro government is fanning the flames.
Bloomberg Green
news and views 