Al Gore, We're listening now
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JoeUser Forums
As I logged in, I wasn't too surprised to see that you Joes are already talking about this. Well dangit, I want to talk about it too.
A couple days ago as I was trying to make sense of the pile-o-everything that's always accumulating on our computer desk, I noticed a couple DVDs that John rented the night before. Garfield's Holiday Celebration (yes, the orange Cat) and then something called An Inconvenient Truth. I didn't think much of either, maybe because I doubted that anyone who comes home from Blockbuster with a Garfield cartoon could have anything significant on his mind. I did, however, notice on the cover of An Inconvenient Truth that Roger Ebert said, "In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are. You owe it to yourself to see this film."
The next day my random internetting informed me that Al Gore (haha, I just typo-ed, "Bore" twice before I finally found the G key) ...that Al Gore had just been announced as the winner of the latest Nobel Peace Prize. In my own little corner of the world I wondered how my husband had the foresight to rent Gore's DVD the day before the Nobel Prize was announced, but it was just a coincidence.
My interest was piqued to find out what Al Gore had to say that was worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize, so I had no problem agreeing to watch the movie with my hubby this evening. I'm pretty picky about movies.
I must say that was a damn good movie. I found it absolutely riveting, educational, fascinating, eye-opening, and Mr. Gore even made it entertaining.
My childlike mind jumps to one part in particular: With a happy little cartoon frog, Al illustrates his point that the general population doesn't notice Global Warming because it's so gradual. We see the animated frog jump into a pot of boiling water and immediately jump back out because the water's dang hot. Smart li'l froggie. Then we see the same frog jump into a pot of lukewarm water and he sits there complacently, unaware that it's gradually begun to boil. He probably won't notice he's in trouble until it's too late to jump out. But Mr. Gore doesn't want that frog to boil. In the knick of time, the hand of a knowledgeable and forward-thinking person pulls that frog out of the hot water.
Al is simply urging mankind to use our own knowledge and resources to save ourselves in the knick of time.
So Gore's compelling speech has spurred me into a more globally-conscious, energy-efficient mindset.
In my little la-la land I come up with ways I can do my part to help the environment. For example, I'm just dying to overhaul our Ford Freestyle's engine into a more environmentally-friendly fuel cell. (We bought that car without doing any research at all. It was simply "bigger" than the car we'd been driving, and had room for more people and big stuff. We weren't even thinking about fuel efficiency.) Now if we were to overhaul that Ford's engine into a fuel cell, we'd need hydrogen for fuel. For lack of hydrogen filling stations around here, we could make our own hydrogen at home with shredded aluminum foil and Drain-O! Oh yeah baby. With my hubby the chemistry junkie and me the globally-aware wife, we could have some fun. (And we'd probably need life-happens with her fix-it prowess to help tear our car apart and put it back together.) OK, I'm only joking a little bit. I'm not mocking global warming. I AM serious about fuel cell vehicles. I really think vehicles should be run on hydrogen. Can you imagine the only byproduct of vehicle fuel being water vapor? With less CO2 being trapped in the atmosphere, the global warming trend could be slowed or reversed.
But we'll start by taping plastic around our widow frames and buying some of those nifty spiral light bulbs. It's a start.
Al Gore's movie really makes me long to know, if in a parallel universe he had won the Presidency instead of Bush 1 or Bush 2, what the world would be like today. I think Gore would have focused on improving the world. I wonder how he would have responded to the 9/11 attack? Would he have waged this War on Terrorism? Would there be troops in Iraq? Would Sadaam have been captured? Good and bad things have come from Bush's administration. In my current optimistic mindset, and having just watched An Inconvenient Truth, I can only imagine that good things would have come from Gore had he been elected President.
A couple days ago as I was trying to make sense of the pile-o-everything that's always accumulating on our computer desk, I noticed a couple DVDs that John rented the night before. Garfield's Holiday Celebration (yes, the orange Cat) and then something called An Inconvenient Truth. I didn't think much of either, maybe because I doubted that anyone who comes home from Blockbuster with a Garfield cartoon could have anything significant on his mind. I did, however, notice on the cover of An Inconvenient Truth that Roger Ebert said, "In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are. You owe it to yourself to see this film."
The next day my random internetting informed me that Al Gore (haha, I just typo-ed, "Bore" twice before I finally found the G key) ...that Al Gore had just been announced as the winner of the latest Nobel Peace Prize. In my own little corner of the world I wondered how my husband had the foresight to rent Gore's DVD the day before the Nobel Prize was announced, but it was just a coincidence.
My interest was piqued to find out what Al Gore had to say that was worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize, so I had no problem agreeing to watch the movie with my hubby this evening. I'm pretty picky about movies.
I must say that was a damn good movie. I found it absolutely riveting, educational, fascinating, eye-opening, and Mr. Gore even made it entertaining.
My childlike mind jumps to one part in particular: With a happy little cartoon frog, Al illustrates his point that the general population doesn't notice Global Warming because it's so gradual. We see the animated frog jump into a pot of boiling water and immediately jump back out because the water's dang hot. Smart li'l froggie. Then we see the same frog jump into a pot of lukewarm water and he sits there complacently, unaware that it's gradually begun to boil. He probably won't notice he's in trouble until it's too late to jump out. But Mr. Gore doesn't want that frog to boil. In the knick of time, the hand of a knowledgeable and forward-thinking person pulls that frog out of the hot water.
Al is simply urging mankind to use our own knowledge and resources to save ourselves in the knick of time.
So Gore's compelling speech has spurred me into a more globally-conscious, energy-efficient mindset.
In my little la-la land I come up with ways I can do my part to help the environment. For example, I'm just dying to overhaul our Ford Freestyle's engine into a more environmentally-friendly fuel cell. (We bought that car without doing any research at all. It was simply "bigger" than the car we'd been driving, and had room for more people and big stuff. We weren't even thinking about fuel efficiency.) Now if we were to overhaul that Ford's engine into a fuel cell, we'd need hydrogen for fuel. For lack of hydrogen filling stations around here, we could make our own hydrogen at home with shredded aluminum foil and Drain-O! Oh yeah baby. With my hubby the chemistry junkie and me the globally-aware wife, we could have some fun. (And we'd probably need life-happens with her fix-it prowess to help tear our car apart and put it back together.) OK, I'm only joking a little bit. I'm not mocking global warming. I AM serious about fuel cell vehicles. I really think vehicles should be run on hydrogen. Can you imagine the only byproduct of vehicle fuel being water vapor? With less CO2 being trapped in the atmosphere, the global warming trend could be slowed or reversed.
But we'll start by taping plastic around our widow frames and buying some of those nifty spiral light bulbs. It's a start.
Al Gore's movie really makes me long to know, if in a parallel universe he had won the Presidency instead of Bush 1 or Bush 2, what the world would be like today. I think Gore would have focused on improving the world. I wonder how he would have responded to the 9/11 attack? Would he have waged this War on Terrorism? Would there be troops in Iraq? Would Sadaam have been captured? Good and bad things have come from Bush's administration. In my current optimistic mindset, and having just watched An Inconvenient Truth, I can only imagine that good things would have come from Gore had he been elected President.
