With the missus out of town on a business trip, I had lots of free time last night where "sleep" should have been. I don't take well to sleeping alone. To pass the time, I moved my computer into my bedroom and popped in the DVD for the much-hyped An Inconvenient Truth. I figured Al Gore is so freaking boring, it would put me to sleep.
Wrong.
Not only was Gore more passionate and interesting in this film than any political campaign (damn it, Al, if only you could have been this convincing in 2000...), it exacerbated my sleeplessness by giving the gory details about global warming in a way that could induce nightmares.
For about five years, I have said that Requiem for a Dream was the most depressing movie I'd ever seen. It is a fictitious (but believable) story of a handful of drug addicts who ruin their lives.
An Inconvenient Truth is about how all of us (but especially the U.S.) have fucked the environment up, and now we're all going to die a slow horrible painful extinction. And it's not fiction.
Yay. I think I'll go chase a bottle full of Vicodin down with a pint of Jack Daniels and save global warming the effort.
Global warming is something I have been aware of, but only in a vague "this is bad" sense. I have even tried to make token efforts here and there to reduce my contribution to pollution (see: my many rants and discussions about biodiesel). This movie, though, puts front-and-center in your conscience the fact that:
a) this is a really serious problem that is going to eliminate our species, possibly in our lifetime, if left unchecked.
b) WE are responsible for a good chunk of it.
And while Al tries to brighten it up in the last 10 minutes or so with a "there is still hope" message, the reality is:
c) The necessary steps to stop it are really in the hands of the world governments (half of whom are in the pockets of the oil and energy lobbies) and a populace who largely can't be bothered to do anything.
This does not come at a good time for me, as I've been on a bit of a consumerist spending spree lately, including buying a car that runs on gas and not diesel (my diesel truck died and had to be replaced, so no biodiesel for me right now). Knowing more about global warming than I ever wanted to know, I now wish I could sell it all and move to some remote area and live off the land wearing animal pelts and using a bow and arrow to hunt for food. Unfortunately, I'm a lazy city boy and creature of comfort, so that's out.
At least I don't still drive a '71 Buick with a broken carburetor getting 4 miles to the gallon. Jesus, I want to go back and kick that me in the ass, over and over again.
6 comments:
It’s so incredibly simply…
1st point is that America is becoming more intellectual property then manufacturing, (case in point, EVERYONE’s job involving with physical work is going overseas as all manufacturing is being done for pennies on our Dollars for labor cost.)
All we need is to have the frigg’n phone company at least attempt to hold some status with third world nations and get high speed fiber-optic to its customers like any other company who is interested in maintaining quality of service to it’s customers.
Then, here’s the biggie.
Frigg’n Tele-commute. Then those one and a half hour commutes that normally take 15 minutes on a empty road would cease. America could probably eliminate about 30%-40% of our need of Gasoline.
High speed, and I do mean “HIGH” speed as in T1 lines which would be very easy with fiber, could have high quality video conference along with very short up/down-loads of large files and work files all at the same time.
We all know how incredibly immersive MMO’s are, it wouldn’t take much to make a “office app” MMO which would make a Virtual office location for workers to log into. (Which is important for egotistical managers to feel like they are lording over their small pathetic empires, this covers about 85% of the managers out there, You know who you are.)
Hey it would be great managers. You could set up your GUI’s to have people look like peasants in 16th century England, or ragged cloth torn emaciated slaves in a concentration death camp, think of all the possibilities to stroke your own egos because as a manager, you are after all, soulless and evil at heart.
Customers, and workers could interface with each other (with decent GUI’s not the manager slave/Death camp interfaces, but humane, clean, garden Zen type settings.)
So anyone working with designs ads, office work, intellectual property, pretty much anything that doesn’t require physical manipulation of items, such as building 767’s could be done and eliminate the wasted hours per week we spend grid locked on the mislabeled “Free”ways.
Not sure about the rest but I spend more then a full shift per week on the road going to work and driving back, Almost 9 hours a week (and a tank of gas). As does everyone else who spends more then 40 minutes one way.
Of course delivery trucks like UPS and Fed-Ex, and other couriers could deliver physical packages and we would still vastly decrease emissions by not having to drive to work.
Sorry Factory workers, you still got to work, but at least half the traffic would be gone.
The final point: traveling at the more efficient 60 MPH for 15 minutes is less emissions then going 12 MPH stop-n-go for 45 minutes to an hour and a half.
But then this is a dream world, as the Phone companies can't even get billing right, and profit is so critical they would never re-invest in their own company because "it's not economically feasible” to put 10% back into their own infrastructure from the profits. After all they are not making enough profits. Apparently Microsoft set the precedent that making 15000% profit margins (way back when) is an absolute requirement for all companies to function at a basic level.
This of course means screwing our planet over and killing everyone so that when Aliens land on our then, deserted planet, they can see that company A had a profit margin of 15000% prior to the extinction of our planet.
I am a firm believer that if laws where not in place, companies would execute employees to make that profit margin, much like the Nazi party did and the Kim’s in North Korea do to people to further their agenda.
Gas totaly Blows. What ever happend to electric cars? They where around prior to Ford, honestly, This sucks, now I'm depressed too.
Whoa. I thought I had issues. Reign it in there, Mr. Angry. :)
haha I read like 1/4 of psyber wolf's then gave up. Sounded like an Issac Asimov novel or something.
Anyways, that movie is depressing and yea it's like some sick joke that George Bush became president instead of this guy. NOW I know that he is dull, but can you believe how different they are? Instead of someone who cares about the environment we/you got a total moron to run the show. I feel like we are living in an alternate reality and that movie showed us what the other way would have been like.
Well I'm glad you enjoyed it, or not. I too am perplexed that the public had to wait this long to see this version of Al Gore. Amazing.
Rawbean - Yes, psyber is a little...unusual...but he's a good guy, really.
If Al had been elected, he would have been handicapped by the compromises every politician has to make, but at the very least the US would be part of the Kyoto Accord and the ANWAR drilling never would have been on the table.
Wiwille - I suspect Al's heard that a lot since this movie came out, and despite the fact that the Netflix sleeve said he talked about the issue "without getting political" (hahahaha), I think this new public image and this movie are part of a testing of the waters for a 2008 run.
And yes, despite it utterly depressing me, I did like the movie, and think it's an important one that everyone should see and pay attention to.
Yah, I know, (loooong) winded. I have been stewing on this for a looong time now.
Matt, back when I was doing a lot of biking, Most drivers are downright hostile to people not in cars, So I started this hatred for vehicles back then, (over 12 years ago)
I figured I could rant, damn it!
hehe, Still it would be sad if there was no one left to welcome the aliens...
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