I just watched "The 11th Hour" last night. It was narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, who is known for his green lifestyle.
To synopsize the movie I watched (I took four pages on notes!), allow me to paraphrase, with some quotes taken from the movie:
1. We are a sun-based culture, who are quickly outpopulating our natural resources.
2. We use our resources as if they are abundant, and we (human) tend to think we are seperate from nature and natural law. We operate based on that fallacy.
3. We, as a species, evolved in Africa 150,000 years ago. We have doubled our population since JFK was inaugurated.
4. Since the most recent industrial revolution, in any classroom, you will find between 30 - 60% of the students suffer from asthma, due to the pollutants and the climate change.
In that time, choices made by human has forced the extinction 55,000 species per year. One species is taking over the world.
5. There is acid rain by burning coal, on our planet. As our ice sheets melt, it reduces the heat that can reflect back out of our biosphere, thus raising our temperature. Venus has a temperature of 250 Celcius, and rains sulfuric acid. Homosapiens could not survive there.
We have raised the temperature by 7/10 Celcius already.
6. It took only a few degrees to shift us out of the ice age, it could only take a few to shift us back in.
7. There is permafrost already starting across the tundra.
8. We have raised our output of carbon dioxide by 35%, and methane gas by 150%. We are putting unnatural chemicals and gases into the air and bodies of water/oceans.
There are 5,000,000 gallons a day of waste being poured into one bay. Just one bay. That waste is mercury, copper, pesticides, things artifially coloured.
9. We have depleted the United States of 95% of our forests. Rainforests are quickly becoming deserts.
10. Trees hold 57,000 gallons of water. They help to prevent flash floods, and their roots help to prevent landslides.
11. Fertilizers and pesticides in the farming states travel down the Mississippi and our found 1100 miles away, causing cancers, asthma, and other illnesses along the way.
12. The public, as a whole, wants cleaner burning energy, but we are not being represented in Congress. They are bought out by oil companies. Exxon/Mobile has more money than all the automobile companies combined.
13. Corporate economic globalization will kill off our host. When nature is destroyed, the human population is destroyed along with it.
14. By the time a child goes to college, they will have watched enough television that they will be able to recognize one thousand corporate logos, but not be able to name ten plants and animals native to their land.
15. The United States' defense budget is larger than the economy of Australia. We are putting our money in the wrong places, defending our stranglehold on oil and its petrol dollar, rather than creating cleaner energy.
16. Several years ago, they calculated what the cost of the work nature does for us. To remove the carbon dioxide and other pollutants would cost $35 TRILLION DOLLARS. At the time of the study, the combined total economies of the world was $18 TRILLION DOLLARS.
17. We are at a critical limit. The global climate change threatens 1/3 to 1/2 all variety of life on earth. The earth is 3.8 to 4 billion years old. Since then, 99.9999% of species have gone extinct. Humans are only an infant species. Extinction is common on this planet, and it could happen to us.
18. Deepak Chopra said, "People are doing the best they can, given their level of awareness."
19. Winston Churchhill said, "Americans always do the right thing, only after they have exhausted all other possibilities."
20. For the skeptic and the activist alike, I urge you to watch a video on youtube. Go to the search box, and plug in the words, "THE MOST TERRIFYING VIDEO YOU WILL EVER SEE".
We are at the tripping point, to where we may lose control over the climate. We have already seen catastrophes like Hurricaine Katrina and deadly tsunamis. The global climate change will effect our rainfall patterns, which will effect flooding, droughts, and the sea level.
If the sea level rises by just ten meters, 23 million people in the US (starting in Florida) will be displaced or killed, 144 million in China, 12 million in the Netherlands, and 63 million in Bangladesh.
This could happen in as early as a decade. At this rate, we will still be debating whether or not the human footprint is causing global warming. We simply don't have that luxury of time.
WHAT CAN WE DO????!!!!!
1. Use the information age to make everyone aware of the situation at hand. Have discussions about it, google one of the million environmentalist groups and follow their simple instructions on how to go green.
2. Start walking/biking/ or using mass transit for your daily commute.
3. Stop digging up the earth and turning it to waste. We need a sustainable eco-system where one organism's waste is another organism's food.
4. It is said that if we use solar energy, there would be enough power generated for every home and building on this planet 13,000 times over.
5. Start using wind energy, and buy from companies who do, vote with your dollar!
6. Start supporting trident energy (power generated from the ocean's waves) or Verdant energy (electricity generated from the currents of the Hudson River).
7. I have done something so simple, and I get paid for it. I joined a paid to read program, that actually pays me to click on donation links that help save land, species, plants trees, gives water to impoverished countries, etc. Human greed plays a significant role in any action that we take, so, why not get paid for doing something that only takes a few mouse clicks?
I offput my use of my computer daily, using this method. Message me for a link if you want. I don't think I am allowed to post it here.
8. The usual - recycle, buy only things that biodegrade, eat fewer flatulent cows, etc.
9. The movie mentioned lowering income tax, and raising the tax of those polluting the world. Sounds fair.
10. Open for suggestions.
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2 comments:
It might well be that Google would not think highly of paid to read / paid to click sites. But why refrain from mentioning the target sites, which sound like they might be one of two families of such sites that I happen to know of, the one that comes to mind first being The Hunger Site et al.
Is it that unless you are paid you aren't actually much interested in promoting such causes? Or simply concern that Google, in its quest to be good, might object to free food being provided for hungry people, free books for children, free care for animals, and conservation for the rainforest?
(If so, foo you google, nyah nyah nyah. Money is one of the seven adult topics that might somehow relate to the seven sins, and money seems to stand in as euphemism for the other six (drugs, gambling, politics, religion, sex and violence... maybe they boil down to power, power to control chance, maybe even to control what is a gamble and what is an investment or opportunity...)
What I have read here so far seems to fint with a few of my niches, such s the concept of adult (the seven components?) and the site I started today to start trying to tie together everything relating to the conceopt of organic. Such as organic checmicals such as hydrocarbons such as gasoline and oil...
See you around, I hope.
-MarkM- ("knotwork"; Digitalis Data Services.)
Very thought provoking post. I like how you refer to the topics as the sins - great analogy.
Actually, a lot of the paid to click sites also reward you for clicking at the donation sites, like the hunger sites, and the save land sites.
But, I think there is a bit of concern when google is involved, because they tend to avoid anything that has incentivized clicks.
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