Following is an excerpt of Peter's reaction to An Inconvenient Truth. Edited only for spelling and posted with permission.
"The movie nevertheless stops somewhat short of telling the REAL inconvenient truth. That would be the one not only Big Biz and Oil companies and its affiliates like the present government don't want to hear. But we all don't want to hear it.
"At the very ending, the titles suggest moviegoers should buy energy efficient bulbs and the like. This is pure hypocrisy. It might be the American Dream that each and every problem can be solved by substituting one technology with another. Being European, I don't believe this will save us. Although, the US is way behind when it comes to energy efficiency - even with the most efficient cars 1.3 billion Chinese people would outweigh every new technology if they started using cars as we do in this country, where bicycles are for kids, buses are for the poor and railroads are almost nonexistent (to transport people, that is).
"It will take a change of behaviour, not hydrogen cars, to get over this crisis. But even Al Gore wouldn't want to tell people to "stop using your cars the way you are". And he doesn't show one graph that would probably fit the ones of rising temperatures and carbon-dioxide: During the last fifty years the price of energy has not at all matched the general global inflation - it is cheaper than ever, despite all the yapping about gas prices here in the US. Rising prices would solve a lot of problems at once: It would slow pollution, it would keep labor local and make people realize what's surrounding them.
"I congratulate you to the idea of "sharethetruth" as a start in fighting another crisis we are facing: The end of labor and the downfall of the middle class. The next generation will have to deal with the problem of finding ways to make the haves share with the havenots. If they don't, this will become one brutal world.
I believe Peter raises important issues; following is an excerpt of my take on them as I sent him ten days ago.
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What I found inspirational about An Inconvenient Truth was that it has the power to change minds. You might be well aware of the climate issues in the movie, as was I to some extent, but plenty of people are not, and have indeed had serious awakenings after viewing the film. That it does not address issues of corporate greed, class struggle, and the fallacy of believing technology to be the panacea to cure our ills is, I believe, not really its fault. We need thirty other documentaries each by different energetic and compassionate leaders addressing problems, explored individually, in order to tackle them in any effective manner. An Inconvenient Truth is, at the least, a good start.
Global warming, to be however fair, is a unique issue in that it has the most devastating long-term consequences that must be addressed now. We will reach Peak Oil soon and that may cause lots of nasty resource wars. The increased privatization of water (and droughts) might very well lead to its own collapses of entire cities and countries. Then there's the issue of (not) growing our food, related to both oil and water, and also soil phosphates which are being quickly depleted, exacerbated by the corporatization of farming (don't even get me started on seed patents). But global warming? If we plunge ourselves into an ice age, our entire civilization is largely annihilated.
At any rate, I think that you are both right and wrong, regarding the usefulness of "energy efficient bulbs".
Taken alone, such small changes in technology, even when widely used, are pretty insignificant. I think we agree that there is no use creating vastly efficient ways of doing things (less energy expended per task), if it is not effective (many more tasks being started!). There must be a fundamental change in the way people think.
Which leads to why I think "energy efficient bulbs" are more important than you've stated. It's really not about the bulbs, it's more about the awareness of the need for the bulbs. If everyone realized they should use energy efficient bulbs, bike everywhere as much as possible, and build their homes to generate more energy than produced, we would have a serious renaissance upon us, because the thinking would be vastly different. Such a people would not stand for corporations and governments that lay waste to the environment, with feckless disregard to human well-being. Perhaps I'm too idealistic, but I think such a people would also be more considerate. There is a mindset of not caring about any entities outside one's ego that must be slowly overturned or, to put it bluntly, massive quantities of people will perish. As you pointed out, it will probably be the have-nots.
That is why I started ShareTheTruth. It's more than to get some people to see the movie. It's because the presence of the site speaks to the subject's importance. As it becomes more successful, its success is greater than the number of free tickets given away: people who were never inclined to be a part of the ShareTheTruth community can still be aware of its ideals. Ultimately, like a soldier in a war, this site can only do so much for the cause. But without awareness, all is lost, and so we must do all we can to enlighten our neighbors, the way we were enlightened by others, learn as much as we can, constantly, no matter how much we think we know, and try our very hardest to not miss the forest for the trees.
hulettk
Jul 5th 2006
The funny thing about Social Change of any kind, is the lack of interest it inspires in general. Lately, people are resorting to clever documentaries to get the word out, which has helped raise awareness, but then what?
How many people after watching SuperSize Me, changed their eating habits completely? I imagine some did. I imagine many people haven't even seen it. What about any of the Michael Moore documentaries? While I think they are great ways to reach out and provide information and grab someone's attention (at least for the 1-2 hours it takes to make your case), how effective are they at creating social change?
What happens next? The viewers leave, and perhaps discuss it over dinner... They may even make a few quick changes in their life, if any, and then finally go on about their lives.
Where is the lasting impression? The stickiness to the solution?
Social Change should be taught in schools on a large scale. America is a country based on the ideology that the people run the government, yet we don't prepare them to do so.
In the past few years, I am gravitating more and more to the understanding of how anything started as a good idea, actually becomes realized and integrated into everyday life within society at large.
Malcolm Gladwell wrote his book, The Tipping Point, about this sort of thing. He referenced how several companies changed (internally and externally). He referenced epidemics and how social change (such as a massive boom in sales) can be related to the way a disease spreads. That may sound odd, but it makes a lot of sense. Like a disease, the first few days/weeks, etc the virus or product takes the longest just to get the right foothold. With the infrastructure and key components finally in place, BAM! it spreads like wildfire, dying out only when the infrastruture fails or is unable to maintain the growth (such as a company who sells a hot product then can't make them fast enough, etc)
Social changes can occur very similarly to epidemics.
If we are to see a real change and overcome the barriers that others like to put up, the groundwork has to be in place, key individuals (who have a strong natural ability to influence), need to be strategically placed, and then the smaller fires need to be lit. If everything goes well, the fire spreads exponentially. This is not an easy task to predict, but when done right, can create a momentum that you will wish you had more time to prepare for.
Perhaps this is what needs to be studied.
I want to find ways to bring the world together on this issue. Nothing would be greater in my eyes, than to see a huge world-wide effort to reduce the waste-products our societies produce. To possibly shift the climate back onto it's natural course. But if it's an issue of creating lasting social change, we need a serious jolt in the arm before the ball will get rolling with enough momentum to sustain itself.
I hate to admit it, but social change is often affected by 2 things: calamity and popularity. Despite how noble the cause may be, it is rarely an influencer that will predicate sufficient change BEFORE a terrible event is predicted to occur. Yet, after the worst has happened, watch how united we suddenly become.
However, if something becomes extremely popular, social change can also occur on large scales as well. However now you must deal with the fickle nature of humanity.
If we are to try to prevent global warming, popularity coupled with the infrastructure to sustain an epidemic would be needed. Luckily, recent calamities (Katrina, the tsunami) are on our side to help gain credibility and a following. In addition, the movie is raising considerable popularity as well. Failure to capitalize on this soon, can mean lost opportunity to gain large numbers of participants and social involvement. At least until a more severe calamity occurs or some other greater influence steps in.
But I have found recently that it's all too easy to get swept up by 1) the lack of awareness and amount of inaction everywhere, and 2) "dissenters" who often belligerently argue against what the best scientific evidence indicates is true.
(I use "dissenters" in quotes because it's better applied to people who protest something actually, materially faulty in reasoning or ideals. Evidence for anthropogenic global warming is as legitimate as science gets, and we only need to look for species extinct from habitats now too warm (golden toad), or at species severely endangered because their homes are vanishing (polar bear)--species who've been around far longer than we have.)
In getting swept up by those forces we succumb to the exact kinds of human tendencies you're talking about--namely, that people are heavily influenced by public opinion and have a tough time thinking in the long-term.
For if we are able to suspend our pessimism for a little bit and focus on the amazing leaps and bounds occurring this very moment, I believe we can channel the power of great social movements past. I thank you for being so accurately realistic, so temperately reasoned. But a true birds-eye view of the elusive goal that is "Social Change" also must take into account the power of the movement itself and the fact that change can, simply put, take time to accelerate.
At http://stopglobalwarming.org, for example, you have half a million people, celebrities galore "marching" for a cause so important, whether it will "work" or not is, at the end of the day, largely irrelevant.
So sure, half a million is barely enough yet. But did the marchers in Memphis or Burmingham wonder if their efforts would be enough? Or the non-unionized workers in the 30s? Ultimately it's not a problem of whether we can observe enough progress being made at this moment, but how much we can contribute to the cause.
It's really hard to step back and see that, because we naturally want to avoid confrontation that disrupts our comfort zones, and we also want instant gratification for our efforts.
But sometimes we transcend the myopia, and it can become the greatest cause to fight for in the history of humankind. After all, what do we have to lose? Nothing, really, and everything.