Tom
Last night I revisited the venue in Yerevan where Andy and I gave a presentation back in February. Common Ground
is the project of a local NGO to provide an open forum for interested
people from all backgrounds to discuss today’s issues and attend
presentations in English. The organiser, an Armenian woman who grew up
in Manchester, England, introduced the event for this evening - a
showing of Al Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.
However many awards it did or did not win, I think this might just
be one of the most important films ever made. If you’re living in the
England and you haven’t seen it, you might be surprised to hear that to
view this film is now a formal part of our children’s education. I
learnt only yesterday that a copy of the film had been distributed to
every state-run school in the country. If you are a parent, and you
haven’t seen it, maybe you should, so you know what your children are
talking about when they come home talking about it, and so you don’t
regret in the future what you are doing today.
Though I’d seen it before, I really wanted Tenny to see the film. I
was interested to see what she thought of the issue which Gore has
dedicated the last 30 years to propounding - global warming. It’s a
frightening film. If you aren’t frightened by it, you probably don’t
understand it. This is not a film that you sit around and talk about
afterwards in the usual way (”The cinematography was nice…” “I really
liked the music…”). This is a film that will lead to a lot of extremely
serious discussions about the topic at hand, not the film-making
itself. Most importantly, this film represents the best chance most
people will have to understand the problems facing the world today, and
to say “Yes, I can do something!”
After viewing the film, the 15 or 20 people in the small conference
centre sat and discussed the issue. “You know, the most important thing
is that people should learn to live basically,” whispered Tenny to me.
I thought she had a very good point. Previously in these blogs, I’ve
made the observation that it has been the people who live basic, rural
lives, and have what they need to live simply - but, importantly, don’t
suffer from the eternal desire for more - who have been the happiest,
most welcoming, and most generous with what they do have.
In reality, the Western world (which is largely to blame for the
present-day CO2 levels) would have a hard time reverting to a
subsistence-level existence. And I think that most people’s biggest
fear is that their relatively comfortable, stable lives would be turned
upside down. This is simply not the case! Most people would be able to
reduce their personal contribution to the global problem - and we all
contribute - by making a few small changes to the way they live. And
you can read about these changes right here at the WWF’s One Planet Living website,
designed specifically to help you make these changes as easily as
possible. Believe me, after seeing An Inconvenient Truth, you’ll be
glad that resources like this are already out there.
On the way home, I talked with Tenny about everything that this
journey represented to me regarding this immense global issue. Most
people won’t be looking to reduce their carbon footprint quite as close
to zero as I have done by choosing my current lifestyle of bike travel
and bare-necessesities living. More realistic for the developed
countries would be something like Masdar City,
soon to be the world’s greenest city, being built by the government of
the Arab Emirate of Abu Dhabi, a tiny pocket of affluence in the
Arabian Peninsular. In the UK, BioRegional and the WWF
are working on similar projects to demonstrate exactly how the
developed world can operate in the future if global warming prevention
measures are taken on board now.
So don’t be afraid to rent An Inconvenient Truth next time you go to the movie store. Better still, buy a copy
(all of £5 from Amazon) and show it to everyone you know. I have a copy
of my own which I am taking with me on my future travels to show to all
those who I can convince to watch it. It’s not often that something
like this comes along, when a serious worldwide issue is presented in
such an accessible, even enjoyable way. You’ll finish watching it,
feeling great that you can be part of the solution to the greatest
threat that the human species has faced, since… well, ever.
