I'm really glad Dr. Shahi suggested that those who haven't yet seen Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth to watch it. That movie does a good job at relaying the potential impact global warming may have on the entire earth. Moreover, he clearly illustrates how pressing the matter is. When seeing a movie that is this moving and well done, it really makes me wonder what it would've been like had Al Gore won the presidency (like he was suppose to).
The environment has a tremendous impact on the health of the population. I suppose it's too late to think about "what if's". We may never know how much the deterioration of the environment impacted the strength in hurricane Katrina, but what we do know is that the effects of global warming are becoming something very tangible to any person. Earlier last week I made a presentation in Dr. Palmer's class, PM 566: China, a country in transition. The article I made my presentation on was regarding projections of the impact of air pollution under various energy scenarios in Shanghai, China for the years 2010 and 2020. Under these energy scenarios the situation with the most stringent environmental rules prevented the most deaths, diseases, and hospital visits. And the preventable numbers all ascended accordingly with how stringent the environmental rules were.
I would just like to close with this final article (yes, once again from BBC. I tend to frequent that site often). http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6315885.stm This article reports that by 2070, Sydney can become unhospitable to be lived in. To me, that is frightening. Especially since Australia and the US are the only 2 industrialized nations who did not sign Kyoto.
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I'm about to watch the movie An Inconvenient Truth tonight. I expect it to shed a great deal of light upon the subject of global warming. Touching upon your statement referral that Sydney may not be hospitable to human life is pretty crazy. Hopefully, the Aussi's have enough ice cold Foster's to hold them over until we can figure something out for them.
thanks for the link to the article on sydney...i agree w/ jordan, that is pretty crazy. i watched an inconvenient truth recently and was very suprised as i didn't know al gore was such an environmentalist. it'll be interesting to see how all these predictions of climate change impact countries with the highest emissions, and to what extent they prioritize environmental concerns.
It's all about the money. I just watched "who killed the electric car," and I have to agree with Dr Shahi's comment on how private companies will always look for the easiest way to get short term profits. After all, these companies do not care what happens to the earth decades from now. But now that the environmental impact of our actions is only years away, these companies have to rethink their environmental responsibility or there won't be an earth left to spend their profits in.
Jen,
There is an SNL skit that Al Gore did when he hosted the show about what it would have been like if he had won the presidency. I can't go on Youtube to find it right now as I am at work, but I'd really recommend searching for it. Let me know what you think. It's hilarious, but extremely sad.
Stop slacking off at work Mana. :P Lucky for you, I just headed over from Jack's blog, so I'm still in the mindset that employee health is more integral to employee productivity. So maybe employers should stop blocking so many websites to promote the happiness and well-being of employees. Nevertheless, we are ever so unnecessarily bringing doomsday upon ourselves. Even with the media deluge, I have little faith that this will instigate change in enough people. I feel that it is the government's responsibility to empower the EPA for stricter regulations and to implement a change in the infrastructure. The government needs to subsidize resources and technologies to bring these changes about before we find ourselves making a mad dash for Mars in Cuban rafts. We have relinquished our true democratic rights to politicians, entrusting them with the decision making power for make benefit glorious nation of America. In a nation that probably has more NGOs and grassroots movements than the rest of the globe combined, if those groups were to consolidate or collaborate, a considerable degree of change could take place before hell melts over.
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