An Inconvenient Truth

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.