Global warming is now a topic that we can talk about during our tea time. To the majority, it is nothing more than affairs and anecdotes which we are quite familiar with. In 2007, this topic was brought up again because of a well-known documentary video: an inconvenient truth.
This video first interests me because of its starring - Al Gore, the former US Vice President. It is hard to imagine a politician busy giving speeches but not for election. Al Gore is definitely a strong speaker. Watching his presentation, I cannot help thinking: what does global warming mean to all of us?
Well, to the public, we have to admit that global warming is just a phrase to us. It has no practical meaning. Yes, we know that after industrialization, our world's temperature increases dramatically. However, this fact up to now still has not make any striking influence on people's daily life. When summer time is extremely hot, people rush to places with air-conditioning. When sand storm is comming, people stay in big shopping malls for the whole day, swearing at the terrible weather. It is a pity that public pay little attention on climate change, but we cannot blame them. Ignorance leads to adaptation and this is not somebody's fault.
Then, what can governments do to resolve this problem? The answer is qiute clear-- make policies to guide people to do things in a correct way. This is quite a useful method. For example in China since last year, free plastic bags in shopping malls and supermarkets have been abandoned. By making such a small change, the usage of plastic bags falls incredibly and this is the power for politics. However, this power may have side effects. A good example is that US and China still refuse to accept Kyoto. Perhaps it is not our duty to comment on such sensitive environmental and political issue.
Besides governments, there is a group of people who play important role on environmental issues. They are environmentalists like Gore and thousands of scientists who work on this problem. By now, there are still many people who believe that greenhouse gases are not caused by mankind but by natural effect. They need to be convinced by scientific proof. Meanwhile, environmentalists, by many ways, are trying to tell the public that our mother earth is bearing a hot weather and now it is time to do something.
Although president Bush did not like the movie and doubted its reliability, An Inconvenient truth is a sucess for sure. It marks that movie can go beyond entertainment.
Hi there Liu Xiang,
回复删除I feel this post is written well.
About "Ignorance leads to adaptation and this is not somebody's fault."
Answer: It is the fault of we humans taking things for granted.
One more thing, it is our duty to comment about environmental issues as everyone of us is affected by the environment one way or another.
In total, good job.