CivicActions

I am a frequent reader of the blog Worldchanging. It is really a wonderful source for very detailed and informative commentary about issues of sustainability from farming to autos.

I've been waiting for Worldchanging the book to come out, and just today I got an email from my friend Sarah Pullman over at DeSmogBlog.com. It was a request from the folks at Worldchanging to make the forthcoming book a success by buying it before it comes out.

Never mind that the penguins look like a little L:inux Penguin, or that the video is actually not funny at all, it seems that this piece of YouTube ephemera mocking Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" has an inconvenient truth of it's own: the video seems to have been paid for by a PR firm that counts Exxon as a client.

Perhaps the Republican firm, DCI, should have given the film maker a bit more direction, they could have attacked Gore on the merrits as in this opinion piece that points out Gore's hypocracy: owning multiple very large homes, lots of air travel, family ownership in oil stocks and a mining concession that has been accused of polluting on his own property.

Ever since seeing Al Gore's brilliant "An Inconvenient Truth," possibly the most persuasive argument I have ever witnessed for anything (and certainly the best PowerPoint... er Keynote ... presentation ever), I have been feeling a little unsettled about whether we can muster the personal and political will to avert global climate crisis.

So you can imagine my relief to learn in the recent People Magazine interview with President Bush that, contrary to popular belief, he acknowledges "...we have a problem on global warming" and even more exciting, that he's in the process of solving global warming "...by advancing new technologies, burning coal cleanly in electric plants, or promoting hydrogen-powered automobiles, or advancing ethanol as an alternative to gasoline."

Last night I went to see An Inconvenient Truth, the Al Gore movie about Catastrophic Climate Change. I saw it with a group of friends and we went out afterward for dinner.

Go see the movie. Every American should see this movie. You cannot watch it and wonder how things would be different if Mr. Gore had faught a little harder after the election of 2000. But that aside, seeing images of the Katrina Aftermath made me cry, literally. I could not watch it. I had a dream last night about the movie, in which I was moved to tears by the facts laid out so eloquently by Mr. Gore.

Via WorldChanging: The movie An Inconvenient Truth will open at the end of May. Participant Productions is getting people to pledge to see the film when it opens in their market (at the film's website ClimateCrisis.net).

The ClimateCrisis site also has a nifty carbon footprint calculator. The Calculator got me feeling really guilty about air travel. This past weekend I met a guy while in the desert south west of LA who is working on carbon pollution credit trading. I should admit that we talked about these issue while in a climate controlled house baking in the sun and 100 degree ambient air temp. We talked about TerraPass which allows you to buy carbon credits for your driving. I suggested that someone should start "AeroPass" to allow travelers to buy carbon credits to offset their air travel.

Perhaps edible meat can be grown in a lab - without the animal? A possible solution to the industrial ranch industry.

Last night, Eric Gundersen of Development Seed sent me a link to the Chevy Tahoe / Apprentice Ad Campaign.

Looks like a bunch of environmentalists are doing a little culture jamming. Check out Marty Kearns' Network Centric Advocacy blog for links to some pro environment andti suv commercials.

Be sure to make your own and post a link.

Here is my first one

I found this site which has a nifty carbon calculator that walks you through a bunch of questions and tells you hoe many pounds of CO2 you are responsible for while looking at Participate.net, a pretty cool drupal site by the guys over at Lullabot that aims to connect people with actions/activism through offline activities related to movies (like Syriana and others).

Back to the carbon calculator, by my estimates I am responsible for over 6 tons of CO2 emissions each year because of my air travel.

From World Changing:

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is a bit of an enigma. He has promoted state policies that have alienated both progressives and moderates (as demonstrated by the resounding election defeat for his various initiatives), but has done more to push a green agenda than pretty much any previous governor. The latest step in his plan, the Green Building Initiative, mandates that all public buildings be 20% more efficient by 2015, and suggests regulatory incentives to get private buildings to meet that same goal (PDF).