Earthday

Earth Day:
Today is Earth Day. Climate change effects everyone around the world, from politics to our home life with weather changes. 

Movies:
I thought I would celebrate by watching
movies with a earth friendly tone.

 The first movie I watched was “Fern Gully”. It was one of my childhood favorites. Christa, a ferry of the forest accidentally shrinks a logger, Zack. He learns through this experience the importance of the rainforest. Mean while Hexus, the spirit of destruction, has escaped and threatens the forest and all the creatures living in it. Christa realizes that humans are behind all the destruction that Hexus is feeding off of.

While Hexus was ultimately the spirit that moved the destruction of the forest it was humans that released it through the act of deforestation. Humans lead to the destruction and the end message was that only humans could stop it.

I also watched “An Inconvenient Truth”. This was the movie that sparked South Park to make fun of Al Gore with Man Bear Pig. Of course, in the movie there is no Man Bear Pig, but there is Al Gore, preaching a message about global warming and how there is more CO₂ in the atmosphere then any other time in human history. This is causing higher temperatures and the melting of glaciers.

Book:

One of the books that I read that had gave me a better understanding of global warming was “Hot, Flat, and Crowded”, by Thomas Friedman. In Friedman’s previous book, “The World is Flat” Friedman explains that technology and the internet has made it possible for all of to connect faster and share information, thus “flattening” the world. In this book Friedman adds overpopulation and “Global Wierding” to this theme. Global Wierding, Friedman explains is not just the Earth warming, it is the idea that all weather systems are going to change due to green house gasses. Some places will become dryer, some places wetter, to the point of masses floods and drought that could destroy farming and food productions.  This book was written in 2008, and we have seen little progress in our attitudes towards climate change, or policies preventing it.

 

Thankfully, Thomas Friedman is following this up with a series "Years of Living Dangerously". This series shows how climate change effects politics around the world.

 

Personal Experience:

In 2006 I visited Glacier National Park with my mom. My mom wanted to go here at this time because she was afraid that the glaciers here would disappear before she ever had another  chance  to see this.

Work Cited:

Guggenheim. Davis. “An Inconvenient Truth”. 2006.

“Dr. Heidi Cullen and Tom Friedman on Face the Nation”. April 6, 2014

Freidman, Thomas. “Hot, Flat, and Crowded”. Published: 2008

Kryler, Bill. “Fern Gully: The Last Rain Forrest”. 1992

Picture of windmills taken by: Arvind Jujare.