Fragments From Floyd

Now, somebody's doing something about it. The movie, An Inconvenient Truth, is coming to the Grandin Theatre in Roanoke, starting June 30 and running til July 27 (so it seems.) So far, what I've read, while not without minor criticism, is supportive overall of the general factuality of the message. We'll see it, and hope to have a busload from Floyd maybe go together on the same night. TBA. Interested?

"Excellent," said William Schlesinger, dean of the Nicholas School of Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University. "He got all the important material and got it right."

Robert Corell, chairman of the worldwide Arctic Climate Impact Assessment group of scientists, read the book and saw Gore give the slideshow presentation that is woven throughout the documentary.

"I sat there and I'm amazed at how thorough and accurate," Corell said. "After the presentation I said, `Al, I'm absolutely blown away. There's a lot of details you could get wrong.' ... I could find no error." link

And yet, another Inconvenient Truth

"As Al Gore's global warming call to action flickers on the screens of America's multiplexes, we must face another inconvenient truth.

We need to confront the really bad climate change news behind China's economic boom built on dirty coal.

And we also need to grasp the available market based solution to the global warming and sustainability crisis, one that can curb China's and our own poisonous habits."

This makes sense: "The key is to make what's polluting, depleting, and ecologically damaging more expensive than sustainable alternatives. The means replacing income taxes with ecological consumption taxes and enlisting the market price mechanism and business acumen in service to sustainability."

Free market economies that let corporate business as usual do what's best only for shareholders is NOT going to sustain this planet into the future. As distasteful as American business might find taxes, regulations, limits or being told what they can or can't do with their coal fields, power plants or farm land to the detriment of our "commons", the sustained and long-term health of the (oh what a loaded word it has become!) environment is what will get my vote in whatever elections I have left to vote it. Our leaders MUST understand that it is biology, not the economy, whose health is ultimately the foundation to "the good life."