What’s the worst that can happen?

Ecological Footprint Quiz

Find out how many planets we would need if everyone lived like you.

My result: if everyone would live like me, we would need 1.6 planets. I am among the 80% of the world population with an Ecological Footprint smaller than 4 hectares. In comparison, the world offers 2 hectares per person today. I was surprised not to find some questions like whether I drink bottled water or whether I do recycling. Anyway there are a few things I am going to do to lower down my score: eat less meat, use more local products and use more public transportation (although here in southern Italy public transportation, like everything which is “public”, it’s unreliable and inefficient (stops not clearly marked, very low frequency of buses, often passing later or earlier than expected, etc).

An Inconvenient Truth

An Inconvenient Truth is a documentary film about climate change, specifically global warming, presented by former United States Vice President Al Gore and directed by Davis Guggenheim.

• Official web site
• Movie trailer

The film opened in USA on May 2006. The film’s distributor, Paramount Classics, is donating 5% of the box office receipts and Gore is donating all of his proceeds from the film to The Alliance for Climate Protection (of which Gore is both founder and chairman).

Gore, who with this movie won the Oscar as best documentary in February 2007, will be in Milan the 14th of June. I am sorry I live so far from there, I would have liked very much to meet him. Although he has been accused of hypocrisy because his “mansion uses more than twice the electricity in one month than the average household does in an entire year“, I think he has made an invaluable service to humanity because with this movie he has considerably helped in bringing the global warming problem into people conscience.

The movie has been on show in Italian cinemas since March 2007 and its DVD has been recently released in shops. When it was shown in a cinema in my town I went to watch it and invited all my friends to come with me. I believe it’s crucial that as many people as possible watch this movie, that’s why I am trying to spread it by talking about it in this blog and by buying some DVD copies and lending it to friends and relatives.

If you, reader, haven’t watched it yet I urge you to do it and to invite your friends to do the same. Paraphrasing a statement by Hiro Nakamura, “Spread the word, save the world“.

Will Ferrell impersonating Bush

I have found this funny video of Will Ferrell impersonating Bush and talking about global warming. It’s one of the funniest thing I have ever seen and, at the same time, it’s disconcerting. I wrote down its transcription to help better understand it all those non-native English speaker out there:

and now a special address
from the president of the United States
on Global Warminghello America

it’s me here
your president
your commander-in-chief of the world
and I’m at my ranch in Crawford Texas
just taking a little R&R
you know, relax and growing out my soul patch
playing a little freesbe golf
with Condi Rice and Dick Cheney
having a good time
but still keep my eye on the ball
and there is an issue that has come to my attention
the issue of the so called global warmings
that are happening on our planet
for centuries the rays of the sun
have warmed the surface of our earth’s crust
and apparently those rays’re intensifying
in such a way that it’s increasing lava flows and
cut!
… I don’t know what the hell I am talking about

global warming is an issue that my administration
is very concerned about
deeply, deeply in a deep kind of concerned way
it’s a… I don’t…
I start my day and I think about the warming of the globe
and how we can get it warmer
cut!

rest assured that the issue of global warming
is something that my administration takes very seriously
not right now Condi! we’ll play later

I’m sure by now you’ve all heard
what liberal scientists are trying to say
it seems that liberals and godless taxraisers
are trying to make me look bad
by using such things as facts and scientific data
cut!
what?
Mr. President you can’t say that they’re using facts
right
Facts are real, they’re not disputed
how do you know that?

what kind of book is this?
Jesus, why didn’t you tell me it was a pop-up book?
Those things scare the crap out of me.
I don’t think that’s the kind of science book we’re looking for
we’re talking about global warming
what kind of science book would you suggest?
there’s a lot of books
One filled with facts maybe?
Yes!
Yeah, I’d bet you’d like that

When you think back to biblical times
when Adam and Eve talked to that snake 6000 years ago
when the world was created
it was hot back then too
why do you think Adam and Eve were naked?
See what I’m saying?
I mean, I’m not making this stuff up
you didn’t hear Adam and Eve running around
talking about emissions standards or hybrid cars
in fact, Adam and Eve drove an Excursion
cut!

Let’s talk about something that really matters
like keeping steroids out of T-ball
cut!

I think the polar ice caps suck
who cares about having a place
where a bunch of penguins can have an orgy?
cut!

Global warming, don’t worry about it
we got a bead on this thing…
you know, we just need to get nature to co-operate with us
we don’t need to listen to nature
nature needs to listen to us
cut!

Mr. President, you asked me to tell you
when the Rangers game’s on?
It’s on right now.

Oh Gee… What inning is it?
It better not be past the third inning

CO2 ‘highest for 650,000 years’

This morning I have been reading these news. It is not like I haven’t been aware of the bad situation of our planet, it’s just that we have been submerged by news like that, and what surprises me the most is the reaction: feeble indeed I’d say. I mean, this should be the top priority of every single intelligent person in the world, after all this is the only place we have to live.

We don’t have other places to go when this will be gone, and we don’t know when the process will start being irreversible (if it hasn’t already happened). Nevertheless, there is still people who seem careless about the problem, and not only don’t actively do anything to settle it, to try to find a solution, but it even not welcome the proposals made by the others (like USA did with the Kyoto protocol).

People do not realize the situation, I don’t know whether it is because they are basically selfish, or because they are unable to think large-scale, to see the whole world like their own house and not only like their neighborhood; unable to think in terms of centuries and of humanity, not in terms of years and individuals. Maybe this is a limit of the human being, a thing which will inevitably lead him to his own destruction.