Flashes of Panic

In the last month, two things have prompted me to look around for more to do. Most recently, something we noticed on the Mt. Washington hike. See the photo above? There are all kinds of reasons for the sky not to be bluer; a hazy, humid day, or just the way I had the camera pointed. But one of them is that up in the mountains, you can look around and see a brown smudge around the horizon. Prevailing winds sweeping across the industrial Midwest and Northeast pass through New Hampshire and Maine on their way out into the ocean, giving New England some of the worst air quality in the nation even outside urban areas. We’re the tailpipe of the nation, and it’s pretty ugly. It’s really hard to see that—to be up in a place that is so massive, and emphasizes how small we are, as individuals—and contribute to making it uglier.

(It’s also jarring to hike four and a half hours, then emerge at the summit and see a parking lot. But that’s New Hampshire for you.)

The other thing was, about a month ago, going down to Harvard Square with A to see An Inconvenient Truth. I didn’t go expecting to hear about anything I hadn’t heard before, but the weird part was that I did. The thing I hadn’t known was that environmentalism isn’t hopeless. Remember the Ozone Hole? It’s shrinking. It won’t be gone quite as soon as forecast, but it’s already 4% of its peak size. 4%.

Remember that for a minute.

Now, I have one problem with An Inconvenient Truth, and that problem is the movie’s biggest asset. Al Gore. Thanks to the 2000 presidential election and the last few years of the Clinton administration, Gore is a polarizing figure. People either love him or hate him. (Me, I voted for Bill Bradley.) So if you tag a film “Al Gore’s movie,” you’re losing 50% of the potential audience immediately, which is a shame. There’s only about five minutes of this movie that’s about that election, and while it’s pretty sharply critical of the Bush administration, it’s a valid criticism.

Put simply, it’s this: Given the environmental evidence, that we’re faced with a problem we can solve if we have the will (remember the Ozone hole!), but which could destroy the planet if we ignore it, mightn’t we have a higher priority than fighting terrorists?

A few days ago, I read an eloquent criticism of the movie which suggested that Gore’s quest might be purely Quixotic:

Against the firepower of this kind of commercialized ignorance, it’s hard to see how Gore’s dogged rationalism has much of a chance—particularly when his truth is so highly inconvenient to the oil lobby, the coal lobby, the auto lobby and the utility lobby, and not just the flat earth lobby (sometimes known as the Republican Party.)

But at the same time, it explained my own resonance to Gore’s message, that even if we can’t swing our well-subsidized political machine into action (Kyoto accord? Tougher auto emissions standards? A higher gas tax, for crying out loud?) we can take action on our own. We can put our money where our mouths are. (And not even much money!) We can lead, even if our leaders won’t.

I’d hate to think that Gore, who has better contacts and knows more about the science and the politics of climate change than I do, is as pessimistic as I am. But I like the image of him out there on the speaking trail, completely without illusions about the ultimate outcome of the battle, but determined that it won’t be lost because he gave up.

Seriously, go see the movie. If you don’t like Gore, pretend it’s Bill Bradley.

Now Playing: Untitled from Green by R.E.M.