An Incoveniant Truth

[Drunk Monk]

See this film. It's important, especially if you don't know much about this situation.

For me, it was preaching to the choir. By the film's end, I was ready to storm the White House, but the suggestions for change were more like 'change your lightbulbs'. Done all that already. In fact, everything suggested I did a while ago. So I personally felt it was a softball, but perhaps that's needed to get the message across. Most Americans haven't done any of this so it makes this an important film.

The changes are easy. We can all do this. DOOM has two hybrids now, and counting...

[El Dingo]

First off, my Scion gets the same gas mileage as my friend's Prius, so there!

Secondly, the percentage of people who actively try and reduce their planteary footprint is tiny. America (and soon China and India) would rather eat it's young than give up disposable diapers.

I'm just going to buy a shotgun and wait for the fireworks to start around 2010.

The 800 lb. gorilla is in the room and the doors are nailed shut.

We're doomed.

[The Queen]

I rode my bike over to the AMC dealer to pick up Greg's SUV when it was fixed, and I've read Al's book, and I didn't have any kids so I never had to deal with any kind of diapering -- is that good enough?

[King Bob]

2010? Everybody's knows that the real date is 2012, when the Mayan calendar ends. So you have two more years to prepare.

But now some people are saying McKenna didn't understand the Mayan calendar correctly, so we might have to call the whole thing off.

[Drunk Monk]

ED: You've become such a republican. How did that happen?

TQ: The biking is great. Keep it up. Get Greg on that bike too. It's never enough with EDs about, putting out fumes and such...

KB: We're trying to call it off. What did the Mayans know anyway? OK, maybe human sacrifice wasn't that bad of an idea, but that calendar was way too big to put on a wall...

[El Dingo]

Actually I'm more of a socialist these days.

I've seen so many documentaries on Peak Oil, Global Warming and Intercontinental Corporatization that I've just given up any hope for humanity.

Industrialized Society + Unchecked Capitalism = No Change in Status Quo.

Something HUGE would have to happen to make people pull their heads out of the sand. Like an alien invasion or a nuke hitting New York or a Garfield movie actually being funny.

I think the only answer is violent revolution and that won't happen till gas is $20 a gallon and the government takes our TVs away.

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

Yeah, high gas prices change everything. Except Europe's been paying five bucks a gallon for ever and look how much society has chnged over there.

[Dr. Ivor Yeti]

The European comparison is faulty since the Euros A) have better public transport and don't depend on their cars like we do, and
B) They get a whole buncha services for their $5/galllon: Free health care, free education up through University, Pensions, Dental, Eye-care, sports, arts, smoking in the disco, hot French chicks, hotter Italian chicks...drugs (in some places).

PPFY, ZY

[El Dingo]

Also, cars in europe are teeny-tiny and get 100mpg.

Here is a European SUV:

[Drunk Monk]

Now about those hot French chicks, hotter Italian chicks and drugs...

[King Bob]

The hot French chicks? No, sorry, I meant the Q&A with Nick (Mick?) LaSalle in the Chronicle where some guy wrote in and said that scientists don't agree about global warming, and that it was true because he "read it on Wikipedia"!

I hope it was a prank. But it probably wasn't.

[Drunk Monk]

Dear Mick LaSalle: According to "An Inconvenient Truth," we're down to one alternative with regard to global warming. Would that be an alternative like Kyoto, which would trash our economy with unachievable reductions in greenhouse gases, while the Chinese burn as much fossil fuel as they please? Wikipedia says there is not a consensus among climatologists that human-generated gases are a significant cause of this undisputed warming. I checked.

TJ Pierce, Oakland

Dear TJ Pierce: Yours is one of about 20 e-mails, all expressing varying degrees of anger or skepticism, that I received the morning "An Inconvenient Truth" opened, before it played to a single paying customer. The movie answers every aspect of your question, so why not see it and form an opinion that way? Maybe you'll like the movie's answers; maybe you'll argue with them. But, in any case, you'll be informed. Frankly, I think you can argue with the movie until the cows come home, but those cows are coming home. The cowbells are tolling for thee and everybody else. But that's just my opinion. There's no reason you should care what I think, though you should certainly care what you think, and I mean think, not believe or feel or have a strong hunch about. Citizenship doesn't begin and end with checking Wikipedia.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...005&sc=578

BTW, there's a great Simpsons-like video in An Inconveniant Truth, just for people like TJ.

[King Bob]

Smart car coming to the US:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060628/ap_o...er_zetsche