NORMAL LIFE: What Have You Done?

It’s all go this week on the environmental front. Last night, I watched two movies. The first one, An Inconvenient Truth (you can watch the trailer here) hosted by Al Gore, scared me to bits. Despite all the scientific data relating to the Global Climate Crisis, governments worldwide just don’t seem to be doing enough. Interestingly, and for the first time however, it was nice to hear an American admit that they were the most guilty when it comes to environmental emissions. So, my advice is this: if the US thinks is it still so bloody fantastic, why doesn’t it start its preaching at home and let the world follow?

The movie didn’t really tell me anything that I didn’t already know, but I was particularly interested in Al Gore’s illustration of glacial earthquakes. As we all know, glaciers are melting. What I didn't know is that sometimes the melt water seeps into the ice itself, burrowing into the glacier itself. By the time the water reaches the earth far below, it creates a slippery effect, very much like rain water beneath car tyres. When enough water enough accumulates, you see huge ice-shelves caving into the sea. Apparently, if Greenland melts completely, it will raise sea levels worldwide by 20 feet. Only last weekend, when I trekked in Norway, I visited a glacier which has retreated significantly since 1998. For the first time, I saw the direct impact of our wrongdoing as a race.

On another subject, more of a humanitarian issue than an environmental issue, I watched Blood Diamond. Leonard DiCaprio plays the leading role (that guy has been working out, by the way!) of a Zimbabwean diamond smuggler from Sierra Leonne to Liberia. I’m not overly familiar with the facts of the Sierra Leonne dispute, but the Revolutionary movement – which is nothing more than a militia of drugged-up Majors and child soldiers as young as ten – are hell-bent on claiming their own diamonds for themselves rather than extract them for white man’s consumption. And quite rightly so although there are better ways to do it.

On an certain level, however, these two movies have a lot in common; most of the suffering we see in the world today is a result of trade begun by white man. Ever since the Industrial revolution kicked off in 18th Century England, the world has been dying very slowly. A combination of the growing population and the unceasing demand for natural resources such as oil (just look at Iraq), gas, wood (look at the Amazon) and even diamonds is, in effect, killing the only place we can call ‘home’. What will it take for the capitalists among us to say ‘no’ to the very things we have been enjoying for centuries? Can technology really develop so far as to help us undo the damage inflicted thus far?

Since the Live Earth concerts too place last month as a follow up to An Inconvenient Truth, I have been shocked and appalled at how few people I know actually tuned in to the event. Carry on like this and you have only yourself to blame when the temperatures rise, the glaciers melt and London is underwater. I already reuse my plastic bags when I go to the stores. I have started downloading music for the first time instead of buying CDs which, surprisingly, contain oil. And I have been recycling all of my domestic household waste since moving to Finland nearly six years ago. What have you done?