One of those mocking, derisive but ultimately silly attacks made by both Giuliani and Palin yesterday had to do with mocking Obama’s time as a community organizers. I’ve read many different posts today defending the work community organizers do but Obama, as you might expect, puts the right perspective on the issue. Steve Benen has more background.
(he slightly misspeaks at the start — it was 20 years ago, not 3).
|
Blogroll
Friends
CT Politics Politics
Technology
West Hartford Blogs Hartford Blogs |
Active Posts
|
|
Track & Validate
|
If you’re looking to understand the differences between the cap and trade proposals outlined by Obama and alluded to by John McCain, this is a good place to start. While I trust Obama, and I trust Drum’s interpretation, I don’t understand the mechanism by which the issued permits under the assumed McCain proposal create a windfall for the oil companies. Granted, I haven’t had the cycles to apply any brainpower to this, so does anyone want to take a shot at explaining?
I should say, I understand why it’s cheaper for the companies in the short run to get the permits rather than bidding for them, but isn’t that just corporate welfare in the normal sense? or is that supposed to be the windfall?
Also, Drum’s explanation of how the 100% auction is less regressive depends on any legislation actually applying revenue from the auction as grants or assistance or whatever for lower income Americans. That seems hopeful, though more likely with a Democratic Congress than a Republican one. It’s still the United States Congress, however… color me skeptical.
God, not another round of “let me list all of my issues with An Inconvenient Truth (without talking to an actual climate scientist).” Of course, we’ll have to because Gore is in the news again.
Yay! Media fails to do basic truth reporting again!
You would think, just maybe CNN is embarrassed to have this guy on the air. He is a bigot and a liar and, quite frankly, has gone down the stupid tunnel with this comment. (via Atrios)
Last week, Heidi and I went to see An Inconvenient Truth as part of our double feature. I didn’t really know what to expect from this movie. Documentaries often have this annoying habit of either being too serious and thus preachy or too entertaining (often masquerading as being “accessible”) and thus too light or even misleading. When I heard about Truth, I was worried it would fall on the preachy side. Even more concerning, when I found out that Al Gore’s life forms a major part of the story, I was concerned that it would be sappy and too much to handle. That, and well, two hours of Al Gore and two hours of a Keynote presentation… how much fun could that be? When the mostly positive reviews started coming out, we decided to go give it a shot. I’m happy we did.
The movie is built around a presentation Al Gore has been giving for years (even before he became a Senator) on global warming and the evidence of an impending climate crisis. The presentation has gone through different versions over the years, of course. The version shown in the film is a modern slideshow built on Keynote. Much of the movie, indeed most of the best sequences, are simply of Gore doing the presentation in front of a studio audience. Between sections of the presentation, we’re treated to back story about how Gore became aware of this issue, what he’s done over his political career to help improve policy around global warming and climate issues, and other personal stories that are relevant to the film.
These segments are how the filmmaker keeps the movie from being “Two Cameras and a Slideshow.” In general, they are deftly woven into the film and provide the transitions between different topics. Too often, however, a monologue or narration by Al Gore is simply played over a really tight shot of his face lit by the glow of his Powerbook and Keynote. He’s not a bad looking guy but I really don’t want to be that close to him (or anyone, really).
In general, though, the stories about Gore are not really about him. A story about the Gore farm becomes an allegory about how humans change habits. The story about his political efforts is about how Congress deals with long term warnings. My fears ended up generally unfounded.
Even better, though, is that very little discussion of the current administration or partisanship in general comes into the film. Short of a few jokes and a discussion about Kyoto, there are few mentions of the Bush administration. Katrina, while held up as an example of the types of disasters we can expect if warming continues unabated, doesn’t become a polemic against Bush’s inaction. As Gore himself says in the movie, this isn’t about politics and the film stays true to that.
The movie also doesn’t really try to scare the audience with the scenarios presented. That’s not to say we’re not shown worst case scenarios, including the ocean current theory butchered in Day After Tomorrow. They’re just not presented in the Dateline/11 o’clock news way, where everything is soooooo very scary. The director doesn’t want you to be afraid. He wants you to act.
It’s this lucid discussion and sensible presentation of the science that makes the film so powerful. You will end up concerned, but in a thoughtful way. This is the first time I’ve watched a film or TV special about global warming where I walked away learning something while also believing there’s still time to do relatively simple things to curb the overall effect.
This is my favorite part of this movie, by the way. I love that the movie spends a significant amount of time talking about what you can do to improve your energy usage and reduce your output of greenhouse gases. The most interesting slide is the one where Gore shows how employing existing technologies can reduce global output of CO2 to 1970 levels. Best of all, none of these involve everyone switching to electric cars or something else ridiculous. Increasing fuel efficiency, replacing incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs, and improving home insulation all have far greater impacts than I would’ve expected. Granted, some of the steps listed require political action and legislative help, so they’re not all possible unless Congress and both parties take this issue more seriously.
I recommend seeing this movie. It’s worth it and is a far better documentary about a politically charged issue than any I’ve seen. If you’re interested in taking action to reduce your own impact on climate change, the film’s website lists many ways you can help reduce your own carbon footprint. We’re taking some of those steps today because of this film.
An Inconvenient Truth: 
Last ad shown before the previews started at the An Inconvenient Truth showing today: An ad for the new Mazda SUV, the CX-7. Can’t make this stuff up.
Yes, it was the same ad reel used throughout the whole theater (we also went to see A Prairie Home Companion which had the same reel). Oddly enough, the previews for An Inconvenient Truth didn’t have the trailer for Who Killed the Electric Car, but Prairie did.
Heidi or I will have reviews up soon.
Easy funny:
You can see it right there, science doesn’t lie. The correlation is clear as the Los Angeles haze — countries that educate women are dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Now, unless you’re crazy enough to think that it’s the CO2 that is causing all those girls to go get themselves an education, I think the implication is obvious: feminism is destroying the planet.
From New York Magazine:
Bush-administration officials privately threatened organizers of the U.N. Climate Change Conference, telling them that any chance there might’ve been for the United States to sign on to the Kyoto global-warming protocol would be scuttled if they allowed Bill Clinton to speak at the gathering today in Montreal, according to a source involved with the negotiations who spoke to New York Magazine on condition of anonymity
They eventually backed down when the conference organizers decided to “call their bluff.” Seems a bit petty, don’t ya think?
(found via TPM)
