Al Gore was at UMBC a couple of weeks ago to give his inconvenient truth presentation. The audience was 4000 strong and included MD Senators Mikulski and Sarbanes. He was an excellent speaker—engaging, inspiring, reflective, and warm. I’m so glad Erica, Eric, Lindsey and I could be there together. It was a beautiful and exciting spring evening!If global warming will be our children’s greatest challenge in their adult years, how will our world be different then? Will the scientific community be united on key issues? Will advocacy groups be adequately represented? Will researchers have access to unbiased resources? Will politicians put health and welfare ahead of donor interests? Will businesses respect the precautionary principle? Will laymen embrace knowledge-seeking with zeal? Will skeptics be receptive to new ideas about change? How will we unite as the community of mankind to help solve a shared problem?
Information about global warming streams daily from newspapers, the Internet, books, speakers, friends, magazines, etc. It’s easy to amass information and questions about how humans impact the Earth and what Earth’s natural rhythms are apart from our human influence.
All questions, though, ultimately seem to point to our relationship with nature, Earth, and the universe. It seems hard to deny that we are one and that one of our greatest human challenges is to respect, value, and appreciate our role in nurturing one another.
For our children, Laurie David and Cambria Gordon have written The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming to help understand why global warming happens and how we can work together to stop it. It’s scheduled for publication by Scholastic, Inc. in September 2007.
- Sierra Club on Global Warming
- Crispin Tickell
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
- An Inconvenient Truth
(Photo from Apollo 11, July 16, 1969)
