The news site of Verona High School

The Fairviewer

The news site of Verona High School

The Fairviewer

The news site of Verona High School

The Fairviewer

An Inconvenient Reality

What do you do when you try to save the world, but it’s just not enough?

Al Gore can tell you a lot about being let down. Thanks to Florida’s botching of a presidential election, Gore’s seat as head of the country was stolen right from under him, and he had to watch as the world crumbled beneath his opponents’ fingers for the next eight years. But instead of ending his career and drowning in self-pity, Gore seized the opportunity to try save the world from climate change. Investing all his time in educating about climate change’s detrimental effects, Gore collected data over the years and created his Academy-Award winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.

In my environmental science class, I watched his documentary as most of my classmates fell asleep. Once a warning to the world when it came out seven years ago, Gore’s movie has now become our reality. Yet I find it unfathomable that people are more worried about a zombie apocalypse as they are about the effects of climate change.

I decided to write about Al Gore because I often wonder what he’s doing now. After being gypped of a presidency in 2000, he created The Climate Reality Project and took it upon himself to educate and prepare the world. But, here we are more than a decade later, and not much has changed. It wasn’t until our beloved Jersey Shore and Memorial Day Weekend plans were ruined by Sandy, that the Verona bubble was popped. But there are many other bubbles around the world that climate change is destroying.

In 2012, 60 percent of America was in drought, and the trend has continued in 2013. Last year, $110 billion was were spent in fixing climate-related disasters. Half of the North Pole has melted away. The sea level is rising exponentially, causing stronger and more unpredictable storms.

But still 90 million tons of global warming pollution is released into the atmosphere every day.

Why is it that people are so in denial about the changes occurring all over our Earth?

Is it because Americans want to keep their macho SUVs roaming the roads and AC units blasting, or is denying the reality of climate change just something that will keep the norm of the right and left in constant stalemate? Or, maybe people just believe that it is Earth’s “natural cycle,” or that God will fix it all.

When I looked up “Al Gore Interview” on YouTube, there were many results that caught my eye. “Science and Distortion- The Truth About Global Warming,” “Al Gore: ‘I was wrong about global warming’ WHY HE IS A LIAR,” and my favorite, “100% proof Al Gore: NO global warming due to mankind.”

But whether failing to acknowledge its existence is a way to polarize the right from the left, or blind faith leaving it in the hands of God, or Earth’s “natural cycle,” there shouldn’t be anybody who wants to watch the world deteriorate around us. In an interview with Charlie Rose, Gore referred to people’s denial of climate change as a “memory hole” because no one wants to admit its existence.

Now back to my question, what is Gore doing now? The answer is anticlimactic, and slightly disheartening. Although he is still occasionally gives conferences on climate change, his new book, The Future, is about the six drivers of global change–with only a mere chapter on climate change.

He’s done all he can, but not even a Nobel laureate-Academy Award winning genius who “used to be the next president of the United States” can save the world.

That’s our job.

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