I spoke to an acquaintance about "An Inconvenient Truth" this weekend. She was previously uninformed about global warming but receptive, and compelled by the movie. But she expressed this disappointment: "I did not feel I left the theater really knowing what I can do, and what I should do FIRST."

It may have been too much for one film to tackle both problem AND solutions in comparable depth. Mixing the solutions with the final credits may have been an mistake. So a sequel needs to do the solutions piece -- what it will be like to live in a world in which we live differently. A worthy worldchanging challenge.

I saw the movie in LA with family I was visiting after going to YearlyKos in Las Vegas where I exhibited my Solar Survival Show, demonstrations of simple and practical solar techniques that I'd like to see others take to such local events as the more than 3700 farmers markets that happen around the USA every week. Gore will be training 1000 people to give his presentation starting in September. I wish he were training 1000 people to do Solar Survival Shows as well.

We need to start making real changes - yesterday!

PS: I have videos of an example of what I mean by a Solar Survival Show on my blog and some of my other small scale solar devices.

The FIRST thing you should tell people is compact fluorescent bulbs because it is quick and easy and makes a real impact. The second thing is keeping up the basic maintenance on an automobile - proper tire inflation, new air and oil filters, that picky kind of stuff - and switching to a hybrid when possible.

Another easy thing is to plug in any appliances that generate a phantom load - TV sets, computers, any appliance with an instant on feature - into a power strip. After you turn off the appliance, turn off the power strip. Phantom loads are as much as 5% of all US electricial use.

climatecrisis.net actually has a pretty good list of what you can do.

We rarely discuss politics on this site, but please let me ask something.

In the movie, we saw not only a masterful presentation of facts, but we saw a mastery of high-tech means of presenting them.

Can we imagine the current occupant of the White House even being able to find the "On" switch?

the AIT site (climatecrisis.net) is extremely frustrating; there seems to be no channel back to the filmmakers/site owners, I guess because there's nothing of value that the public can tell them? It's old fashioned and patronizing.

It would seem like the natural spot to be discussing/evaluating/providing solutions - which are of global interest, so should be on a global site - but there's no place on the site to do that.

The denialists that I talk to are refusing to see the film until it goes to video because (they say) they don't want to give Al Gore any money. How much does he make from the film, per ticket?

And why aren't his charts - which were hugely convincing - online?
(why do I feel that Gore _doesn't_ "get" the web?)

Anna, please let your denier friends know that Mr. Gore is donating all his proceeds from the film to non-profit groups working to solve climate disruption. I'm not sure, but I believe that the charts are in Mr. Gore's book, of the same title as the film. It costs US $13.17 at Amazon right now, where it is currently the 5th-highest-selling book. Proceeds from the book will also be donated.

A fellow student and I at the University of Guelph saw this film when it came out, and decided that we would try to obtain a license to show it on campus several times throughout the year. Ideally, we'd like to have a panel discussion or debate on the film with our very own Dr. McKitrick (who disagrees that climate change is happening) and any one of our professors who have been studying and researching climate change (and are therefore very much in agreement that it is happening). I think having open discussions on this topic with open-minded youth and community members is key to spreading the word. You can convince every friend you have to go see it, but if you don't make them question it and think about what they saw, it will have no effect on them in the end.

I wanted to respond to this comment:

She was previously uninformed about global warming but receptive, and compelled by the movie. But she expressed this disappointment: "I did not feel I left the theater really knowing what I can do, and what I should do FIRST."

Actually, that's part of the point.

Gore is waking us up to the fact that these things are happening, and he is trying to encourage us to explore for ourselves "what we can do."

If he told us "Do Step A, then Step B, etc," he would be no different from all the evangelists telling us how to find God, be free, save the world, whatever.

Our job is to take responsibility in our own lives, in our own context, with the means available to us (not to someone else). For some, that will mean cutting back on energy use. For others, it might mean joining a local effort to save some wetlands. For still others, it could mean changing careers.

The message for your friend is: Gore doesn't know what she should do. Only she can figure that out. And it doesn't mean she has to get it exactly right from Day 1.

Just try something! Form the intention to help, and then try to help. Evaluate how well it's going, and refine as necessary.

This is called the Art of Life. We don't need people to tell us Step A in order to get started.

I was impressed by a line Al Gore spoke in response to questions about where we are politically regarding climate change. He said something to the effect that, "the maximum of what is politically possible is not enough for what is minimally necessary."

There is a koan for worldchangers to sit with.

How we expand the limits of what we can imagine is possible is at the core of what you are offering at worldchanging.com.

The challenge for me as a reader is to pick a few promising ideas or technologies and find a way to introduce them to my communities...both where i live and my communities of association.

max

I bought a bike after seeing the film, have been riding it to work 3 days per week for the past month.

Jennie - I like your idea at Guelph. While having an open discussion is a good thing, I hope you guys will emphasize that the two presenters do not represent equally weighted opinions. One is very much in the minority (probably 1% of scientists) and the other is very much in the majority. Kind of doesn't even seem right to give the 1% guy more than a couple of minutes...

A reply to Kim -- I appreciate the sentiment, and agree that the "Art of Life" demands of each of us the courage and conviction to start where we are.

For climate change, this is simply not going to be enough. "An inconvenient Truth" DOES suggest many of the simple changes we all know (some of which could be hugely significant -- i.e., CFLs in every socket). Those changes are necessary, but need to be made in the context of political changes actually matched to the true magnitude of the problem. James Hansen says we have ten years to MAKE THE DECISIONS to put society/civilization on a path to avoid the worst impacts of global warming. We are barely facing the right direction yet.

AIT needs LOTS of sequels, to help bring clear the many levels of solution that must be activated together.

1001 guilt mongers won't end our addiction to fossil fuel. Offering people engaged in the "art of life" (whatever that means to the below average man in the car) real options in energy use is the first step. However there are big losers if this happens - Exxon, Peabody coal, utilities, Saudi Arabia etc
More liquid fuels, like ethanol, to dump inefficiently through our cars and trucks is not the answer even if they are "carbon neutral".
Ending our use of the internal combustion engine by switching to electric drive - Teslamotors.com - will return ten times the efficiency gain of switching our light bulbs to CF. Cheap solar - NanoSolar.com and more wind power are a start in the right direction. But we are currently investing much more money in fossil fuel infrastructure and technology than we are investing in renewable energy both here and in China and India where the biggest growth in energy use is occurring. There are solutions. Will the uneducated public ever see them much less embrace them in the market? Only time will tell and we don't have much of that left.

Hassan, you asked about ways to follow up Gore's movie.

This web site, The Canary Project looks like a good place to help marshall evidence.

Actions are harder. How much of this problem depends on policy and how much depends on design? Obviously both are needed, but beyond that we need to coordination of efforts between disciplines and scales.

We haven't learned how to create "fractal" sustainability - the same fundamental processes applied a million times over, at every scale from household to planet. But that's what we need.

An Inconvenient Truth - The word "An" indicates that there are other inconvenient truths and here is one. If Honorable Al (or anyone else in North America) thinks he is doing something significant about CO2 emissions he is deluding himself. He would need to be speaking Chinese to do that. "Eighty per cent of China's electricity comes from coal, and there are plans for 544 new coal-fired power stations to meet an insatiable demand for energy." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4330469.stm
How many lightbulbs will Americans need to change to slow global warming? 10 billion and they are all on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

Spike, this is a place where people check the facts - it's a good idea to be on firm ground with your data. You can take a look at total Co2 emissions, and Co2 emissions per capita, at this web site.

Spike, it's a cop-out to say opportunities for solutions "are all on the other side of the Pacific". I think we should be the change we wish to see in the world. While it is perhaps true that, through the eyes of people in developing nations, Americans are the model of a comfortable yet over-comsumptive lifestyle, I'd like to see us instead become a model of comfortable living based on radical resource efficiency.

(And for what it's worth, there is a scene (as I recall) in An Inconvenient Truth where Gore is meeting with some Chinese officials and listening (somewhat passively, perhaps) to their plans for expanding coal-fired power.)