monline

Tram is not the ultimate solution. Take a look at Beijing: millions go to work every day by bicycle. Of course they've bicycle roads everywhere in the city ... something that Budapest unfortunately cannot claim. And as for me coming to work by car ... yes, that's true. However I'm going to buy a bicycle very soon (in the spring) and I will test whether I can come to work using it safely or not (on the way from my home to work there's a portion where one can cycle only between the cars).

And of course nobody said that people should stop using cars all of a sudden. Economy of all countries relies on gas at the moment. Without it life would not exist as we know it. However we should make serious efforts to minimize CO2 production and that's what I'm planning to do. I was quite impressed by "An Inconvenient Truth", you (and everybody else) should watch it too. I've already changed some of my habits at home and I'm planning to change things in future too. Eg. I'll choose my next car to be one of the lower CO2 emitting models (maybe a hybrid one if I can afford it). I'll place the vehicle's environmental friendlyness to the top of my list of aspects. I'll buy electrical devices by considering their overall energy consumption and their effectivity in reducing consumption in standby mode. I'll turn off devices as soon as I stop using them. I've set my computer's energy saving modes to lot more effective settings (I've set it to go to sleep even if attached to the power adapter and left unused, and not just while on batteries). I already had an APC surge protector at home, but my DSL modem and the WiFi router were not plugged into it. So when I turned off my PC (or lately the notebook) and switched off the surge protector, the modem and the router were still on. I've now reconfigured my plugs and if I turn off the surge protector, the modem and the router turn off as well. There's absolutely no need to have them running while nobody is at home.

Of course these are small steps, but mankind was not born in space ... it took such small steps for us to get there.

Gore explains the warming in a way that even a 6 year child would understand so you don't need a degree in anything to get the point. At the end of the movie you also get a few tips on how you can contribute to the fight against global warming ... but to tell the truth, the basic principle is very simple: don't do anything to nature that you wouldn't do to yourself. Don't throw garbage on it, don't pollute or poison it and discourage anybody who does. Try to live in symbiosis with your surroundings instead of cannibalizing it. Greenhouse gases are just one thing on an endless list that people should stop producing, so do not think that we're all done if we can push down the CO2 concentration to some imaginary limit.

Sure. Earth changes all the time. I'm aware that the climate would change even without mankind. But I believe (and I don't say I know since I cannot ... I'm nowhere near "knowing" ) that modern civilizations add a significant speedup to the warming effect. On the other hand: I also believe that Earth would be just fine even if we did nothing to stop pollution, etc. A few thousand species would disappear (including humans), but "Earth" would still prevail. In a few million years our (bad) influence would dissolve into thin air and new species would arise.

Doing something about the warming is not for Earth! It's for us! We are the ones who will suck if climate get's unbearable. Of course not today, not tomorrow. But soon enough so that our grand-children (or grand-grand children, etc.) will feel the pain. We should think forward ... a few hundred years in advance. I know: it's a lot to ask from people who have their own share of everyday problems (eg. where to get the money to feed the children and such basic stuff), but if we consistently ignore the problem, mandkind will fail to survive. I believe that the climate problem will grow faster than space exploration and terraforming will become a real alternative (I mean an alternative to keep living on Earth).