In-flight Education: An Inconvenient Truth

I had a great flight from JFK back to HK, where it was easier for me to stay awake through the night (morning in HK time) by watching action/adventure movies and television shows. But the most engaging and thought-provoking movie I watched was the last one I watched over breakfast service: Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Most people have known for some time that global warming is a problem. I certainly feel the effects in my day-to-day life in Hong Kong these past few years as pollution has gotten worse and worse. Just being in the US and Canada these past couple of months, I have been able to breath much easier and feel a lot healthier. Granted, I also had a healthier lifestyle, but one should not underestimate the restorative power of being able to breath clean, healthy air. And it's also worrying that in these past couple of years, I've had much more exposure to friends or family of friends falling ill from cancer. And these are relatively young people between the ages of 35 and 60. The facts and statistics Al Gore presents are quite shocking. When you see the dramatic spike in C02 emissions and rise in global temperature in the past few decades relative to a relatively stable span of 650,000 years, it wakes you up to the scale of the problem. We all know that global warming is a fact, but as Al Gore pointed out, most of us are frogs sitting contentedly in a pot of water that is slowing coming to boil, oblivious to the eventual consequences. If you haven't seen the film, try to see it. There's plenty more information on the website: www.climatecrisis.net.

An Inconvenient Truth doesn't just tell you how dire the global warming problems is. It places the responsibility for solving the problem back in the hands of each individual. The website gives more information on how to take action. The movie even inspired me to make a small change; I took the train to work today.