Sunday, February 10, 2008

Should I Stay or Should I Gore?

Well, the title is pretty clever. Okay, its a tad corny... very corny. I have to admit something. I did not see the movie until today. I've heard so many great things about this movie. People have been raving about this. My sister claims to have seen the movie ten times. Well I have finally seen it. I personally liked the documentary but in the end, it was nothing new to me. It was great to put a lot of the concepts and ideas into one piece. I feel that everything here is interconnected, interrelated. As humans and our curiosity, we try to learn these interrelationships, whether it is politics, social issues, science, etc. In fact those are interrelated. Whatever we do, it will affect something else, whether or not it is apparent to us or not. And finally, we are beginning to see the how interconnected we, as humans, are to the Earth, how we can affect everything through what we do.

So what should we do? And are we doing it? Like many other special interest films, I get this rush to go out and apply what I learned. But after a week, a month, a year, it fades away. That willingness to make a change disappears. Are we a generation of apathy? Before this movie, I was completely aware about global warming and how we are affecting the Earth. What have I done to alleviate this problem? Obviously, its small things. These small things become habits. I turn off the lights when I'm not using them. I try and limit my driving. I take the bus. Is it enough? I don't know. Sometimes, I just want to indulge. I want to waste everything and not care about the consequences. But I really can't. Its like wearing a car seatbelt. If I'm not wearing one, I feel naked. It just feels too weird. My relatives and friends in Indonesia laugh at me when I wear my seatbelt. To them, its quite unusual to put on a seatbelt if you're not driving. I believe that we need to be constantly pounded about the issue of global warming to the point where we cannot ignore it. That pink elephant in the room? Its global warming and one day it could trample all of us. Can we ignore that?

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