Response to Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth'

After watching the Al Gore DVD, An Inconvenient Truth, all I could think of was that we’re doomed. It seems pretty impossible to be able to cut our waste by enough to stop major environmental change happening soon!! But that it was Gore is trying to get people to realise - that we need to act. I think that the film is good in some ways because it can be used to bring this issue of sustainability back to Earth and make it hit home for all the people who don’t realise the magnitude of what we are doing.
I do think they deserved the Nobel Peace Prize because it is a pioneering documentary – yes, studies had been done before but Al Gore had the capability to make them heard to a much wider audience, this is a key thing.
I think that after watching the film that hardly anyone would be able to ignore its message. This means that it has a positive influence on people to become more sustainable and more educated about the environment around us. This is such a valuable thing because education is key to sustainability.
The film was good in the fact that it had concrete information about our environment that no-one can dispute, whereas in conversation about climate change it is difficult to back up your argument and therefore difficult to convince someone of its effects. Al Gore was also able to prove an opposing argument obsolete; the fact that many people argue that global warming is natural and has occurred in the past. Gore acknowledged that fact but, with evidence, showed that it had not happened to the extent or with the rapidity of today. He showed that these two things were the problem – he made it so that no-one could contradict him, therefore making is a very good film.

What actions could you (in theory) undertake that would improve the 'sustainability' of your lifestyle? What might be preventing you from doing these?

Since studying Geography at GCSE level I have become increasingly aware of the negative impacts that we, as human beings, have on our precious environment. Personally I hate so see the damage we are doing to our world because I perceive it to be such a beautiful place and I can't imagine other generations not being able to enjoy it as we have. As I am writing this I have an image in my head of the Alps in winter with snow that it unskiiable. I've never seen proper snow before and already my friends who do go on ski holidays with their families yearly have noticed that the amount of snowfall is decreasing. I know this isn't the most important problem the world is facing at the moment but it is one that didn't need to occur; this along with the adverts of suffering people in Africa who can't even grow crops to survive are partly the result of unsustainability. This is the sort of thing that got me interested in sustainable development.

I think that I live a relatively sustainable life compared to some others, but I'm in no way a saint. I'm very good around the house with the little things such as not wasting water, switching the TV off and not leaving it on standby. I recycle EVERYTHING that is possible, every last scrap of paper is put into the correct bin. When I book a flight I carbon offset it. I (try to) grow some of my own vegetables in my own garden. When it comes to buying vegetables I never know whether it is best to buy them from UK farmers because they have used less fuel to get to the supermarket or vegetables that have been flown in and create jobs for farmers in third world countries.
I try to walk to places instead of driving. I use the train and the bus to get into university instead of driving. I feel bad if I don’t recycle something that could easily be or if I haven’t switched something off.

To make my life more sustainable I could try to persuade my parents to switch to renewable energy, although I have a feeling this isn’t as easy as it looks. I could watch less TV, use my laptop less and drink less cups of tea to use less energy. In truth there is nothing stopping me from doing these other than I wouldn’t want to stop doing these things. I think that there are so many easy things that everybody could do and it would make a huge difference to our waste and our emissions but people are lazy or in the case of some people (I know some) they don’t even care. I have one friend who is very unsustainable, he drives gas guzzlers, has his pool heater turned up to the max all year round, doesn’t recycle and I tell him what the consequences of his actions might be and he thinks that global warming, for example, would be great because he would get to sunbathe more. He doesn’t understand that it’s not quite that simple. Education is key to sustainability. If I was told of more ways that I could be sustainable then I would do them, these are the only obstacles in my way.