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For the issue of global warming, 2007 was the year everything changed. Al Gore's documentary on the climate crisis, An Inconvenient Truth, won two Oscars and lots of other awards; later in the year, Al himself shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose 2007 report summary for policymakers states that "Most of the observed increase in globally-averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations" (italics in original). And of course there were the Bali climate talks just last month, where the U.S. finally made a few compromises to its holdout position on the issue.
We also had a year of unusually severe and widespread drought and floods, as well as massive wildfires across Southern California. While any individual one of these events could be random, together they form part of the ongoing pattern of an increasingly chaotic climate.
So what have we, the people, been doing about this? To a large extent, the answer is that we've been buying compact fluorescent lightbulbs and remembering to turn them off when we leave the room. Some of us have gone further and purchased carbon offsets or a Toyota Prius. What I worry is that we could have done much more. The environmental movement could have recruited thousands of new activists to lobby the government and major corporations to enact the changes we know to be necessary.
One can argue that small first steps are good, that we need to ramp up toward the greater demands on people's time, money, and effort. But my concern is the so-called Issue Attention Cycle, which may already be turning toward a downswing as people get sick of the phrase "going green" cropping up everywhere. Perhaps we could have moved more quickly and been able to get to the point where the American middle class is ready to put solar panels on their roofs en masse, and vote initiatives into place to help them pay for it, by the end of 2008; perhaps we still can. But one thing I know is that we can't fail to take advantage of the momentum we have, because we can't make it last until we get the green mentality firmly engrained in the American psyche.
We also had a year of unusually severe and widespread drought and floods, as well as massive wildfires across Southern California. While any individual one of these events could be random, together they form part of the ongoing pattern of an increasingly chaotic climate.
So what have we, the people, been doing about this? To a large extent, the answer is that we've been buying compact fluorescent lightbulbs and remembering to turn them off when we leave the room. Some of us have gone further and purchased carbon offsets or a Toyota Prius. What I worry is that we could have done much more. The environmental movement could have recruited thousands of new activists to lobby the government and major corporations to enact the changes we know to be necessary.
One can argue that small first steps are good, that we need to ramp up toward the greater demands on people's time, money, and effort. But my concern is the so-called Issue Attention Cycle, which may already be turning toward a downswing as people get sick of the phrase "going green" cropping up everywhere. Perhaps we could have moved more quickly and been able to get to the point where the American middle class is ready to put solar panels on their roofs en masse, and vote initiatives into place to help them pay for it, by the end of 2008; perhaps we still can. But one thing I know is that we can't fail to take advantage of the momentum we have, because we can't make it last until we get the green mentality firmly engrained in the American psyche.
