global warming

From this CNN article:

PARIS, France (AP) -- Global warming caused by human activity is real and will continue for hundreds of years, a panel of some of the world's top climate scientists said Friday.

Officially releasing a 21-page report in Paris on the hows and the what of global warming -- though not telling the world what to do about it -- the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change gave a bleak observation of what is happening now and an even more dire prediction for the future.

I do believe in global warming. I do believe what Gore said in An Inconvenient Truth. I also believe it because the past year or so there has been an article about it in every issue of Discover, my favorite science magazine.

Josh can tell me silt or something is causing world destruction faster, but either way, the environment is being hurt by our abuse and blindness, and the precautionary principle is just a nice idea no one will apply.

We talk a lot in school about how to get the country off of fossil fuels (sign the stupid Kyoto Proticol, why don't we?!), and sometimes it seems very helpless. We all have so many excuses as to why we can't ride our bicycles or afford cleaner-fuel cars (it's freezing out, school's three miles away). I have just as many excuses. I think we could try to change things on an individual level (which is why I rode my bike all last summer), but ultimately something has to change on a corporate and governmental level so society can accomodate a world free of the devastating consequences of environmental destruction (and free of all of the benefits they contribute to our lives).

It does feel a bit hopeless sometimes. What corporation will abandon their shareholders to pursue alternative energy sources? What president will sign a bill that our capitalistic corporate-controlled society hates (even if nearly every other industrialized nation in the world has signed it)? What individual can give up the comforts of a car and ride to school in -10 degree weather with a cello on their back?

Something has to change, but I fear it won't happen until it is obvious that the world is falling apart, whether it be from global warming or silt pollution. When LA floods they'll sign the stupid bills. Or filibuster until the whole world's covered in water and dead plants and dehydrated people.

What motivates people to let go of their material comforts for a better cause?