This past December I happened to catch an Oprah show featuring Al Gore
and his then-new documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Having seen and
been energized by the documentary months earlier, I was initially
pleased that the film was getting attention from someone who has such a
great influence over US culture, behavior, and attitude. I was so happy
to see that mainstream broadcast television was dedicating an entire
hour to the topic of climate change. After watching for a few minutes –
watching Oprah and the audience’s wide-eyed reactions, their murmurs of
shock and revelation – I became agitated and angry and started to
question why Oprah was just now addressing this issue, and why these
people were behaving as if they were being introduced to a planetary
crisis for the very first time.
The Kyoto Protocol (an
agreement made under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change, commiting ratified parties to reduce their emissions of
greenhouse gases) was negotiated in 1997; the first global conference
to discuss the changing climate, the World Climate Conference, was held
in 1979; and the first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970, the same year
that the well known 3 arrow recycling symbol was designed. So why did
it take that most influential broadcaster of all – Oprah Winfrey –
until 2006 to catch on to the trend and introduce people to the fact of
climate change and the human contribution to it? I decided to just be
grateful she is on board, and I expected to see a new energy and
enthusiasm in the media. I figured the Oprah website would tip the
tide in favor of survival.
A few days after the broadcast, I
checked the Oprah.com website to take a look at the message board for
this particular show, and was both encouraged and horrified by the
postings. Encouraged by the number of people showing enthusiasm and
expressing their readiness to take action to reduce their greenhouse
gas emissions and alter their consumption habits. Horrified by the
number of people who continue to think that this is an us vs them issue
– the United States vs the developing world – and that we, residents of
the richest country on Earth, should feel justified in delaying
responsive action because we can’t force China or India to make the
same sacrifices! China and India are not even in the same pollution
league as the US; they don’t have the same history of global polluting
and over-consumption of resources as we have in the US.
I
believe that if people are presented with truthful information, proper
motivation, and a sense of empowerment to make a change, they will take
responsibility to change their lives and their habits, and ownership of
the consequences of their actions. Climate change is more than big
businesses dumping poisons into the air; it is regular people turning
on their lights, driving their cars, and consuming in excess. It’s all
of us allowing and encouraging the ongoing degradation of our own home
through daily consumer decisions we make because we can and because we
are waiting on the other guy.
Let me get back to Oprah: One
show not long before the Gore appearance discussed the spiritual void
that people in the United States say they feel. The featured guests
talked about the consumption and excess Americans participate in to try
to fill this void. The consumption that Americans are stuffing this
void with is killing not only our spirits, but our planet and our
future as well – and we are allowing our worse nature and our
politicians to persuade us to wait around for the other guy – China,
India, Thailand, for heavens sake – to do the right thing before we
agree to save our own lives.
But behavior change is difficult.
To monitor our resource consumption and make even small sacrifices is
hard to sustain beyond a few days or weeks. So it is especially
important for visible, influential people and media to keep climate
change, conservation, and the danger of our unmindful consumption at
the front of the minds of Americans. This is a global problem, and a
big one at that, but that does not take either the responsibility or
the solution entirely out of the hands of “regular” people. We need to
have Oprah and Al and Simon and Conan and Rosie help make saving the
planet and the most vulnerable residents of it hip, chic, sexy, popular
– and they can’t wait around for rating sweeps week.
The earth
is a global commons, providing benefit to all, but at the risk of
exploitation and abuse as well. To ignore the current emergency and
turn our backs on an opportunity to improve our own lives, the lives of
others living with us around the world, and the lives of future, fellow
Earth citizens would be a tragedy indeed. It is time to step up the
level and intensity of commitment that we have to conserving natural
resources and mitigating the damage of our ill-informed ways.