Global Warming: A national awakening
Have you noticed? People are beginning to pay attention.
After decades of finger pointing, opposing scientific conclusions and flat out denial, if seems now as though the general populace of the nation is starting to come to it’s senses and realize we’ve got a problem on our hands. In the past few weeks I’ve been an enthusiastic witness to series of events and media portrayals which exemplify this trend.
You may have seen that I wrote about one such story back in early February. Richard Branson with the endorsement of Al Gore announced the Virgin Earth Challenge, sponsoring a $25 million dollar prize for researchers who could create a process to effectively remove large amounts of CO2 from our atmosphere.
Since then news of the wave of public awareness has been pouring in.
The documentary film “An Inconvenient Truth” which features Al Gore’s campaign to raise awareness of global warming won an oscar for best documentary. Winning this award not promises to increase the market exposure of the film itself, it presented an opportunity for those involved to snag a few moments of time in front of an estimated 35 million US television viewers, and countless millions more worldwide. Gore, along with oscar winning songwriter (for her original song in the same movie) Melissa Ethridge and the film’s creator Davis Guggenheim brought the topic of global warming to the forefront and urged those watching to educate themselves and take action.
Yesterday brought an even more significant leap forward in this fight as 5 governors of Western Sates announced an agreement to develop a target to lower greenhouse gasses and create a program aimed at helping industry reach these goals. The specifics are unclear on what these goals will be, or exactly how significant the motivation will be to comply for businesses. While this coalition of states doesn’t equate to national representation, it is significant. It has been said that if the 5 states of Washington, Oregon, California, New Mexico, and Arizona where to be considered an autonomous nation state, the emission of greenhouse gasses from that state would rank among the top 10 worldwide. Here’s to hoping that the regulations they implement at least measure up to those of the Kyoto Protocol… but, I’m not holding my breath.
Today the big news is of the proposed buy out of the Texas power giant TXU by a group of private investment firms. On the surface it’s a big dollar business deal which stands to make a few people a lot of money right? The real story from an environmental perspective here however is that this buyout comes with some strict environmental requirements. Specifically, TXU is to scrap plans for 8 of it’s proposed 11 coal fired power plants which where to be built in Texas, in favor of alternative energy sources. Should this come to fruition, we’re talking about a reduction of 56 million tons of carbon release into the atmosphere every year. This deal is a long way from being set in stone, but the fact that these environmental regulations are even factoring into the negotiations of what would be the largest private equity buyout of a publicly owned corporation in US history, is significant.
More than any one of these stories is the sum of the movement which they represent. After years of frustration, it finally feels like things are beginning to change. Only time will tell…
Tags: Al Gore, Climate Change, Global Warming
