Truth can be inconvenient, but not insurmountable

So, what’s your truth? Clearly Al Gore has found his, and now it’s brought him an Oscar and a Nobel Peace Prize nomination. Excuse me, but where was this green version of Al Gore when he was in the White House?

Amazing what leaving Washington, D.C., can do for someone’s career and personality.

I have not yet watched “An Inconvenient Truth,” Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary on climate crisis, global warming and environmental irresponsibility. I never was a big Gore fan, and initially I doubted this film would matter much.

Yet I can’t deny that something usually happens in America when a celebrity begins to champion a cause. It’s an odd cultural phenomenon: All the scientific research in the world is not enough to get anyone off the couch, but if Oprah says there’s a problem, gosh darn it and pronto, people are listening.

Is the climate changing? Yes, I believe so; I also believe it’s always been changing.

Is manmade pollution the primary reason why the climate is changing? Mainstream scientists seem to agree on this one, at least for now.

Do we have holes in the ozone layer? Yes, I believe we do, and the ice at the poles is melting. It sucks being a penguin when the ice is disappearing underneath your webbed feet.

So isn’t it just grand that we can go watch a movie about all this? Sure, but it really doesn’t matter if we don’t change our behavior when we come home after the show.

In Europe the environmental debate has for decades been much more prominent than it is in this country. European regulatory agencies have figured out a very effective way to get people to change their habits: Hit them where it hurts – in the pocket book.

In Denmark, where I grew up, you pay for grocery sacks to encourage you to reuse the ones you already have.

Most bottles and glass containers have a refund value that’s high enough to make you care to take them back to the store.

Gasoline remains steady at a little more than $6 per gallon, making you think twice before you put the key in the ignition.

There are special green taxes on anything from product packaging to paper plates to batteries to diapers. I’m here to tell you that these taxes are not popular among consumers, but we’ve come to look at them as the price you pay when you use or consume something that has a heavy impact on our environment.

So what’s our inconvenient truth here in Spokane? We cling to our cars like babies cling to their bottles, rejecting several light rail proposals because “it’s too expensive.” Well, guess what? As time passes, construction materials and the land to build on is not going to get any cheaper.

We’d like people to bike to work, but we will not give up one square foot of street pavement for safe bike lanes, except the occasional oddball bike path that doesn’t go anywhere. I’ve commuted by bike in this town. I know how scary it can be.

And as long as our car passes the emission test we figure it’s justifiable to drive it the two blocks to the bakery and back.

Soon, when it gets warmer and the sprinklers come on, we can all fall asleep to the soothing sound of clean drinking water running down the streets in the gutter.

Acres of turf will be rolled out in places where grass simply never was intended to grow. So in order to at least appear healthy it has to be watered and chemically treated unlike any other vegetation I can think of.

The truth is, of course, that we’ll have to change on our own.

Plant a tree, use native plants in your new flower bed, use a compact fluorescent light bulb where you can, drive less or carpool, maintain your car and tire pressure, use less hot water and continue to recycle.

It’s worth it, even if you don’t get an Oscar for any of it.