Tuesday Video(s) - Back to Basics

With talks and hopefully negotiations going on in Copenhagen, and protests going on everywhere else - we thought it a good time to bring it all back to where it started.  We’d be lying if we said “An Inconvenient Truth” wasn’t a majority of the reason we decided to do what we do with this blog.  But there was something else in 2007 that really fueled our desire to self educate and motivate others to do the same.

The following is a post we did in January of 2008. Maybe now more than ever, it’s important for those fighting for environmental justice, those urging our leaders to take action, and those who see the threat of climate change as a basic human rights issue, to take a few minutes and get back to the basics. And that is that we can’t afford to not do something. It’s that simple.  For further ammunition for your battle with skeptics, or just to refresh yourself, Andrew Revkin of Dot Earth and The New York Times recently put together a “Global Warming Basics” piece which is a must-read for EVERYONE .
The following words are just as true today as they were nearly two years ago. And the videos that follow are every bit as relevant.

Al Gore’s “An In

continent Truth” is amazing in its detail, and presentation.  In retrospect, it is even more remarkable for one could argue that that 90 minute presentation pumped new energy into the environmental movement, jumpstarted old perceptions and introduced the movement to millions who previously had never given thought to climate change.

Though the validity is still debated, few if any would argue that something is happening.  The question now being, how to act and how much to act?

Recently we were introduced to a video on YouTube titled, “The Most Terrifying Video You’ll Ever See.”  It is a from a high school science teacher, Greg Craven,  in Oregon and it just might be the best ten minute’s on global climate change that you will ever see.  So we thought….

The video features Craven spending a considerable amount of his ten minutes weighing the options between acting or not acting on climate change all the while leaving it open for debate whether or not climate change is a real threat.  Presumably all of you think it is real, as do we, but that is the most compelling part of his presentation.  By accepting that skeptics will always exist, he shows without a seed of doubt that even the hardest skeptic could not ignore the risk of doing nothing.

Upon further research, thankfully, we found a message from Craven dispelling his first attempt and presenting a follow-up video that was even more compelling.  This one called, “How It All Ends” in which he introduces a devils advocate voice to further dispel skeptics.  A lot of the same material is used in the second clip, which is also ten minutes.

Anyone with a soapbox and a voice could put a video on YouTube about why you should believe in something. But this is different.  This presentation may seem obvious, and a bit nerdy, but that is the beauty of it.  Trust us when we tell you that this is the best twenty minutes you can spend online.  Despite the message to not watch the first one (which we thought was some reverse psychology bit but it wasn’t) watch both of them.  You won’t be disappointed.