When tourists fleeing the blazing heat of the Central Valley enter Toni Orans” Mendocino art gallery, they often want to talk about the cool weather.
Orans makes a point of steering weather small talk toward a discussion about why the hottest years on record have happened in the past decade — asking them if they have seen the nationally-distributed documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.”
“Many people who live in more conservative areas don”t want to see the movie … they [already] don”t believe it for a minute,” said Orans.
She was quickly interrupted by moderator Nancy McCagney, Ph. D., a retired climate science professor from Delaware, who pointed out the film had played very well all over the country in conservative areas.
More than 50 people attended a Sierra Club roundtable discussion of the documentary at the Stanford Inn last Thursday evening, with the room packed full and people sitting out in the hall. All but three had seen the film.
The inconvenient truths went beyond images from the film of the ocean gobbling up Florida or the specter of a comfortable and forceful Al Gore to local people asking hard questions of themselves — and others.
One was a discussion — and disagreement — about how progressives can spread the nonpartisan message of the film moderated by Gore, which closed its Fort Bragg run last Thursday. While some pointed fingers at President Bush on Thursday, most said the issue is bigger than any political divide.
Another uncomfortable truth was the obvious point that almost everybody had driven a car to the meeting, about a quarter of the participants driving alone.
David Linkhart drew high praise from organizer Lorraine Buranzon for providing carpooling from Fort Bragg to the event.
“After seeing the film, and talking with Nancy, I was motivated to organize this evening of discussion. As a member of the Sierra Club”s Mendocino Group, I”m interested in organizing events that inspire people to become involved with issues of environmental concern on a community level,” Buranzon said.
“The film does a good job of taking many sources of technical information, such as climate change, and putting the information into a form that can be digested by the average citizen — and in an informative and interesting manner,” Buranzon said.
Christiane Heckeroth, an organizer of the group Coast Economic Localization Link (CELL), came with a long list of ideas on how people can use the awareness created by global warming to foster action. Among her ideas were working for energy independence and food security, asking school boards to use locally-produced organic foods, and looking at more sustainable ways to design and build homes.
She encouraged viewing the climate disaster presented by the film as “an opportunity that has never presented itself before” to create a saner, more local society.
“I would like to think about what we can do … to reshape our communities,” she said.
Heckeroth encouraged people to carpool to the Aug. 14 Board of Supervisors meeting in Ukiah to back the passage of the ICLEI resolution, already endorsed by the cities of Fort Bragg and Point Arena. Supervisors have worried about the cost of the program.
ICLEI — Local Governments for Sustainability — is an international membership association of local governments dedicated to reducing greenhouse gasses through local actions. Information is available at www.icklei.org. (ICLEI no longer has any meaning as an acronym.)
“Anything that happens locally is put through the lens of How much Co2 does it produce?”” Heckeroth said in explaining the resolution”s key benefit.
Gore”s film documents how the rise in carbon dioxide caused by consumption and pollution is melting icecaps and how climate change is responsible for everything from the loss of the famous snows on Kilimanjaro to the spectacular disaster of Hurricane Katrina.
Much of the discussion was on the impracticality of reversing destructive behaviors in a greed- and bottom-line-based system. Many brought up the points made in the film about how China and Europe are doing so much more than the United States toward lower energy use, lower waste and alternative energy. America has to relearn its own agrarian and communal values.
“We are all on this same ship together. Eventually we are going to have to learn to share,” said Pamela Hunter.
People in the crowd disagreed about issues like population control, some saying that was an excuse to blame those in developing nations, rather than take personal action. Facilitator McCagney said people should be aware that not everybody is against the end of the world. She said some pre-millenialist fundamental Christians are hoping to bring on the reign of Christ.
Pre-millennialism is the view that after His second coming, Jesus Christ will rule the earth for 1,000 years, necessitating darker days than the post-millennial idea of the church converting the world.
But most people at the event stayed away from criticism, politics and religion.
Bernie MacDonald had his own list of ideas for change and worried the film might be so scary that people might think there was nothing they can do.
“If we can all use half of our current energy consumption, and take responsibility for quantifying this reduction, it is possible to create a real change in our local ecology and to being the changes toward sustainability,” MacDonald said.
Buffy Maple attended a packed showing of the film in Orange County and thought the crowd was a mixture of conservative and progressive people.
She interjected into the population growth discussion the idea that the population of liberal people worldwide seemed to be in decline, bringing laughter from the crowd.
McCagney said the rapid growth of poorer people and flat population growth for the most educated people was a historic fact that necessitated more work in communicating messages like the one in the film. She said progressives must understand the American conservative fear of any rules or government regulation, pointing to the plight and attitude of local fisherpersons.
The film”s Website — climatecrisis.net — details specific steps that individuals can take to improve the environment directly through their own actions and choices.
The hope is that the scientific approach of the film, which will be available for distribution in schools this fall, will be more successful in changing minds that past, more partisan efforts.
When the film comes out on DVD, Buranzon said she would offer to rent the film, bring it to the schools and show it, and/or lend a DVD player to any teacher who”d like to show it.
“It would be a small investment with a potentially large impact,” she said.
