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Inconvenient Truths
Ray Johnson, CFP
July 2006
This past weekend, Sue and I saw the new documentary film on global warming called An Inconvenient Truth. Now mind you, I have never been a big fan of Al Gore, but this is a movie that everyone should see. Walking out of the theater, you could feel the uneasiness of the crowd as they mulled over what they had seen and heard. Thoughts of melting glacial continents raising the levels of the earth's oceans 20 to 40 feet and the movie's visual effects showing the impact that this would have on the world's coastline populations are hard to imagine.
One of the film's main themes is the disturbing claim that scientists world-wide have followed global warming trends for some time, and there seems to be a universal consensus in the scientific community about the problem and the necessary steps to fix it.
"Why not take immediate action?" you ask. The problem seems to be one of economic sacrifice on the part of the world's population as we attempt to wean ourselves from our growing use of fossil fuels (oil and gas). America has long been the biggest producer of the gaseous emissions doing the damage, but other developing countries are starting to join us as their economies expand quickly and their people try to be like us in the cars they drive and the houses they live in. Politicians and economists are concerned that taking action to solve the global warming problem will have negative effects on our economy.
During World War II, Americans were asked to ration and sacrifice. I remember hearing my parents talk about the sacrifices they made during World War II and the pride they took in doing so for the good of the country and for the future of their children. The challenge today appears to be the fact that American society has become growth dependent and that we need an economy growing at about 3% a year. Without this growth, unemployment will increase, companies will go out of business, the stock market will not go up, company pension plans will increasingly be under funded, real estate values will drop, etc. Well, I guess you get the picture. This is one reason why, after the collapse of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, President Bush encouraged us to go to the shopping malls instead of cutting back and starting to save for the future.
My parents always used to tell me that the longer you wait to correct a problem, the bigger the problem will get and the more drastic the solution will be. Maybe things have changed this wisdom, but somehow I doubt it. Now I can add An Inconvenient Truth of global warming to those other Inconvenient Truths that have also been relegated to the bottom shelf of the American To Do List:
- Social Security
- Medicare
- Health Care
- Oil Dependency & Future Access to Oil Reserves
- Global Warming
You owe it to yourself and your family to see the documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth. Right or wrong, it will give you something to think about.
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