It's important to rescue the frog

Except for math exams when I was in secondary school, I've never been terrified of charts. Until today. Watching that red line go up the axis, I literally felt my heart in my throat and something akin to shortness of breath...


We just saw An Inconvenient Truth, and I have to say, it was both uncomfortable and devastating to watch. Al Gore relates rising CO2 emissions to a whole host of environmental crisises- from the splitting of the ice shelves in Antarctica to the bleaching of coral reefs. I've never considered myself an environmentalist, but after watching the video, I'm actually rethinking installing the air-con for the summer and whether we should be driving to the grocery store instead of walking or biking.

Some people have criticized the movie and Al Gore's entire endeavor separately as 1) a vanity project, 2) a launching pad for a shadow campaign for the 2008 Presidency, and/ or 3) an attempt to stir up mass hysteria. Some have even incomprehensibly compared him to Hitler (????) Ermmm... excuse me, whatever the grounds for comparison, Hitler wanted his followers to massacre an entire race of people; Al Gore wants us to... save our planet.

Politics aside, watching the movie- or his presentation more accurately speaking- makes you realize that conserving the environment has truly become a moral and ethical imperative for our generation. And it doesn't have to be hard. I'm not expecting to jump on a Greenpeace ship to protest against deep-sea drilling, but I might bring my own bag to the grocery store the next time I go. Or read my notes online instead of printing them out. And start buying energy-efficient bulbs. Choose your way.

Because it's important to rescue the frog.