On Edge

Well I finally got around to seeing An Inconvenient Truth on Saturday. Its an important film and I was nicely surprised as to how much I like Al Gore - I never imagined him so personable. Things are missing from the discussion and there are a few too many gauzy close ups of his Mac - which feels a bit infomercial - but I'm happy this film is getting into the public. Its a good continuance of (though not related) Bill Moyers' Earth on Edge from a few years back. My hope is that it can get into each classroom. The saddest part of all is that we know what's wrong - unlike so many other areas of the human tragedy, we can actually measure and see what is going wrong. There just isn't the political will from our leadership and I think our followership is nearly as guilty. Go see it and email your reps about it. Its a worthy film.

So Sunday, like a parrallel universe of denial, Tim Russert had three of the top four oil giants on board - resulting in hand wringing and crying about how hard they work delivering energy. See the full transcript here. They also kept on point that they need 100 years to fully divest of oil - if then! Forget the 40-50 year tipping point cited in the Gore film and endless scientific "report cards" administered by multiple independent bodies ( even the UN) that consisitently state we are in crisis mode. The oil boys insisted on not being energy independent but rather part of the global community. It was laughable to say the least. These Corps created the world oil economy in the first place, made the rules and continue to re-make the rules while consistently undermining international law and human rights efforts in hot spots. Anyway, you know that. I'm just glad they got a free 30 minute commercial courtesy of NBC/ General Electric. The lack of vision is appalling - just regular millionaires working under the ever increasing burdens of demand from thankless and Selfish consumers!

The tri-fecta today- there is a story over at MSN via Huffington about the doomsday Seed Vault. 100 nations have decided to lock away all the earth's seeds near the Arctic Circle. Effectively storing the history of human plant domestication. Its pretty amazing when you think about it and quite prudent, but it is frightening to think this is what has to be done NOW as a safety net. I'm sure future mutants will enjoy corn on the cob as much as we do.