I was reading some text over the net on Al Gore and the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s winning the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, and the former vice president used the attention to warn that global warming is “the greatest challenge we’ve ever faced.”
It is always interesting to see how awards or prizes are most of the time given to those who apparently deserve it due to years upon years of labouring for their good purpose to fight for a just cause. And more so these winners would have done it openly and publicly and with much publicity that even those from outer space could tune in to their intergalactic satellite dishes to watch live performances of worldwide telecasted concert engineered to the very cause of saving the planet. What better reward to receive than a world-acclaimed prize of “trying to do good to the environment” which cannot fend for itself in this modern era.
Let’s not forget of course, the Kyoto Protocol. Now the US GOvernment under President Bush’s administration has abandoned the Kyoto Protocol because he said “it would harm the U.S. economy and because it did not require immediate cuts by countries like China and India. The treaty aimed to put the biggest burden on the richest nations that contributed the most carbon emissions.” The U.S. Senate voted against mandatory carbon reductions before the Kyoto negotiations were completed. The treaty was never presented to the Senate for ratification by the Clinton administration.
It’s always easy to criticise those who try to do their part in the world, be it saving the whales or the championing the fight to have clean air to breathe, and it;s never easy being those doing the fighting. For those of us who are able to do something, then it’s high time we do do something about it. We don’t have to wait for Al Gore and his bunch of merry men to air power-consuming concerts all over the world and ferry expensive artists to perform in them to get our attention on the subject, we just need to open our eyes a bit wider and read just a little bit more and find out what’s happening to the world around us. The weather is enough to tell us that something is not right. No amount of day-long lectures on Kyoto Protocol can save the world. It is up to us individually, you and me.
Listen to the Earth, she speaks through her children. The wind, the sun, the rain, the seas. Do your part to conserve her, do what is right. Don’t wait for Mr Gore or Nobel prize givers or any other media-friendly conservationists. Do it because you want to, and you know you need to.
Menstuff 