Global Warming: A Moral Issue
Posted by: EvanOct 25 2006, 5:42 pm
I was among the several thousand people who attended Al Gore's talk about global warming last night. Of those thousands, it appeared that only a handful rode their bikes.
Al gave his standard performance, trying to thoroughly convince the audience that global warming is one of, if not the, leading moral issues of our time. I presume that many, if not most, of the attendees had seen Al's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, which is almost identical to the presentation he gave.
It was good to have Gore talk about how Portland is perceived as a leader, nationally, on confronting this issue and creating new jobs and businesses out of the opportunity.
And yet — and this is a common comment among those who saw the movie or his presentation — the call to action remains etherial. For roughly an hour and a half, the case is made convincingly that global warming is a problem, and for roughly five minutes, the case is made that we can do something about it.
Specifics — where the devil resides, the details — are scant when it comes to the solutions. Perhaps this is because when the pie-slices of dramatically reducing our emissions are explained, from energy efficiency to transportation efficiency, people pick at the specifics. You sell people a great show, and they complain about how buttery the popcorn was. Gore seems to believe everything will change once we reach a mind-shift caused by a Tipping Point of beliefs. Once enough people think it's serious, we'll jump to action. Until then, we're likely to not act boldly enough.
But if people are anxious for something to do, one of the top things is to reduce unnecessary driving. Perhaps there were many more bicyclists than I saw; the Rose Garden's official bike parking is rather dark and doesn't feel all that safe. But my sense is that people, while they can change their beliefs, have a hard time changing their habits, and it's easier to change from a polluting car to a less polluting car than to discover the transformative joys of bicycling.
In the end, I left uplifted, ready to come to work on behalf of bicycling, ready to help the BTA do our small part to take on this great moral issue of our time.
Evan
Sounds like you were a bit discouraged by the lack of bikes at the Gore event. Frankly, I wouldn't dream of leaving a bike locked with even the most impregnable design outdoors in the evening at the Rose Garden. so I bet I am not alone in being a cyclist who wouldn't even consider taking my bike to an event there.
On the plus side, I rode the MAX a few stops to get my car which I had parked at Lloyd Center parking area. Apparently lots of other people did something comparable. While this is not ideal, it is a step in the right direction to have folks use transit at least in part to get to destinations well served by transit. If nothing else one gets a chance to chat with people who attended the event which would not be the case if everyone just drove and paid for parking.
I was overall impressed by the fact that Gore has been doing this all over the world more than a 1000 times now and still seems fresh and enthusasitic about getting enough of us to a 'Tipping Point'.
I also though he treated the questions courteously and thoughfully . And the fact that film (which I haven't seen) is now being shown in thousands of churches is a good sign.
On the minus sign, the audience was completely white; I didn't even see a token number of Hispanics or African Americans. Grantd tickets were at least $35 a pop, but still.
On that matter, what efforst are we at the BTA doing to reach the non-white community in the greater Portalnd area, and elsewhere in the State?
ONE more thing: if fortune is relatively good to me, I am considering sponsoring in part ($100)? someone from the BTA to go to Victoria to check out their bike path program. I had the opporutnity to experience first hand the Galloping Goose trail and was very favorably impressed. Especially by the number of older people who were socializing and exercising with their bicycles on the trail. Granted the weather was superb but I was told that the trail was actually used a lot even during the wetter winter weather. Best of all, people were smiling and taking time to 'smell the roses.'
p.s. I rode my bike from Portland to Port Angeles via a western route, came back via the ferry to Anacortes and took the train home from Seattle. If anyone is interested, I would be happy to share my lexpereince on this little 8 day bike trip
Thanks for the message, Jonathan! And thanks for offering to contribute to a Victoria trip. We may just take you up on that.
If you want to write up a post about your bike trip, that'd be great — we could post it as a guest blog entry.
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