Zach LarkinsTAKING A BREAK FROM KYOTO
I thought I'd take a break today to bring you some of the views others have of Gore, Suzuki and Kyoto in general. The following comes from letters to the editor, in their entirety. Anything in brackets is the editor's reply. Enjoy.
Letters to the editor - The National Post - Feb 27, 2007
Congratulations to Al Gore on his Oscar win. His achievement is all the more noteworthy, given the Academy's traditional reticence to recognize works in the field of science fiction.
G. Davis, Toronto.
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In the fantasy society that the United States sometimes is, it would only be normal that film actors become president (Ronald Reagan) or state governor (Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger). It is only a small step from here for a former vice-president to become a movie star.
Al Gore's got his Best Documentary Oscar on Sunday night using film as a propaganda tool, as Leni Riefenstahl did with Triumph of the Will in 1935. This Hitler-commissioned work became arguably the first and best political documentary of all time.
The Gore-y Inconvenient Truth is of a meaner sort. It pretends to use science, but instead wallows in exaggerations and unsupported extrapolations and uses the persuasive media of the film to put scary computer scenarios on the screen as if they were fact.
Sadly, this propaganda film is widely shown in schools. I would not want impressionable children to see it.
Albert Jacobs, Calgary.
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Letters to the editor - The Toronto Sun - Feb 27, 2007
Apparently the Oscars have gone green. I was deeply moved as I listened to Melissa Ethbridge, Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio tell me all the things I could do to help reduce greenhouse emissions. I suppose the hundreds of people sitting in the audience that night were all crowded around a bus stop at the end of the show. Surely there weren't close to a thousand limousines -- all sporting V8 engines or greater -- driving one or two people at a time back to their immense mansions with their industrial sized air conditioners keeping them at unnaturally cool temperatures. I couldn't imagine that the incredibly wealthy members of the academy all have gigantic, heated swimming pools, hot tubs, sports cars, SUV's, private planes and such. Surely these advocates of ecology don't ever use their extreme prosperity to be the largest consumers and therefore garbage producers on the planet. Sarcasm aside, isn't it a touch hypocritical that the very group of people who probably pollute more per individual than 99.9% of the world's population have named themselves the champions of the environment?
Nick Hoekstra
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Your article about Al Gore's visit to Toronto ("Tree huggers gored," Michele Mandel, Feb. 22) and the Feb. 24 letter from Grant Kelly both portray Gore and David Suzuki to be hypocrites for getting to and from their lectures in gas-powered vehicles. To be fair to these two, both tours are spending substantial amounts of money to buy carbon offsets to make up for the trips. While buying these offsets isn't a perfect solution, at least these men are making a legitimate effort to practice what they preach and you should give them some credit for it.
Jeffery Nichols
Kingston
(Carbon offsets are being viewed rightly, with increasing skepticism, because they are essentially a small financial penalty one pays to be able to go right on polluting)
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Letters to the editor - The National Post - Feb 27, 2007
Congratulations to Al Gore on his Oscar win. His achievement is all the more noteworthy, given the Academy's traditional reticence to recognize works in the field of science fiction.
G. Davis, Toronto.
*********************
In the fantasy society that the United States sometimes is, it would only be normal that film actors become president (Ronald Reagan) or state governor (Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger). It is only a small step from here for a former vice-president to become a movie star.
The Gore-y Inconvenient Truth is of a meaner sort. It pretends to use science, but instead wallows in exaggerations and unsupported extrapolations and uses the persuasive media of the film to put scary computer scenarios on the screen as if they were fact.
Sadly, this propaganda film is widely shown in schools. I would not want impressionable children to see it.
Albert Jacobs, Calgary.
*********************
Letters to the editor - The Toronto Sun - Feb 27, 2007
Apparently the Oscars have gone green. I was deeply moved as I listened to Melissa Ethbridge, Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio tell me all the things I could do to help reduce greenhouse emissions. I suppose the hundreds of people sitting in the audience that night were all crowded around a bus stop at the end of the show. Surely there weren't close to a thousand limousines -- all sporting V8 engines or greater -- driving one or two people at a time back to their immense mansions with their industrial sized air conditioners keeping them at unnaturally cool temperatures. I couldn't imagine that the incredibly wealthy members of the academy all have gigantic, heated swimming pools, hot tubs, sports cars, SUV's, private planes and such. Surely these advocates of ecology don't ever use their extreme prosperity to be the largest consumers and therefore garbage producers on the planet. Sarcasm aside, isn't it a touch hypocritical that the very group of people who probably pollute more per individual than 99.9% of the world's population have named themselves the champions of the environment?
***********************
Your article about Al Gore's visit to Toronto ("Tree huggers gored," Michele Mandel, Feb. 22) and the Feb. 24 letter from Grant Kelly both portray Gore and David Suzuki to be hypocrites for getting to and from their lectures in gas-powered vehicles. To be fair to these two, both tours are spending substantial amounts of money to buy carbon offsets to make up for the trips. While buying these offsets isn't a perfect solution, at least these men are making a legitimate effort to practice what they preach and you should give them some credit for it.
Jeffery Nichols
Kingston
(Carbon offsets are being viewed rightly, with increasing skepticism, because they are essentially a small financial penalty one pays to be able to go right on polluting)
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