The Truth Hurts..

Okay, so first, sorry for missing yesterday. Damned mother nature bitch slapped us Ontario folks and getting home was quite the challenge. Mental note - if you're trying to get home on a snowy, stormy day and you're right at the 401, don't make a stupid decision to trek up to the 407 to make your way across. Just get on the damned highway and start making progress. Ugh. Took us four and a half hours to get from Yorkdale to Whitby. That ain't right!

And to top it all off, it sure did mess up our plans. Tonight we were supposed to go snow tubing with a group of friends at a hill quite close to our home. Yippee! I really enjoy this form of winter entertainment - anything where I can sit on my butt in a huge rubber tube, grab onto a rope to be pulled up the hill so I can rush right back down again is totally up my alley. But alas, mother nature messed up those plans as well, so the gang was supposed to go for a pint or two. Since I never did hear where they were going or when they were going to be there, and it was well after 7pm by the time my week-weary bones shuffled off the train, we hit our local Blockbuster in yet another unsuccessful attempt to procure The Departed for the evening's viewing pleasure.

We didn't get what we had originally gone for, but left with something we'd wanted to see for ages - An Inconvenient Truth.

Now, I know many of you have seen this film and if you're reading this and haven't, I urge you to go out and get it so you can watch it this weekend. There are no special effects, no real eye candy (can't say Al Gore is at the top of my celebrity male hotties list - which is a whole other post, by the way), no witty dialogue (except for a few funny quips from Al), and no nail biting plot.

But it will still take your breath away and leave you speechless at the end.

It is peppered with more 'holy shit' moments than even I expected, and I'd heard and read so much hype about this movie I was prepped for many a revelation. And I most certainly was not disappointed.

What fascinated me, among many things, is the fact that cars in China get more miles to the gallon of fuel than those made in the US due to stricter environmental policies. Diva says whut? In my mind, I think China and immediately images of population density, communism and pollution spring to mind - that and every little item that resides on a Dollarama shelf (hell, pretty much any retail shelf, come to think about it). But to see this, you'd really think differently. I'm not saying that China is leading the world in its environmental policies - but this actually altered my perception of the entire nation. Now for a movie to do that - wow.

I consider myself to be rather energy conscious. I'm by no means a granola crunching tree hugger (Birkenstocks are not part of this diva's dress code) but I do try to do my part wherever possible. We're pretty steadfast in our dedication to recycling and composting, since we moved into our new place we've replaced every light bulb in the house with compact flourescents, we have energystar appliances, we have a seven day programmable thermostat so we're not keeping our house hot when we're not even here, we're going to pull out our furnace and install a high efficiency boiler, we have one car and I use public transit (then again, that's almost more a financial/circumstantial than environmental decision but I thought it was a good one to add to the list). Not too shabby, I suppose.

But I have to tell you, after watching this movie and seeing what's going on, I honestly wonder if I'm doing enough, if there's something more I should be considering, to help reduce this incredibly serious issue of global warming.

We all laugh and say it's not a bad thing - hell, any winter where it doesn't really snow until January seems pretty damned acceptable in my books - but in reality, no snow til January can and will also mean 35 degree summer days over and over again. And I don't know about you, but I do not look all pretty and girlie in 35 degree weather. I sweat. It trickles down my back and my entire hairline insta-soaks. I get ridiculously frizzy curly hair (actually, the humidity works for my hair - strike that one, I have a cute do in the sweaty summer months), and live in a permanent state of swass (yes, that is the kind and polite smushed up word for sweaty ass - come on, you know what I'm talking about).

Swass aside, it boggles the mind to think about how long we've known about this issue and how very, very little has been done about it. I sincerely have to give Al and The Gang snaps for putting the picture together so magnificently, and I find there's so much more credibility to his involvement in all this because in watching the film you realize that he's been championing this cause since he first got into politics decades ago and this isn't some bandwagon he jumped on because he wanted to keep his face in the limelight.

Interesting. I did my undergraduate degree in political science and in or around the year that I graduated - more than 10 years ago - it was noted that the number one issue that Canadians were concerned about was healthcare. Also on the list were the state of the economy, interest rates/inflation, taxes, the state of the general infrastructure (roads, etc)...pretty much anything you could think of - except the environment. While it was finally starting to be included on the list of possible responses, it invariably came last, garnering a measly three percentage points in the poll. Ouch - why even bother to be on the list?

The poor environment slunk home with its tail between its legs and crawled into a corner to weep at its fate. And look at us now.

There's a real change in the wind, and it's not just because of all the turbines you see dotting the horizon. The environment as an issue of concern to Canadians is experiencing a surge in 'popularity' never before seen in this country. If memory serves me correctly, one recent poll actually had it as the number one issue parents cited as a concern for their children's generation - take that, healthcare! Your reign of terror is over - make way for carbon dioxide!

All kidding aside, if any change is going to be made, if we want to leave our planet in livable condition for our children (be they born or working their way into our future plans) it's going to take all of us doing our part and standing up to say no more. The first step is going out to rent this movie if you haven't seen it already. If you have, you know what to do.

Truly, it's not rocket science. Having said that, I know a rocket scientist and he's not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but I digress. What I'm trying to say is that each one of us can make small changes that will have global impact.

To find out more about what you can do, go see the best guy in the land for some really sound advice - David Suzuki. He came up with that One Tonne Challenge which never really got off the ground - mostly because he didn't have any government backing, but that's another story - but still has many valid tips for reducing your CO2 emissions. Go to www.davidsuzuki.org/naturechallenge/ to find out more.

The gauntlet has been thrown, my diva friends! I'm kinda inspired - can you tell!? Hehe. I can't believe I'm about to quote Ghandi in my diva blog, but here goes - Be the change you want to see in the world, he said, and that's what I leave you with on this fine Friday. Now go, grab a glass of wine, turn down the thermostat, shut off a light or two, and find a way to make some heat of your own. You can save money, the environment AND have a lick or two of fun all at the same time. And it doesn't get much better than that.

And that's your daily dash. How's your diva doin'?