Gore Gives Some Hope on Global Warming

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:30:00 -0000

When former American Vice President Al Gore came out with An Inconvenient Truth, his 2006 documentary on global warming, songwriter Jill Sobule sought to lighten up the message a bit. Her satirical lyrics went:

Strolling along in Central Park, everyone’s out today
The daisies and dogwoods are all in bloom, oh what a glorious day
For picnics and Frisbees and roller skaters, friends and lovers and lonely sun bathers
Everyone’s out and merry. Manhattan in January. …

Gore has followed that with another slide show, neither happy nor funny. He says, besides that the icecaps in the Arctic Ocean are melting, when global warming heats up the frozen ground around the Arctic Ocean, its frozen carbon thaws and is turned into methane by microbes, further exacerbating the problem.

“Compared to the total amount of global warming in the atmosphere,” says Gore, “that amount could double.”

Methane is already bubbling up out of the water in some shallow lakes in Alaska.

From there, consequences snowball, in the wrong direction. As annual melting-ice flows grow in volume – as is happening in the Antarctica, already in negative ice balance, in the Himalayas where new lakes are forming where glaciers used to be, in the Andes where flows take much of the drinking water with them, and in California, which has seen a 40% decline in the sierra snow patch – the earth dries. This results in increased fires, which have occurred four times as often in the last 30 years as had occurred in the previous 75.

“This is a completely unsustainable pattern,” says Gore.

But what to do? The biggest single cause of global warming, he claims, is the burning of fossil fuels, of which the USA is one of the two greatest contributors. He describes the political battle between the Alliance for climate protection and the oil and coal industries that promote “clean coal”, which Gore says is an oxymoron.

But like Sobule, he also has something upbeat to share. Gore sees a way to re-power America: through clean electricity, using wind and sun. Unwilling to accept summer weather in a New York January, Gore quotes an old African proverb: “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. We need to go far, quickly.”

New Voices for Neil Young’s Old Tunes

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 10:26:41 -0000

Written by Elizabeth Willoughby

Neil Young’s songs are getting a makeover – by women. A group of over 20 female singers, including Tanya Donelly, Jill Sobule and Lori McKenna, are redoing Young’s most popular, pre-1980 acoustic ballads, giving a feminine touch to his deeply insightful lyrics. The collection, called Cinnamon Girl, will benefit Casting for Recovery, a cancer charity.

Casting For Recovery (CFR) provides weekend retreats for breast cancer survivors. The retreats are located throughout the United States where women come together for social support and group interaction. And to learn fly fishing. For no cost to the participants, they receive room and board, professional counseling and health care and the techniques learned in fly fishing provide gentle exercise for joint and soft tissue mobility.

One grateful participant summed up her weekend with CFR: “My body is tired but my spirit is renewed. I leave with memories of strong, beautiful women and a new experience to build on. I leave with the information that will help me to continue on as a survivor.”

Her statement makes Young’s lyrics even more poignant as the double CD opens with Heart of Gold and the words “I want to live.”

As one survivor puts it, “You’ve given me friends, new skills, and new hope.”

Look To The Stars News: Jill Sobule

Gore Gives Some Hope on Global Warming

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