Global Warming and Some Convenient Truths - Essay Example

The issues that the Earth is heating up and that greenhouse gases should be immediately reduced have been the primary concerns for most environmental advocates around the world, pointing out our responsibilities to eliminate those elements and be able to save our planet before anything else worse could happen. With the release of the documentary entitled An Inconvenient Truth in 2006, former Vice President Al Gore brilliantly showcased what he assumed to be the possible consequences of global warming if we, humans will not restrict ourselves in producing greenhouse gases.

He furthered in his book An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It, that “the world’s oceans are becoming more acidic due to enormous quantities of CO2” (p. 40) and that the most dramatic impact of global warming is the melting of ice sheets in the Arctic which will result to rising of sea level to up to 6 feet. However, Gregg Easterbrook, an environmental commentator rebutted that these were “realistic short-term prospect” and that even mild restriction in the use of greenhouse gases will immobilize the economy.

He rather emphasized the use of technology and effective regulations of environmental laws to somehow lessen the use or production of greenhouse gases and eventually alter the immediate progress of climate change. He stayed optimistic that previous air-pollution problems have been reduced faster in a cheaper way added that “the basic pattern observed in all other forms of air-pollution control – rapid progress at low cost – should repeat for greenhouse-gas controls” (Some Convenient Truths, para. 6).ReferenceGore, A. (2006). An inconvenient truth: The planetary emergency of global warming and what we can do about it.

Emmaus, Pa: Rodale Press.