By DAVID ADAMS, Times Latin America Correspondent
Published January 23, 2007
TAMPA - To help her presentation on global warming, Roberta Fernandez flashes a map of Florida.
It
shows the southern half of the state underwater, including Tampa Bay.
"If Greenland melts the sea will rise 20 feet," says Fernandez, who
calls herself a Climate Messenger.
There are gasps in the
audience of smart, but mostly uninformed staffers at a local mortgage
and real estate firm who have given up their lunch hour to hear her
message.
Seven months ago she was just like them. But that was
before she saw An Inconvenient Truth, former Vice President Al Gore's
hit climate change documentary (which was nominated for two Oscars today).
"I was astounded. I knew about
global warming, but not in that way," said Fernandez, 48, who lives in
Tampa and owns a Montessori school.
After she came home she found
the film's Web site and learned that Gore was looking to personally
train 1,000 "Climate Change Messengers" to spread the word on global
warming. She signed up.
In her application she said that as owner
of a school she felt a responsibility to be a model to children. "They
were looking for people with passion who weren't afraid of standing up
in front of people," she said.
She had considered becoming a
volunteer for heart disease or breast cancer. "But I realized after the
movie that no other cause mattered if we didn't have an inhabitable
place to live."
September she attended the first two-day
training session for 50 volunteers at a downtown Nashville hotel. Gore led the training which included a visit to the family farm where he grew up outside Nashville (see photo and click to enlarge).
Not
satisfied with that, she volunteered to be a mentor for future
trainees. She has been back to Nashville twice, including three
back-to-back training sessions earlier this month.
Trainees, who
must pay their own airfare and hotel, come away from the sessions armed
with materials to go forth and spread the gospel on global warming.
They also sign a commitment to give 10 presentations of Gore's slide
show on climate change, which is the basis for An Inconvenient Truth.
At
the sessions Gore patiently goes through his now famous slides,
explaining the science behind each one and the sources for the
information he uses, as well as taking questions.
"All the trainees are very surprised how much time he spends with them," Fernandez said. (photo of Al Gore with the first group of 50 trainees at his farm outside Nashville)
The
idea for training the messengers was born from interviews Gore gave
after An Inconvenient Truth was released in May. Gore found himself
being asked repeatedly what he planned to do next. So he formed the
Climate Project and tasked it with building a curriculum and Web site
to attract trainees.
"It all happened very fast," said the
Climate Project's director, Jenny Clad, a lawyer who is married to
Gore's longtime friend and chief of staff, Roy Neel. "There was no
model for this. It was all invented as we went along."
Rather
than seek publicity the organizers decided to fly under the radar,
fearing that if word got out too widely they might be inundated with
applications. Even without publicity they were overwhelmed by requests.
"We didn't want to have to turn all those people down," said Clad.
In
picking the successful applicants, organizers tried to select as broad
a range of people and professions as possible, covering all 50 states,
with a handful also from Canada, Mexico, Europe and Africa.
The
trainees are a diverse bunch, varying in age from a woman in her 90s to
a 14-year-old boy. They include judges, scientists, politicians and
teachers, as well as Hollywood actor Cameron Diaz. Several other
celebrities, including Leonardo DiCaprio and Laura Dern, were unable to
make the sessions due to other commitments.
So far, about 850
messengers have been trained in the United States and another 85 in
Australia. More sessions are planned in Nashville in late spring. Gore
also plans to do training in the United Kingdom and Australia, and
maybe India and China, too.
The success of the project may have
answered Gore's personal frustration - one he expresses in the film -
over his failure as a politician to get the message about climate
change across to the public. An Inconvenient Truth has become the
world's third best-grossing documentary, after Fahrenheit 9/11 and
March of the Penguins, and is a likely Oscar candidate.
"We have
failed to mobilize an organized response in this country to global
warming," says Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern
Alliance for Clean Energy, who took the course in January. "This is one
of the motivating factors for him."
Gore tells his trainees they
are the "cavalry" who must take the battle forward from now on. Since
the training began, the messengers have already surpassed Gore's
personal tally of presentations, which runs into the thousands.
"That's what most tickles him pink," said Clad. "It's a grass roots organization, and it's sort of become a movement."
The
message is certainly spreading. Fernandez has already exceeded her
quota of presentations, conducting 18 in the Tampa Bay area, including
local school students, as well as Hillsborough county science teachers.
More
than 30 staffers at the Tampa offices of the Loan Corp., Florida's
largest mortgage broker, packed the firm's conference room Friday for
her 40-minute talk.
They listened intently as she flashed up
Gore's slides with grim images of melting glaciers and graphs of
population growth and rising energy demand.
After it was over Harry Hedaya, the company president thanked her
for opening their eyes to a problem which could seriously affect the
property and livelihoods of millions of Floridians. "I have always
thought of it as a political process," he said. "Now I realize it's
much more of an educational process."
(see photo at top of story by Melissa Lyttle, St Petersburg Times staff)
He highlighted the slide which showed most of the
southern half of Florida under water. Hedaya noted that anyone in real estate business should be
taking this very seriously. "I think about the insurance industry," he said. "They are not idiots. They can predict when you are going to die."
Fernandez likes to end on a
positive note. "It's not true that global warming is not fixable," she
said, reeling off a list of "convenient" things everyone can do to be
more energy efficient.
Her message seems to hit home. "I was clueless, it was very informative," said Maria Valeri, 40, who works in accounting.
"No
wonder the rest of the world hates us!" added loan officer Matt Moskos,
28, referring to the United States' disproportionate 30 percent share
of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.
Fernandez says that while the messengers may lack Gore's star power, the concept works well.
"Some
people don't like Mr. Gore," she says. "A presentation is more
personal. People want to ask questions. They want to know why you are
doing it."
Fernandez has no doubts about her reasons. "So many
people I talk to don't think it's going to happen in our lifetime. They
need to hear it."
- David Adams
Click here to read the latest report about glaciers melting in Europe's Alps. Scientists say they will have disappeared by 2050 if we don't reduce our greenhouse gas emissions!
Fast Facts:
More information
Find out about the Climate Project at www.the climateproject.org
To obtain a copy of her book or request a global warming presentation, contact Roberta at: roberta@environmentaladvocacy.com
Roberta sent us her Top Ten facts about global warming:
#1- Rank of 2006 as hottest year on record in the continental United States.
#1-
Rank of United States as top global warming polluter, emitting almost
as much as the European Union, Russia and Japan combined.
20% - Increase of America's carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels since 1990.
15% - Increase of America's carbon dioxide emissions forecast by 2020 if pollution is not capped.
78 - Number of days by which the U.S. fire season has increased over the past 20 years.
200-million - Number of people who could be displaced globally by extreme droughts, sea level rise and flooding by 2080.
0 - Number of federal bills passed by Congress to cap America's global warming pollution.
0 - number of times president Bush has mentioned the words 'global warming' or 'climate change' in his speeches (prior to his State of the Union speech Jan 23 2007).
Roberta also has some tips for 'convenient' ways you can help stop global warming:
1./ Carpool, walk, ride
a bike, use mass transit: If every commuter did this 1 day at home, we’d save
5.85 billion gallons of gas and 143 billion tons of CO²
2./ Get better gas
mileage: Every 3 miles per gallon improvement can save 3,000 lbs. of CO₂ per year; A hybrid car can reduce CO₂ by 16,000 lbs. and save you $3,750 per year;
Rapid acceleration can decrease mileage by 5 to 33%
3./ Replace your bulbs
with CFL’s: If every house used only 1 CFL, it would be equivalent to removing
of 1 million cars from the roads; Lighting accounts for 20% of all electricity
consumed in the US
4./ Set your thermostat
at 78 in the summer and 68 in the winter: Heating/cooling your home accounts
for about 45% of a home’s total energy use.
5./ Seal your doors and
windows, insulate. The average home causes more pollution than our car because
of the fossil fuels burned to supply the power we need.
6./ Unplug everything you are not using: Standby power can account for 9-10% of household energy. A television
uses 25% of its energy when it is turned off.
7./ Take shorter
showers: aim for 5 minutes; 1883 low flow shower heads will save 472,630 lbs.
of CO₂
8./ Stop junk mail: The
production of junk mail consumes as much energy as 2.8 million cars. There are
200 million trees cut for junk mail every year – that’s like cutting down the
Rocky Mt. National Park 3 times per year
9./ Use refillable and reusable containers, recycle: 1.5 million barrels of oil is used for
America’s bottled water. This equals fueling 100,000 cars for a year. 8 out of
10 bottles end up in landfills; Worldwide, 500 billion plastic bags are
manufactured each year, that is nearly 1 million per minute. Use cloth bags
instead
10./ Use the power of
your voice and your votes: Write your local, state and federal officials to let
them know you think this is a critical issue that needs to be addressed with
appropriate measures.
Source: 'The Little Book of Convenient Things you can do to Stop Global Warming,' by Roberta Fernandez.
The American Solar Energy Society (ASES) says it has an answer: Deploy clean energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies now!
The report examines the potential role of several energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies in reducing carbon dioxide emissions, including energy efficiency in buildings, transportation, and industry, as well as concentrating solar power, photovoltaics, wind power, biomass, biofuels, and geothermal power. (click on graphic to enlarge. It show that the biggest reduction can come from energy efficiency (EE), followed by wind, biofuels, biomass and solar.)
The results indicate that these technologies can displace approximately 1.2 billion tons of carbon emissions annually by the year 2030, the report finds. This is equal to the magnituide of reduction that scientists believe is necessary to prevent the most dangerous consequences of climate change. (click on the second graphic to enlarge. It shows which energy technologies are suitable for different parts of the country. e.g. Florida is mostly biomass and solar, but not wind or geothermal.)
