How better to spend my time after catching a reception in the National Botanincal Gardens on renewable energy than to see Al Gore’s “An Inconveinient Truth”. I found the movie quite inspirational and a bit depressing at the same time. The documetry is litered with Gore’s personal memorabelia which adds some nice insight into one of the greenest politicians to walk the US. It was very interesting to see the data he presented, and it was a virtual plug for Computers (which I personally happen to endorse).
While I enjoyed the film immensly, there were several inferred errors implied to the viewer, like better MPG standards help imply strong economic growth. Unfortunetely, Gore had listed Japan and the EU at the top of that list which haven not beet doing so well for the last couple years, and Gore had noted China’s growth as well, which I can garauntee is not due to their “highly stringent environmental standards”.
Besides these minor issues I would like to encourage you gentle readers to go see the movie and tell others to as well. In my personal analysis as a country there are several variables that are imperative to maintain no matter what.
Populace- this is a two fold item, it involves the health of the people and the human capital that they posess. Labor is an essential component to a funtioning economy, if it is not healthy it cannot work simple as that. Secondly, as the global economies become more advanced the emphasis becomes that of human capital, in other words how productive are your people, do they actually know how to do the occupations required, and can they immprove this function in the future. Given the current administrations cuts to student loan programs and the banckrupting of medicare by 2019 (I belive that was the year in the last CBO report), it is quite probable we will have labor problems in the future. I attended a lecture at Brookings about a year ago and one economist from China argued that their largest growth period had followed from the massive amounts of capital spent try to raise the education level in the rural parts of China. What China is experiencing today is a remanent of that wise expenditure.
Land- provided you are not taken over by a stronger aggressor, the second component is your soveriegn domain. With out a functioning ecosystem you have possible problems general public health (think China, where the last chemical spills are covered up). Or for that matter where will your food be grown if there is no arrable soil or the climate changes severly. For as much fretting as we do over foreign energy dependence, imagine if the problem was feeding ou populace, and you have alienated your trading partners. These are issues already being faced in some regions and clearly we should expect this more often in the future.
In closing, I do hope you check this film out. It strikes a pertinent point that what we have is fleeting, and there is much more out there than just the experience of our short lifetimes. With this in mind here is the trailer for “An Inconvenient Truth”