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Climate Skeptics Change their Minds

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AlterNet / By Tara Lohan

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Watch: Bill O'Reilly-Loving Climate-Denier Breaks Down After Watching Documentary 'Chasing Ice,' Vows to Stop Climate Change

The new documentary "Chasing Ice" is life changing. Here's why.

November 27, 2012 |

 

This article was published in partnership with GlobalPossibilities.org.

Every now and then something comes along that can turn even the staunchest climate change denier into someone who finally sees the truth. Today that something is Chasing Ice, a moving documentary about a photographer trying to record the images of a fast-changing planet before it’s too late.

The most recent believer is a 59-year-old woman who is interviewed leaving a showing of Chasing Ice. She explains that she is a lover of Bill O’Reilly and kicked people out of her home for saying they believe in climate change. She’s told everyone she knows that climate change is a hoax. But after watching Chasing Ice, she’s a changed woman. In the interview she appears shaken and near tears as she describes how she now wishes to do all she can to stop climate change. Here’s her confession:

 

 

 

We need more showings of Chasing Ice and more women like this who are able to own up to their mistakes and work to make them right (and hopefully turn off Fox News in the process). Last week five new reports were released that show we’re on track for catastrophic climate change (I’ve got a break down of them here) and for the next few weeks, world leaders will be meeting in Doha to continue the doomed routine of figuring out who will take responsibility and who will take action. There is little hope that the kind of agreement that emerges, if any, will be of the scope needed to truly make a difference in curbing greenhouse emissions.

So where does that leave us? Do we have time to change one Fox News viewer’s mind at a time? The international community has managed nothing meaningful in a decade and they’re stymied in part by our own country’s utter unwillingness to challenge the fossil fuel industry. Obama had done some, but not enough, and a verdict on the Keystone XL pipeline hangs in the balance -- and with it, potentially the fate of the planet. So in fact, right now, we need regular people — regardless of how they vote or from which station they get their news — to begin taking action and demanding political responsibility.

In an interview last week with Osha Gray Davidson, author of Breaking Clean, Davidson chronicles how Germany went from 6 percent renewable energy in their country’s portfolio in 2000 to 26 percent today (and they’re headed to 80 percent by 2050). The key, he learned while traveling around the country, was citizens breaking free from large energy corporations that refused to change and igniting a clean energy revolution that went from the grassroots to the halls of power. In the process, they made everyone in Germany able to participate in the financial rewards of switching from dirty to clean energy.

The U.S currently gets 6 percent of its energy from renewables but Davidson says we have the capacity to hit 80 percent by 2050, too. How do we get there? Stop complaining about big corporations and start actually working to get stuff done, he says. And of course, we should continue the public education until the complacent ones are moved to action and the climate deniers are laughed back into their caves or they are finally able to see the bright light of reality.

For more information about Chasing Ice and how to see it, check out the website.

Tara Lohan is a senior editor at AlterNet and editor of the new book Water Matters: Why We Need to Act Now to Save Our Most Critical Resource. You can follow her on Twitter

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