Whats with the lies?

Sustainability is the new black or blue or whatever the trend is at the moment, but it is the in thing, everybody what's to be in the in crowd, seen by others as a good person, so saying that you recycle, turn of all the lights in your house and travel on the bus makes them sound sustainable. But can turning of the lights and catching the bus really be classed as a way of being sustainable or a way of saving on the energy bill and a little extra money? For there are many people who would say that they are thinking about the environment; when they pull on an extra jumper when it’s cold, but in their mind think "I have just saved some money there". Thus this could be classed as lying or a lot of bending the truth, because it’s easier to think that you are saving the world on a hot sunny day by winding the windows down, in your gas guzzling car, then it is to think that you are adding CO2 into the atmosphere. So in my case I am unsure if I am lying or saving the world, for I do recycle but only because there are recycling bins supplied at Uni.

Would you rather drive (or drive in the future) a Ford/Renault car or an Audi/Mercedes/BMW?

At the moment I do not drive and I know nothing about cars, but in the future because I see myself as a high flying business woman an Audi sounds right up my street. Though I can also see myself having children in the futre, who will not be able to squeeze into my two seated convertible. So if I weighed up my options properly it would be better for me to drive a people carrier then a convertible, which would make me sustainable, but it would be buy accident.

Would you honestly rather live in a small flat in a city centre or a bigger house, with more space, perhaps in the country?

For me this is a difficult question, because I love the sound of living in the city, preferably New York, which means that I would be taking up less space which is more sustainable, wouldn’t have to drive for miles to get to the closest supermarket and a car would be pointless with such good public transport systems in the city. Which means without lying I can say that I would love to be sustainable in the city, but as I have said before this is a difficult question, because though I would like to a high flying business woman living in the city, there is no room to house the children I wish to be mother to, thus a bigger house preferably not in the city would be better.
However living in a 3 bedroom plus house in suburbia or the countryside is less sustainable then living in the city, for example I like old fashioned  houses with character which  take up much more room than a one or two bedroomed apartment. If I'm thinking about living in a village I would need to drive to get to any shops and bigger houses means more central heating or if I wanted to be sustainable more layers of clothing can be put on, which need to be washed and dried, adding up to more energy being used anyway. When deciding between a flat or a house energy efficiency and CO2 ratings come into play, for a flat is lower on both, putting it in the F band of the sustainability rating, which makes the flat far more sustainable.


Though when I am personally talking about a flat in the city I am talking about New York City. But the sustainability of a studio flat in Central London has an energy efficiency rating of 72 which puts it in the C band and a CO2 level of 66 which places it into the D band. Compared to a 3 bedroomed detached country house  with space in Brackenburn Foxfield, which has an energy efficiency rating of around 36 placing it in the F band and a CO2 level of around 34. Making the $945,000 1 bedroom apartment in New York abysmal due to its fancy electrical gadgets, sauna and interactive golf room and the amount of metal and glass needed to make the spectacular tower block. 


So I am much better off living in a fabulous 3 bedroom barn conversion which has an energy efficiency rating and Co2 level in the D band, which is much more sustainable than both the other house and the flat in New York and has much more room than the flat in Central London. Which means that If I chose to live in the barn then I would be being sustainable, but once again its more to do with necessity then sustainability.

Would you prefer your next holiday to be in Norfolk or Wales or do you fancy a trip to Thailand/South Africa/California/Greece?

At the moment my family are planning a trip to the Isle of White because we are going to an archery tournament, not to cut down on holiday CO 2 emissions, though that is a bonus. But for me if I had it my way and money was no object I would definitely go abroad to California and Greece. Mainly because I have been to neither of those places, but also to gather a sense of global culture and awareness.


When it comes to holidays it does not really bother me (even though it should) about CO2 emotions, frankly it is the last thing on my mind.  Though it would make more sustainable sense to go vacationing in Norfolk or Wales (seriously, these places look so amazingly, heart poundingly BORING), in which less Co2 emitions are produced compared to the 5 of us in my family travelling to California (from Heathrow to Los Angelis International) and flying  roughly a distance of 8768 each way, producing over 9650kgs for the round trip (calculated at Flight Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Emissions).

But in my opinion why would you want to stay in a caravan for a week and not be able to go out to visit the beach because this is England and it’s raining. However if you look at the 2 ways of holidaying properly, staying in sunny warm England or jetting off into the countries where they actually see the sun, then outcomes look rather different. To me in my opinion it makes more sense in terms of sustainability, to pack about over 800 people onto a plane and travel to California, than it is for those 800 people to drive travel to Wales. For example a normal long haul flight can carry around 800 passengers, whilst the average car can carry 5 people, so if you send those 800 to California (bearing in mind that for long journey by air produces between 210 to 330 grams of Co2) the journey will produce around 2,367,360 grams of CO2. Whereas if the 800 people drive to Cardiff each in 5 seater cars (160 cars) then 3,840,000 grams of Co2 would be produced (worked this answer out by using Flight Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Emissions and How does air compare to other means of travel).

There is also another reason why flying abroad is a good thing, because when we go to other countries we are supplying them with some of the income they need to grow and stay sustainable. So if all those 800 people travel to Wales instead of Thailand or South Africa, then there is less money for them to develop to help make the world a more sustainable place.

Would you go as far as swap your new smart phone for the cheapest handset in Tescos?

My phone is theoretically my life support machine; it keeps me in contact with the rest of the world. My lovely little HTC Wildfire may be unsustainable because I have to charge it every night and it may have cost an arm and a leg to produce in terms of CO2 emissions, due to the fact that it was manufactured in Asia somewhere. But I would never ever swap my phone for a Tesco’s cheap one, though come to think of it aren’t all phones unsustainable due to the fact that when they do eventually die from over usage or just old age, they just get chucked out the window and onto a landfill site where the harmful chemicals in the battery seep into the surrounding atmosphere. Also why should I swap my high tech phone that is probably made out of new age eco-friendly material, for a brick that is probably so cheap because it is mad out of the junk that nobody else wanted. Though when looking into the future it would probably be smarter to have a smartphone over cheap Tesco’s one, because companies such as Motorola have collaborated with Android to create the Motorola Citrus, which is the new greener smart phone. To quote from Motorola it has a “convenient eco-friendly design that is carbon free and made in part with 25% recycled plastic“ which means that the future for smartphones is not orange, its green. Though the smartphone will always being more energy insufficient then the cheap phones, due to its energy intensiveness, but smartphones provide the power for a person on the move to bring their life with them on the go such as a business man or woman, think about would you prefer to carry your note book, laptop, calendar, friends and your brick of a phone in your bag?

Would you give up shopping for clothes for a year?

This has a quick and easy answer: NO!!!!!!!!

I’m sorry to say this to my fellow earth inhibitors, the environment and Mother Nature, but I love to shop, shopping makes me feel good inside. I know that buying new clothes every other weekend is probably one of my worst habits, due to the fact that each item of clothing I buy, probably creates the same carbon footprint as a family in a 3^rd world country.


But I can’t help it I have always been a shopaholic and I always will be. But when I am fished with certain clothes I make it a point not to throw them away, instead I either donate them to charity or recycle them to make new clothes. Donating a kg of clothes apparently saves 4kg of CO2 says the GAIA Movement Trust, they also say that when clothes are donated they get recycled down into new cotton and other textile fibres. Which means when it comes to making a pair of jeans weighing in at 1lb which requires 10,000 lb. of water, 0.5 lb. of fertilizers, 0.4 oz. of pesticides which produces 6lb of greenhouse gasses, when new cotton is used from recycled clothing, my contribution could help to save half the greenhouse gasses generated. My life-long love affair with clothes does not just stop at buying them I also love to reuse my old clothes and turn them into something fabulous. When I’m feeling extra crafty I go on craft sites such as Instuctables, Craftster and Cut Out and Keep to get inspirational ideas for making my new clothes. Recently I made a cute summery dress out of a t-shirt I didn’t like anymore after watching a video tutorial by a girl called GiannyL on Instuctables. I also shop in charity shops too, I pop into Oxfam from time to time to see if there is anything I can wear or create into something new, which means I’m thinking sustainably while I shop and helping others.

But the best thing about the fashion world is that new environmentally, ethical, sustainable clothes are being designed and created now and in the near future. For example on the Guardian online on Friday 28^th January 2011 “H&M creates clothing line made out of left over pieces” was shown off to the world, it’s a new clothing line called Waste , which is made entirely from left over pieces from their Lavin collection. Which in my opinion I see the Fashion industry trying to be sustainable and I’m going to help it the best way I can: by continuing to partake in Olympic sized shopping spree where in a couple of years time those clothes will be reused to make a summer dress.    

Would you stop eating bananas, oranges and out of season fruit?

Now this I could actually mange I think, well to a certain extent. I think that I would be able to handle not eating out of season and imported fruit and vegetables; it gives me an excuse to do some gardening and to learn to use the resources that I have at hand. My garden at home in Harrow, London, has enough room for my family to make a vegetable patch; doing some digging is a good way to be sustainable (and in this case it’s not because we have to, it’s because we want to, so there is no lying involved) which means that we can cut down on our food mileage and carbon footprint by growing in season fruit and vegetables. We called also pop down to the local farm shops that we have close by to our house, where we can buy both local and British, supporting are local community to help keep us all sustainable.

But, now this is a big but, in the real world we have no time to be digging in the garden collecting food, because my Dad works all the time, my Mum works part-time and is a house wife, plus I would not trust my brother and sister with gardening tool unless a trip down to A&E is on my to-do list, also I’m at University for the majority of the year, so I’m great help. When looking rationally into what grows in season in the UK I think I would have to starve or stock up on last season food to get by each season, for in the spring I will not eat purple sprouting broccoli, radishes, sorrel or spring onions and tell me who wants to eat rhubarb all spring. So looking at this question logically, it can be done but the vegetables will dye, my brother and sister will give each other black eyes, I will be craving a fresh pineapple and raspberry smoothy and my parents will probably think about investing in a hot tub to cover up the disaster of a vegetable patch.

I could do this Jamie Oliver style but I don’t have time.

Are you so naive and innocent that you think wind farms, tidal power and solar energy can possibly supply our needs in the future?

I for one am not naïve when it comes to sustainable forms of energy; believe me the majority of my A Level course consisted of how we can save the world the sustainable way, so we could use these forms of energy but we would need a large supply of them and a good back up plan. As the population increases more people are going to be demanding more energy and since the energy resources we already use are running out and becoming too expensive, new methods of energy generation are needed, such as wind turbines and solar power. I know the good points and the benefits of renewable energy, but if you really think about it a lot of energy and money is needed to put these projects into action. For example the cost of a commercially used wind turbine varies between $1 and $2 million per megawatt (ezinearticles.com) and with the typical wind farm being made up of around 20 turbines extending over an area of 1 square kilometre. Thus to be able to generate just 10% of the UKs energy from wind turbines alone, 12,000 megawatts would be needed equating to between $12 and $24 million (Renewable UK). When I think about if these types of renewable energy will be able to supply our future energy needs, I think that we might be kidding ourselves a little bit. Because as I have stated before it is going to cost well over $12 million just to create 10% of our energy needs, which is too much for too little, this is not enough. If we started to design bigger scale more efficient forms of renewable energy sources such as stronger solar cells in solar panels that captured an increased amount of rays, then yes we might just have a chance to rely a bit more on renewable energy. But as a country we do not have the space to accommodate so much renewable energy if all non-renewable energy forms went bust, unless we start insisting that we have solar panels on the roves of our houses and wind turbines in everybody’s garden.

Is there any hope or are we all too selfish, ignorant and lazy to change?
I personally believe that there is hope for use to become more sustainable. But it’s not just me who has to recycle bits of paper and card and to remember to turn off all electrical appliances if not being used, but everybody has a moral responsibility to do it, they just have to wake up to reality. I have to admit at times I am a selfish person, when I’m standing in the line at the till in my favourite shop; I want to be served first, because I could not care less about the 12 other people in front of me. But if we all had that attitude towards global warming and being sustainable, then we would be digging our own grave. But there are allot of people who are not and are interested in what is happening to the planet or nobody would have gone to watch An Inconvenient Truth. Though people these days are very ignorant and lazy, especially since the advancement in technology. Technology such as cars have made people see walking as a to inefficient, so they hope in their car to make that 5 minute walk to the corner shop that little bit faster. The TV is another example; people would rather waste away in front of the TV then get out a board game which produces less emissions than  watching TV. But with all this in mind I do not think we are too lazy to change, just that people need to be shocked out of their comfort zone.

How are we going to change behaviour or should we admit defeat now?

NEVER EVER ADMIT DEFEAT!!!!


We will change; it’s just that in order to, people need to be reached on a level that they understand such as the use of celebrity as a billboard. If you stick a famous face on anything it will sell, so if you put a celebrity’s face on the concept of sustainability you have yourself a winner for a certain amount of people, while the rest of the population say “who?” For example “Leonardo Dicaprio started the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation in 1998 to promote environmental issues, drives a hybrid car, currently writing and producing a feature length documentary on global warming called "11th Hour”” (allamericanspeakers.com) and a few other green celebrities include Orlando Bloom, Gisele Bundchen, Coldplay, Fergie and Snoop Dogg. With people like these and there global reputations people are bound to follow, because I know I will most definitely listen to (more like stare at) what Orlando Bloom has to say about the environment, and I know that many guys will watch what Gisele Bundchen has to say about sustainability. But this is only one idea, because once you capture the public’s attention you’ve got them till the next fad comes along.

Well to answer the overall question “Why bother lying?” I know that I do what I think is best for me, and if what I do is bad for the environment I am not going to butter it up and make it better by lying. But when I am sustainable I am sustainable. So to finish I will admit that I would love to drive an Audi and live in a Manhattan apartment. But reality has a far to stronger hold on my future, so I will have to settle for my 8 seater Ford people carrier and live in a converted barn in the countryside. But I will not forgo my trip to California, buy a cheap Tesco mobile, stop shopping for a year or eat rhubarb for the whole of spring, thus when it comes to these aspects of my life I know I’m not sustainable and I’m not going to lie about it just to fit in with the in crowd. Because I know that there are many other aspects of my life that do make me sustainable, and that’s no lie.

An Inconvenient Truth: None Like It Hot!

In all my life I have never seen a movie that could bore the living daylights out of me, but at the same time intrigue and open my eyes; and that is an inconvenient truth. I could not truly believe that I was watching a serious documentary about how our fossil fuelled lifestyles are eventually leading to Earths unfortunate demise. Because to me what I was watch was a sort of serial chat show style set up; in which Al Gore presented his slide show with detail and graphs about climate change, Co2 levels and greenhouse gases. Then out of nowhere he would say something really intelligent which had an added joke inserted in it, which amused the audience bringing them to life, then silence would fall as the chat show set up had broken into a documentary sequence.

An Inconvenient Truth is a documentary film like in the style of March of the Penguins, but with defiantly a lot less ice, directed by Davis Guggenheim. The film is about the former U.S Vice President Al Gore whose campaign to educate people about the effects of global warming. This film is not an action film like I thought it would be, but involves Al Gore presenting a presentation on climate change and what will happen to Earth. It is broken up between snippets of slideshow and film clips; where he talks about how global warming plays apart in his own life from education to family.

With the understanding of the nub and jist of the film I can begin to reflect on it; it’s overall message, how it’s presented, my overall view of the film and what I think the audience would have thought.
The films messages have complexities attached to them; In my opinion the messages are trying to open the audiences eyes; not in a “shut down all the factorise or the Earth gets it” type of way, nor is it saying “oh don’t worry, when the Co2 levels get really bad we will figure something out” kind of way. Though the first message that I personally picked up on was “as the citizens of this Earth this is what we are doing to it and boy we don’t really want a happy future do we?”. It’s showing to us the levels of danger that we could come into contact with if we don’t start sorting ourselves out, but in a way that immediately catches our attention. For example Al Gore uses examples from 650,000 years of Co2 levels against temperature. Where at first he explains that yes there has been in the past a natural global warming and cooling of the Earth, but the Co2 level had never reached over 300 parts per million, until people became more modern and screwed up Earths natural system. This screwing up of the Earth’s natural system has resulted in the succession of Co2 levels exceeding the 300 part per million level, which Al Gore then emphasises or to put as he said “exzardgerates” through the use of a cherry picker how far predations can compute Co2 levels will be in the next 50 years. This message comes in the form of a dark joke which says “ha ha yeah that sure is funny how he has to use a cherry picker to show how high Co2 levels will be, but hang on; if Co2 is related to temperature… we are going to roast, that’s not funny anymore”, and throughout the part of the film that I watched this sort of eye opening dark comic intellectual humour continues. With a message like this being showed off to the audience, it is a hazy and in some places a complex one to understand, this is because in my opinion the main message is climate change and how it is going to affect us but it is covered up by scientific explanations and jokes.

When deciding whether this approach of portraying the message in the form of in-depth scientific fact and humour is a double edged sword; this is because the message can be interpreted in two ways. The first way of interpreting it is by only seeing the facts, which in my opinion where blown out of proportion and emphasised a bit too much, which can quite easily lead people down the path of panic if miss interpreted. Whereas other people may only see the humours side of what is being said; only listening to and remembering the jokes and comments made around the scientific facts, which can lead to ignorance to what is truly happen, thus the appropriateness of how the message was approached depends on how the person watching the message interprets it.

Within the docufilm when it comes to determining whether the information in the film is the right information it is difficult to say because I don’t know if what is right for one person could be wrong for another, but in my opinion from seeing half of the film the information was sufficient for a main stream audience.  An example of some of the information given by Al Gore was that there are assumptions “that just ain’t so” in which people say that “that the Earth is so big we can’t have any lasting harmful impact on the Earth’s environment” (An Inconvenient Truth, 2006). But he sets the record straight by saying that we are affecting the Earth’s atmosphere which is so vulnerable because of how thin it is. This snippet of information about the Earth’s atmosphere may not contain the right amount of information, but if Al Gore went into depth with it, he could end up losing the point he was talking about and the audience. But a question that springs to mind is well isn’t all this in that GCSE geography textbook I had to read? Yes it is, but I do not think that a middle aged person read that one, so is having a look at this film for guidance, thus the information is relevant for them. 

Some of the information in the film may be right for different people but that does not matter if it is too technical, boring or leaves views confused. Though in my opinion the film is not too technical, it does not contain large amounts of numbers and scientific explanation like what some other documentaries cover, which means that a wide range of age groups and academic abilities are able to understand what is going on. Al Gore uses simplified methods of explaining how global warming occurs though the medium of images and graphics; he begins to explain the process of global warming with the usual textbook description such as in the book New Key Geography for GCSE (Waugh, D. and Bushell, T. 2002). Then into a more simplified comical explanation and between the two explanations even my 11 year old sister and my 9 year old brother could understand global warming; thus if children are able to explain the basic nub and jist of what the film is trying to explain, then it can’t be that technical. When looking into how boring the film is, it wins this round hands down; it is boring. Though credit needs to be given where it is due; yes the film is boring but as I have mentioned before it is eye opening in many ways. When I was watching the film especially during the part where Al Gore discussed the depletion of global ice coverage, my mouth just dropped I am sure I was  catching flies, because to me ice caps have always been so impressive and to see such a large magnificent creation just wither away shocks me, though I know that they are melting, seeing the images just makes it seem so much more real. Now when it comes to being confused whilst watching a documentary, for me at times it is inevitable but whilst watching An Inconvenient Truth confused was not part of my state of mind; the film to me was straight forward, Al Gore had laid it out by explaining global warming, how it is created, what it causes, such as increased natural hazards like hurricanes and droughts and explains what will happen in the future.

However I may be seeing the film in a too simplified light or just giving it too much credit, for the movie itself may be too simple treating views as children using only the tip of the iceberg of information. I say this because, the information as I had mentioned before can be found in a textbook or educational websites such as BBC Bitesize or in a newspaper for example information can be found on The Guardian online. The film explains how global warming is created through solar rays being trapped inside the Earth’s atmosphere, but then goes onto showing a clip from the TV program Futurama. This raises the question is it right to use a cartoon that doesn’t explain global warming in enough detail to make a coach potato sit up scratch there head and say “I should be worried about that”? Patronising the viewer is what this film does not have many elements of doing, Al Gore is not phonetically spelling out the word “Gu-Lu-Oh-Ba-All—Wa-Oor-Mm-Ing”, instead he is making his explanations simple enough to understand, but not so difficult to make the viewer feel stupid.

Though the views that I have given on the film An inconvenient Truth are what I personally think, others may see it completely differently, or in the case of the BBC movie review on this film some may agree with me. The BBC says that “An Inconvenient Truth, is not a drama or even a documentary. It's a slide show, delivered to a live audience, on the subject of the environment. Doesn't sound too thrilling, does it? And in truth, it ain't Die Hard. But be assured: this a really really good slide show”.
Whilst other people have an entirely different view to mine, such as those found on the site rottentomatoes.com which include reviews such as “has its heart in the right place but overall the film stands as a one-track doomsday warning with too little substance to achieve its intended effect” by Dustin Putman from dustinputman.com and “no matter how much generosity critics and activists show this movie, it is still a boring slideshow by a boring speaker with cool graphics and thus, a boring movie” by David Poland from Movie City News. But as I stated before people will interpret how they see the film and its message differently, and the opinions of others does not sway my own, for I see the film as a great movie, but in terms of how good it is as a tool to promote awareness about climate change and environmental sustainability in general, I’m still on the fence.

For the film An Inconvenient Truth to be a tool for promoting awareness about climate change it would need to connect with people from all walks of life. For example if I was not told to watch this film I probably would have not because I don’t usually go for that type of movie, I like chick flicks but also because I thought it was an action film I avoided it, but I know now that I was wrongly informed. The film also has trouble in my opinion at being a tool because when it does get shown to people they may instantly forget about it, for it is not hard hitting enough to be imbedded into peoples memory, thus doesn’t really promote awareness if people watch it but don’t see it. People need for something to either happen to them personally or to shock them to their core or the global destructiveness won’t get through to the middle class office worker who only worries for the day are “I wonder what’s for dinner and did I remember to feed the cat?”. Also to add, as the reviews had stated beforehand to some people the movie was boring, so do you really think they are going to remember it for its global awareness points?


The film doesn’t manage to promote awareness about climate change to its full potential as it had been continuously bashed by scientists saying that some of the information is wrong or blown out of proportion. The BBC may have given the film the thumbs up but it also found nine 'errors'. For example “Mr Gore's assertion that a sea-level rise of up to 20 feet would be caused by melting of ice in either West Antarctica or Greenland "in the near future". The judge said this was "distinctly alarmist" and it was common ground that if Greenland's ice melted it would release this amount of water - "but only after, and over, millennia"”. With such negative remarks it can make people see the film as a dramatisation thus leading them to taking the information included in the film with a pinch of salt. However the film could be acting as a tool for creating awareness; it could be the push that some people need, to see that global warming is actually happening and is a real thing.

Even so, to conclude, in my opinion An Inconvenient Truth is one of those films that is not going to be everybody’s cup of tea, for it has an acquired taste, to one person it may be as tasteful as boiled socks to another it’s the cats pyjamas. The film brings the subject of climate change and global warming to the table quite neatly and the message is clear” this is climate change and this is what is going to happen because of it” with enough added information to not confuse or patronise the average Joe, but to bring about an awareness with whit and scientific fact at it's side. Though the film has been slapped around the face a few times by those in the know, it has managed to capture the attention off the girl who fell asleep watching March of the Penguins and has the theme tune to Sex and the City the Movie as her ringtone.