The school district in Federal Way has banned showing Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth unless an opposing viewpoint is shown at the same time.
A few things come to mind:
My initial reaction is, What? Since when are we the science-poor and uneducated Bible-belt? I can't even believe we would do that. One of the quotes in the article is "Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He's not a schoolteacher," said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who doesn't want the film shown at all.
"The information that's being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is," Hardison told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD." Yow! Under that logic, does science belong in school? An Inconvenient Truth quotes real research rather well.
My second reaction was - What? Do our students believe everything they hear? (Another point the AP article makes is that parent's claimed their kids were taking the movie as truth). Didn't anyone bother to teach them critical thinking. Can't kids see the film and decide for themselves?
The third thought was And maybe it is true. Then what? Pretty inconvenient for your kids to believe something you don't. They might turn the lights out from time to time or suggest that you walk somewhere. Where is the danger in acting to reduce greenhouse gasses? What horrid thing happens?
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Yes, It's amazing that folks would rather ignore the issue and trot out religion. I'm not a big church-goer, but consider myself a good Christian in my actions. I seem to recall a story about a guy named Noah. God was disgusted with humans and how they didn't take care of God's creation. So God wiped the slate clean to start again because people wouldn't listen to God's warnings. Rather than End of Days, could the Noah story be happening again? Also, yes, our children need to learn to THINK. That's what school is for...not to create an army of parrot automatons. Back in the late 60s, I bugged my parents to stop smoking, stop using colored toilet paper, to recycle, to not waste energy. I was ridiculed about it all, but guess what? Recycling is now law. Show the film. Open up discussion. But no matter what, being "green" just can't help but be a good thing.
Through the ages religion has been used by the unscrupulous to deceive the gullible. Bible and other religious texts even warn us about that possibility... nay, eventuality. That this manipulation is happening so close to us in time and place is what is disturbing. Other parents in Federal Way need to speak up.
There is no scientific doubt that global warming is real. Trees remove CO2 from the air which then is locked up in their bodies. Burning fossil fuels is equivalent to burning millions of trees to release that ancient CO2. This increases CO2 in the air, which in turn traps more of sun’s heat inside earth.
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