Eco-Movies in Wallingford

Free movies on environmental topics are being held at First United Methodist in Wallingford. Start time is usually 6:30. Contact Al Satton for info/directions. The schedule is below:

FUMC Community Film Series Schedule

February 1st
An Inconvenient Truth (2006) Rated PG Director Davis Guggenheim. Al Gore’s passionate campaign for the environment is documented. He presents global warming facts without being too political. He did win the Nobel Prize!!

February 8th
Who Killed the Electric Car? (2006)
Amid ever-increasing gas prices, this documentary delves into the short life of the GM EV1 electric car. How could such an efficient, green-friendly vehicle fail to transform our garages and skies? Through interviews Chris Paine (former EV1 owner) seeks to answer the question. This documentary is quite informative and entertaining.

March 7th
Too Hot Not To Handle (2006) Rated G Directors Maryann DeLeo and Ellen Goosenberg Kent. Documentary on how global warming effects our environment and the measures needed to reverse the trend.
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Convenient Showing of An Inconvenient Truth

An Inconvenient Truth returns to the big screen at Cinestudio (Trinity College) in Hartford. Here is the Cinestudio write-up:

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH (PG)Tue Jan 29 @ 7:30(2006) Directed by David Guggenheim, based on a presentation of Al Gore. Featuring: Al Gore.Not to lessen the positive rewards of making An Inconvenient Truth for former V.P. turned activist Al Gore (like winning the Academy Award® for Best Documentary and receiving the Nobel Peace Prize), but the more amazing impact of this eye-opening film has been the turn in public determination to pay attention to the threat of global climate change. If you've only seen it on DVD, now is the chance to experience the power of its visually stunning evidence of a planet in danger. You may even be inspired to urge the U.S. to get on board with the Kyoto Treaty - or to elect a President who will. 100 min.

CINESTUDIO 300 Summit St

Hartford CT
Telephone: 860 297 2544

Fax: 860 297 5126

Showtimes: 860 297 CINE

Visit http://www.cinestudio.org/ for the latest movie listings! Donate at http://www.networkforgood.org/

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.

Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

More Solutions to An Inconvenient Truth

Sponsored by PACE
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2007
Unitarian Society of Hartford
50 Bloomfield Avenue, Hartford(1/10 mile north from intersection of Rts. 44 & 189)
Admission is free to the public. Donations are welcome.
5:00-7:00 PM EXHIBITS AND DINNER
Solar energy installers (Connecticut Clean Energy Fund)
Environmental Exhibits
City Line Pizza, homemade desserts, coffee 7:00 PM
Annual Meeting - Rep. James O'Rourke, President
7:30 PM AWARDS
Lifetime Achievement: The American Solar Energy Society (ases.org) (represented by Steven and Marilyn Strong)
Legislative: Rep. Steve Fontana; Rep. Vickie Orsini Nardello
Business: Van Zelm, Heywood & Shadford, Inc.
Media: Jennifer Boyd (CPTV "The Warming of Connecticut")
8:00 PM AMAZING POWER POINT PRESENTATION "HEADING TOWARD ZERO ENERGY BUILDINGS" Steven J. Strong - Award Winner & President of Solar Design
INFORMATION:(860) 693-4813 or www.pace-cleanenergy.org
PACE is a non-profit public health organization
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 22 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.htm
Enjoy discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/.

Live Earth to Reach 2 Billion

Get ready to rock, world. Live Earth is coming tomorrow to a stadium, TV or house party near you. Read about it in the Kansas City Star (article below.)

Live Earth is ambitious by any standard: eight concerts featuring the biggest names in music, playing for a 24-hour period across the globe, all for the cause of global warming.
But like its template — 2006’s Live 8, the global concert devoted to poverty in Africa — the mission of Live Earth is somewhat amorphous. Its aim is to “trigger a global movement to solve the climate crisis.”
Whatever Live Earth’s accomplishment Saturday, it will be difficult to measure. Former Vice President Al Gore, who partnered with Kevin Wall in founding Live Earth, believes the world needs to rise up as one giant vox populi to influence “a new political reality.”
“The tipping point in the political system will come when the majority of the people are armed with enough knowledge about the crisis and its solutions that they make this cause their own,” Gore said. “Then, you will see the entire political system shift dramatically.”
Wall, an Emmy-winning concert producer who produced Live 8, hopes Live Earth will change attitudes about global warming and spark a larger movement.
“This concert is not the solution,” Wall says. “Maybe we can make the noise, maybe we can be the town crier.”
Live Earth will send proceeds to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a nonprofit organization chaired by Gore. Tickets for the U.S. concert range from $83 to $348.
Wall was originally inspired to put on Live Earth after seeing “An Inconvenient Truth,” the Oscar-winning documentary on Gore’s global-warming slideshow.
“The question I kept asking myself is, ‘What can I do?’ ” Wall says.
Concerts are scheduled for Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.; London; Johannesburg, South Africa; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Shanghai, China; Tokyo; Sydney, Australia; and Hamburg, Germany. A band of scientists also will perform in Antarctica, stretching Live Earth across seven continents.
More than 150 artists will perform, including Madonna, the Police, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Alicia Keys. Sixty short films and 30 public service announcements have been produced, which will be broadcast between performances.
Also planned are more than 6,000 parties in 119 countries, ranging from home viewings to museum festivals. The concerts will be broadcast on TV and the Internet.
Part of the thrust of Live Earth is to communicate what consumers can do to minimize their impact on the environment.
“The problem with it is that it’s a very complicated issue,” Wall says. “When you think about yourself recycling a piece of paper, how does that connect to an iceberg in the North Pole?”
Wall and Gore also have taken measures to maintain the concert’s green integrity by enlisting the support of the U.S. Green Building Council and John Picard, a former member of President Clinton’s Green White House task force. Live Earth is intended to be an eco-friendly event with power supplied from renewable energy sources and ground travel from hybrid or high-efficiency vehicles where possible.
“This is going to be the greenest event of its kind, ever,” Gore says. “The carbon offsets and the innovative practices that are being used to make this a green event, I think will set the standard for years to come.”

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at http://www.irejn.org/.

That's Eco-tainment

Apparently even the eco-friendly famous have their own super-fans, who can now follow the every move of the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Sheryl Crow at ecorazzi, which bills itself as "the latest in green gossip". Today's story: the breakup of An Inconvenient Truth producer Laurie David and her Seinfeld co-creator hubby Larry David. Was Laurie's love of the earth to blame? Read the blurb (below), visit the website, and wallow in a little eco-voyeurism.

Making the rounds through the media circuits this afternoon is the sad news that Larry David and Laurie David are calling it quits after 14 years of marriage. As many of you know, we regularly have highlighted Laurie and Larry’s commitments to fighting global warming. Laurie David in particular has made massive waves with co-producing An Inconvenient Truth and her StopGlobalWarming site. Many consider her to be the #2 person in terms of environmental power in the United States behind Al Gore.
According to some reports, it may have been this sudden rise in fame and commitment to the cause that strained the relationship. In 2004, Larry David told Eric Alterman for a piece on Hollywood fundraising in The Atlantic:
“‘I heard nothing about the environment for all our lives and now this. I wish she would at least take back her own name.’”
Might the StopGlobalWarming tour with Sheryl Crow been the final nail in the coffin for the relationship? Obviously, speculating over why two people have separated doesn’t make us any better than the other gossip sites out there — but you have to wonder? We’ll leave it at that.

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

Mr. Gore Goes to Washington

“A day will come when our children and grandchildren will look back and they’ll ask one of two questions.” Either, “they will ask: what in God’s name were they doing?” or “they may look back and say: how did they find the uncommon moral courage to rise above politics and redeem the promise of American democracy?”
Al Gore made his long-anticipated trek back to Washington to testify before Congress on climate change. This was his first appearance on the Hill since leaving the office of Vice President in 2001. According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune,

Gore advised lawmakers to cut carbon dioxide and other warming gases 90 percent by 2050 to avert a crisis. Doing that, he said, will require a ban on any new coal-burning power plants — a major source of industrial carbon dioxide — that lack state-of-the-art controls to capture the gases.
He said he foresees a revolution in small-scale electricity producers for replacing coal, likening the development to what the Internet has done for the exchange of information. He also advocated tougher fuel-economy standards for cars and trucks.
"There is a sense of hope in this country that this United States Congress will rise to the occasion and present meaningful solutions to this crisis," he said. "Our world faces a true planetary emergency. I know the phrase sounds shrill, and I know it's a challenge to the moral imagination."
IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Light and Power. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

Gore Defended

Grist's David Robert's has struck back against the New York Times article about the backlash against the film "An Inconvenient Truth," analyzing the meandering article point by point.

His conclusion?

Bill Broad took to the pages of the paper of record to establish that there is significant concern in the scientific community about the accuracy of Gore's movie. To do so, he trotted out scientific outliers, non-scientists, and hacks with discredited arguments. In at least two cases (Pielke Jr. being a scientist and the NAS report contradicting Gore) he made gross factual errors. As for the rest, it's a classic case of journalistic "false balance" -- something I thought we were done with on global warming. I guess when it comes to Al Gore, the press still thinks it can get by on smear, suggestion, and innuendo.

IREJN is Connecticut's Light and Power. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

An Inconvenient Backlash

In a backlash that was perhaps inevitable, some scientists charge that "An Inconvenient Truth" overhypes effects of climate change and fails to explain nuances adequately.
According to the New York Times,

Kevin Vranes, a climatologist at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, said he sensed a growing backlash against exaggeration. While praising Mr. Gore for “getting the message out,” Dr. Vranes questioned whether his presentations were “overselling our certainty about knowing the future.”

Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton who advised Mr. Gore on the book and movie, said that reasonable scientists disagreed on the malaria issue and other points that the critics had raised. In general, he said, Mr. Gore had distinguished himself for integrity.

“On balance, he did quite well — a credible and entertaining job on a difficult subject,” Dr. Oppenheimer said. “For that, he deserves a lot of credit. If you rake him over the coals, you’re going to find people who disagree. But in terms of the big picture, he got it right.”

IREJN is Connecticut's Light and Power. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

Florida Faithful Fight Climate Change

An infamous graphic in the Climate Change documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" illustrates how rising global temperatures could put much of Florida under water. According to this article in the South Florida Sun Sentinel, a number of Florida religious communities are trying to prevent that from happening.

Evangelical Christians, Jews, Catholics, Muslims, Unitarians: All are committing time and effort to transforming their buildings and their congregants' mindsets.

David Clark, president of Palm Beach Atlantic University, a Christian college in West Palm Beach, describes himself as a political conservative who believes God created the Earth. But he has become so convinced that the Earth is being destroyed, a year ago he joined 84 other Christian leaders in signing the Evangelical Climate Initiative, which called for federal legislation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions."I didn't want to identify with a group that's way out there," said Clark, who has begun installing energy-efficient lighting and air-conditioning regulators throughout the campus. "I'm not a tree-hugger. But the evidence is overwhelming."

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

Al Gore, You Just Got An Oscar! Where are you going?

If you're Al Gore, apparently you head to Washington--for a visit to Congress, that is. Gore's new initiative is a petition drive to get the US Congress to act quickly on climate change legislation. Here is the link to sign his petition:

http://www.algore.com/cards.html?sc=M0001

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

Oscar Goes Green

In addition to honoring "An Inconvenient Truth" as best documentary and Melissa Etheridge's original song for the film "I Need to Wake Up," the 2007 Academy Awards integrated eco-friendly practices into its production this year.
As reported in The New York Times,

Mr. Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio, a nominee for best actor (“Blood Diamond”), announced in the middle of the telecast that the program had offset its carbon emissions by buying energy credits. “This show has officially gone green,” Mr. DiCaprio said.
The Oscars adopted other conservation measures this year, such as using recycled paper for the Oscar ballots. “We have a long way to go, but all of us, in our lives, can do something to make a difference,” Mr. Gore said.
But Mr. Gore did not throw his hat in the ring, as the producers of his film, among others in Hollywood, had hoped he might. Asked if he had a major announcement to make, Mr. Gore said: “With a billion people watching, it’s as good a time as any. So my fellow Americans, I’m going to take this opportunity, here and now, to formally announce” — and the Oscars orchestra, right on cue, drowned him out as if he had droned on a second too long.

Later, when the Academy Award for "An Inconvenient Truth" was announced, Al Gore joined the director and producers onstage.

“I made this movie for my children,” said the director, Davis Guggenheim[as he accepted the award], his arm on Mr. Gore’s shoulder. “We were moved to act by this man.”
Mr. Gore took his moment in the worldwide spotlight to underline the film’s message. “My fellow Americans, people all over the world, we need to solve the climate crisis,” he said, adding that the “will to act” was a renewable resource. “Let’s renew it,” he said.

Learn more about the greening of the Oscars at www.oscar.com.
View a CNN video of Al Gore speaking at a press conference after the ceremony.

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

US Businesses, States May Force Climate Policy

Al Gore says that the many US businesses and states that have embraced the aims of the Kyoto Protocol may force President Bush to reverse his unwillingness to require cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. Gore is currently in Japan promoting his documentary "An Inconvenient Truth."

Visit us at www.irejn.org.

Gore Urges People to Act on Climate Change

Here is an excerpt from the article on All Headline News:

More than 20,000 people in close to 2,000 living rooms throughout the country watched Gore's documentary on global warming Saturday night.
The event, hosted by Gore and Move On, a Political Action Committee with more than 3.3 million members, featured the film "Inconvenient Truth."
Gore, from his Nashville, Tenn. home, spent 30 minutes on a conference call and answered questions from those who were tuned in via computers and telephones.

"All we are missing (to stop this) is political will, and that is a renewable resource," Gore said.

Gore asked the more than 20,000 to help him and organize a mass movement around global warming.
"The American political system is seemingly paralyzed by this issue," Gore said. "And when that becomes the case, then this is when the grassroots movement has to get mobilized."
Gore said the U.S. is responsible for contributing to more than 30 percent of the climate crisis.
"It's not a political issue as much as a moral one," Gore said. "And to allow this to happen is unethical."

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Lots of News!

It has been a busy couple of days for the environmental community. Al Gore appeared on Oprah on Tuesday to present Global Warming 101 and to promote house party showings of "An Inconvenient Truth" on Saturday, December 16. The U.S. Department of Energy announced a scientific breakthrough: new, super-efficient solar panels. Wired Magazine has a short articles about possible technological solutions to climate change. NPR reported on a story in the journal Science about predicting global warming from CO2 leve.s

An Inconvenient Truth DVD

An Inconvenient Truth is now out on DVD. Read what Al Gore has to say about the DVD release. Buy the book and DVD at Amazon.