Friday, January 26th, 2007
I watched Al Gore’s movie of the same name on the flight going over to the US. The irony of watching a movie on global warming from 35,000 feet was not lost on me.
I had promised myself that the flight would be work, work, work; so I figured that Al Gore was justified. It certainly wasn’t ‘X Men Revisited!’ In reality his documentary struck me more forcibly than I had ever dreamed it would. I was entranced. This was not only due to the subject matter that he presented, brilliantly, but to two things that helped his story. The first was that this was as much about Al Gore and his own personal history as about a global truth. The second was the illustration of his own lifetime’s experience of change. The film was partly about hundreds of thousands of years of history, yet it was as much about a change in one person’s lifetime and life perspectives. The whole thing had legs.
There were other points that resonated:
1. Earth’s climate change is a non-linear phenomenon. A 5º change in global average temperature will be represented by a 1º change at the equator and a 12º change at the poles. It is rather like organisations: a small change of principle, a small betrayal of values at the centre is, a massive disruption for most of the people working at the peripheral.
2. We can’t mindlessly continue the habits of the past.
3. Doing the right thing moves us forward. Can we rise above ourselves and above history?
4. Everything happens on a pixel, but it’s our only home.
5. It is your time to seize this issue, our time to rise and secure our future.
Earth and organisations align!