By Ayami Kanazawa

We often hear about global warming these days. It is often mentioned as the cause of this year's warm winter. In Japan, which confirmed Kyoto Protocol, the government is taking a lead to stop global warming. However, very few other countries in the world have taken measures to influence the environment yet.

In 2006 the documentary movie An Inconvenient Truth was produced in America. Former U.S. Vice-President Al gore (1993-2001) is trying hard to enhance people's awareness, knowledge and interest about the environment in an America that seems to care more about the economy than the environment in comparison with European countries and Japan.

He became interested in environmental problems when he was at Harvard University in the 1960s. He has conducted a campaign for enlightenment about the environment and made many relationships with leaders in foreign countries when he was in the U.S. Congress as a Representative and then as a Senator. The U.S. did not sign the Kyoto Protocol, however, even though Gore made efforts to get the treaty ratified.

After he lost the Presidential election to Bush in 2000, he started a lecture tour about global warming using simple Power-Point animation and graphs and to tell the importance of the action which each of us begins to take in. He gave more than 1,000 lectures throughout America, Europe and Asia. The main contents of the movie An Inconvenient Truth were made from his latest lectures.

According to this movie, the quantity of carbon dioxide has risen from 280 ppm 200 years ago to 370 ppm today and it has a tendency to increase year by year, the top ten warmest years in recent history occurred after 1990, and, if the snow on Mt. Kilimanjaro keeps melting at its present rate all of it will melt away by 2020.

Gore displays some photos of Mt. Kilimanjaro in 1970 and again in 2000 to his audience to show that half of the snow has melted away. He also shows a film of the fishing boats left in what once was the Aral Sea because of drought. He emphasized that this problem is not in the distant future, but it is happening now.

Global warming influences the planet in other ways, too. If temperatures keep rising, the Antarctic and the Arctic ice will melt, which will cause low lying islands to disappear. The ice is melting in the Arctic Ocean and there are cases where polar bears have drown trying to find floating ice.

And if the sea temperature rises, typhoons and hurricanes will become bigger and stronger. Hurricane Katrina which hit New Orleans in 2005 is a typical example of this. Some areas have problems with floods and other areas have drought or forest fires. The extinction of plants and animals and the increase of new kinds of diseases make people feel apprehensive about the future.

One interesting point of this movie was Gore's satirical criticism of the relationship between the environment and politics, and the close relation between the Bush administration and the business community which causes a delay in changes to the environmental policy. Whenever Gore satirizes the Bush administration, it makes me think that if Gore had been elected President of the U.S. instead of Bush, the Iraq war and the present world would be much different.

What should we do to save the Earth? Are there any measures to solve the problems effectively? Gore appeals to each of us to try to do the following things:

1. Change electrical appliances and light bulbs to energy-saving ones.

2. Use public transportation.

3. Buy a hybrid car and check the air pressure in the tires sometimes to keep the car running economically, and to turn the engine off when stopped.

4. Use more recycled products.

5. Turn off the tap when it is not used.

6. Go shopping with an eco-bag, to refuse to get the plastic shopping bag and reduce excessive packing.

7. Set the heater of the air conditioner lower a notch or two in winter, and raise the setting on the air conditioner in summer.

8. Plant as many trees as possible to help reduce CO2.

What many suggestions there are! However, most of them are easy ones. I recently saw some people refusing a plastic shopping bag when I was shopping. By keeping the ecology in mind we can improve the environment. It is all but impossible to adopt all of the ideas at once.

However, if people throughout the world make a little effort, it will have a big effect on preventing global warming. Now is the time to take action in our daily lives to help decrease weather related disasters caused by global warming and save our beautiful planet for future generations.