Half Nelson

Normally, I stay away from movies about crack addicts. But Half Nelson is a great movie. If you haven't seen it, you should. It's about a brilliant junior high school history teacher with an unbeatable crack addiction. Daniel Dunne, the addict, splits his time between inspiring his inner-city students with astounding skill and heart, and a life outside spent alone, seeking and using drugs. There is a scene that I keep remembering. In it, Dunne is talking to his inebriated mother at a rare family dinner. She was an anti-war protester in the 60's, and she says -- we thought we were going to change the world. He tells her -- you stopped the war, mom. She argues, saying that it had more to do with Daniel Ellsberg than with her actions. He says, but mom, you all did it together. One man means nothing.

I think it's Dunne's isolation, his wish for connection sabotaged by his habit, that makes the scene so heartbreaking. But it also left me with a question. At what point do you know you are part of something that will change the world? Are we in such a time?

When I wrote my first piece on climate change in March 2006, it was in response to a nationally syndicated column by George Will in which he attempted to deny both the reality and the importance of global warming. There were multiple errors and distortions in his column, including the suggestion that the world's climate scientists were too unskilled to be able to reliably measure global temperatures. I was appalled that such an inaccurate and misleading column could be printed in so many of our country's newspapers. And much of the press in this country was still falsely portraying global warming as a "scientific debate."

A little more than a year later, a lot has changed. A few climate change deniers are still out there. But they have mostly given way to the real stories about climate change -- the first climate refugees, arctic ice melt, changing weather patterns, and efforts to reign in greenhouse gas emissions. Discussions about what to do and how much it will cost are getting serious.

Many signals suggest we might be able to change the course of global warming. Like Dan Dunne's mother, we might be part of something really big. The recent release of the 4th Global Assessment on Climate Change clearly lays out the human causes and projected consequences of global warming. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that carbon dioxide is a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, and the EPA may regulate it. Evangelical Christians, business leaders, and military authorities are speaking about the grave threat posed by global warming. Mainstream media, including ABC, CBS, USA Today, and The Weather Channel have all declared that global warming is real and here.

The Bush administration is becoming increasingly isolated in its resistance to action. International, State and regional efforts are growing quickly. In the West, California has taken the lead. The Western Regional Climate Action Initiative is an agreement between Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah to implement a joint strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. East coast states are also moving ahead, along with many towns and cities. Twenty-three states have passed renewable energy standards, mandating a growing portion of their state's power come from renewable energy. Congress is at least discussing several bills that would start to address global warming.

If all these acts spread and grow fast enough, they will move from symbolic to significant. If enough of us join in soon enough, we might tackle global climate change, slow it down, and stop it before it does too much damage to our planet and to us. At some point, we will change the world. If we succeed, curtailing greenhouse gas emissions soon enough, we will save uncountable human lives, along with the planet's landscapes as we know them. We will prevent massive suffering and the extinction of a large portion of Earth's species. If not, scientists agree it will be quite a different planet we leave to our children and grandchildren, and while Earth will endure, the level of projected losses is hard to imagine.

I'm hoping we can act. We can be part of something really big. But the best science tells us we have perhaps 10 years to turn our ship around to avoid disastrously large and devastating climate change, so we have to act now.

Like Dan Dunne, the struggling addict in Half Nelson, we are trapped by our own actions. The only way out is to change. The movie ended with the question left unanswered.