Bits and Bobs
So this post was going to be about Morsbags.com but then Chris sat me down and made me watch An Inconvenient Truth so it’s gonna cover various bits and bobs as the title suggests!!!!
Morsbags.com
This website is very cool, it doesn’t have any flashy videos or games but it is a seriously good idea!!!!!!! It is also cool because it leads on to my bit about the film. The idea behind Morsbags.com is that you make a bag and use it rather than using plastic carrier bags when you go to the supermarket – you could also use it for your school/college folders – if you were like me i used to have a small school bag (which wasnt actually for school) and then had to carry a carrier bag with my folder in it. Anyhoo so you go on the website and get the instructions, raid your Mum’s or your own sewing kit and get sewing. It is better to do it with a machine because then that the stitching is some how stronger. You can then add allsorts of different decoration and stuff like that.
On the 6th of April 2002 (21 days before my 16th birthday!) a young female minke whale washed up onto the beach at Normandy in France. The contents of her stomach were: 1x plastic/aluminium crisp packet, 2 English supermarket carrier bags, 7x various colour dustbin bags, 7x transparent plastic bags and 1x food packaging wrapper.
I hear you ask huh why would a minke whale eat plastic bags. No-one knows how long these plastic bags take to biodegrade as they have only really been in use for the last 3o years, but they already cover the earth – globally humans consume 1 million plastic bags PER MINUTE!!!!!!!! they photodegrade – they break down into smaller and smaller toxic bits. SO back to the Minke – whales and other marine wildlife get confused and mistake the plastic bags for jellyfish. the whale or other animal/mammal then dies and decomposes around the plastic bag, the bag then floats of to catch it’s next victim.
Now i hear you saying what can i do? You can do bits like buy a fabric bag for life at the supermarket – and reuse it. Or you can visit the website get the instructions and start making your own. There is a message board so you can share your creations with other Morsbags fans, you can join a “pod” – which is a group who meet to make Morsbags socially – which i hope to do when i find some people near me. If you live in Bedfordshire drop me a comment and i will see if i can get in touch!!!!
An Inconvenient Truth
Before watching this you ask me who was Al Gore and I would say the guy who stood for president and lost. Thats all i really knew about him, well another than that he was an American!!! lol. He has a huge point to say and this DVD does speak volumes. I don’t know how long it is but Gore talks about global warming, the melting of the polar ice caps, and the dying of polar bears. (Ok the dying of polar bears comes under polar ice caps but it needed to be said).
This bit is from the film’s website:
Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If the vast majority of the world’s scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced.
If that sounds like a recipe for serious gloom and doom — think again. From director Davis Guggenheim comes the Sundance Film Festival hit, AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, which offers a passionate and inspirational look at one man’s fervent crusade to halt global warming’s deadly progress in its tracks by exposing the myths and misconceptions that surround it. That man is former Vice President Al Gore, who, in the wake of defeat in the 2000 election, re-set the course of his life to focus on a last-ditch, all-out effort to help save the planet from irrevocable change. In this eye-opening and poignant portrait of Gore and his “traveling global warming show,” Gore also proves himself to be one of the most misunderstood characters in modern American public life. Here he is seen as never before in the media – funny, engaging, open and downright on fire about getting the surprisingly stirring truth about what he calls our “planetary emergency” out to ordinary citizens before it’s too late.
With 2005, the worst storm season ever experienced in America just behind us, it seems we may be reaching a tipping point – and Gore pulls no punches in explaining the dire situation. Interspersed with the bracing facts and future predictions is the story of Gore’s personal journey: from an idealistic college student who first saw a massive environmental crisis looming; to a young Senator facing a harrowing family tragedy that altered his perspective, to the man who almost became President but instead returned to the most important cause of his life – convinced that there is still time to make a difference.
With wit, smarts and hope, AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH ultimately brings home Gore’s persuasive argument that we can no longer afford to view global warming as a political issue – rather, it is the biggest moral challenges facing our global civilization.
