Al Gore in Manila

It started off with an odd environmental musical medley number of a Glee-like performance group. Included in the much extended repertoire was: the “trees” poem, dialogue such as "we can do this, if we do it together", theater smiles, group dances, antiquated and cheesy songs like “if we hold on together”, “people of the world” (is this even the title?) and “heal the world" - among the other cheesy elements. It was, well, weird. The performers seem talented and it would have worked if we were all 5 year olds but, hey, the place was packed with people in suits and barongs. So, I bet you the business people were not all that amused either.

Sans that bizarre front act, I suppose I got my ticket’s worth of Al Gore. That is, I was suppose to get a better seat but at the last minute my dad wanted to attend the event, and so, I got bumped off to the nosebleed section. See this picture:

All in all, it was a live version of the movie Inconvenient Truth, which isn’t bad. Al Gore was there, live. Granted, I couldn’t really see him as the large screens, no matter how close I was to them (I call my seat the best of the worst – since I was after all in the 3rd row of the cheap seats), were not showing Al Gore on screen – they were showing his lecture slides, which are great and all, but I did want to see Al Gore’s face even just for a few minutes. (Note that they did show the front act for minutes on end on the big screens)

On Climate Change

There was a lot of pictures of floods all over the world. Forget my fixation on earthquakes and volcano eruptions, apparently, it's not just the geothermal front we have to worry about. Apparently, (well, duh) flood disasters have been making uncanny appearances all over the world as well.

It's not just about us, Ondoy and Pepeng. All over the world, areas that are not usually flood areas have been getting submerged in water.

Temperatures are expected to rise, ice caps will continue to melt, river and sea levels will continue to rise... Disasters, obviously, would also be on the rise.

And, the point really is: we should all be, BIG TIME, alarmed. After all, there is only one Earth. It's not like we can move out when it gets too hot.

I, personally, had a brief encounter with some C02 statistics when I did this quantitative project (for school) on putting up a green building in Metro Manila. So, I did appreciate Mr. Gore's talk.

Al Gore vs. Tony Blair

Remember that leadership conference talk by Tony Blair in, I think, 2008, well, I was there too. (I suppose, sometimes, I am a weird socio-political groupie.)

In terms of charm, communications skills, and spontaneous answers, I would have to hand it to Mr. Blair. But in terms of say, the message, perhaps there are some merits in, oh, a Nobel prize and an Oscar award... so, this one goes to Mr. Gore.

As for my photography skills, my Tony Blair pictures are definitely better. See how close I was: