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Newsvine“We are probably the most privileged people to ever walk the planet,” Biological Sciences Prof. Terry Root said last night to a packed Cubberley Auditorium. “Our actions now can affect the next 500 generations.”
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Root spoke to an over-capacity crowd that had spilled out into the isles to watch Al Gore’s Academy Award-nominated documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” which projects the apparent effects of global warming on the Earth. The screening was part of the Stanford Climate Change Campaign’s (SCCC) Week of Action and was inspired by the nationwide Campus Climate Challenge.
“The reason we gathered these people together to show them the movie was to demonstrate that as a community, climate change is an issue we really care about,” said sophomore Lauren Finzer, a member of the Stanford Climate Control Crew, a smaller group within the SCCC. “Our main goal is for Stanford to make an institutional commitment to lower emissions and to take leadership on the climate change issue.”
The group’s petition to the University, which calls for a reduction in emissions, was available to sign at the screening.
According to the Climate Control Crew, Yale President Richard Levin recently announced his pledge to reduce emissions by 10 percent. Harvard President Lawrence Summers responded by announcing an 11 percent reduction.
“Why can’t we pledge 12 percent?” asked CCC member Bryce Golden-Chen, a sophomore. “This is the sort of stance Stanford should be taking. We should have a green race of sorts.”
The nearly 500 viewers in Cubberley mostly watched Al Gore’s documentary in rapt silence. They laughed at nearly all of Gore’s jokes and gasped at images of global flooding, one of which showed Stanford nearly underwater.
The SCCC is a subgroup of Sustainable Stanford, a larger student group, which advocates that students and the University adopt environmentally responsible policies.
After the film screening, Root fielded audience questions.
Asked about the proper course of action, Root responded, “We just have to start changing; each one of us can make a difference.”
The professor encouraged students to keep their lights and computers off whenever possible. She also suggested that students write to their congressional representatives to share their concerns about climate control.
“And get rid of Bush,” she added.
Root told the crowd that she believes the Earth is on the cusp of a mass extinction, during which 15 to 35 percent of all species could become extinct in the next 100 to 200 years. She said it was “all because of one species.”
“We can do it,” she said. “We just have to have the political will. We don’t want to leave this horrible legacy to our children and grandchildren.”