| On The Front Lines Fighting Global Warming in NYC |
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| Written by Danielle Martino | |
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Page 1 of 2 Warning! There’s a Warming: Stop Climate Change Oct. 23, 6-8 pm  Kathy Mattea giving her point of view on the causes of global warming
 Kathy Mattea explaining how CO2 is one of the cause of global warming and how its effecting our earth
 New York City Senator Liz Krueger giving her views why she supports Mattea's efforts for stoping global warming
 l to r: Reverend Kevin Beane, St. Bartholomew's Church, Bob Moore, Executive Director, Environmental Advocates, Kathy Mattea, Sen. Liz Krueger, Commissioner of the State Pete Grannis, and New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli
I sat down in a church pew and, for the first time in days, relaxed and looked at the surroundings. The high cathedral ceiling settled me for a brief moment until a priest, Father Bean, went up to the podium to open the meeting. Interestingly, Father Bean not only introduced the church and welcomed the gathering, he spoke in a semi-mock radio voice about hope and its place in the face of catastrophic global warming. He explained that “Hope is the strength that God gives us even when our worse fears about what we’ve done to this planet are being realized.” This is one area where religion and science intersect, yet it was strange to see a priest reign over this environmental crusade. The men in their late 50s sitting next to me mumbled about the fact that most of the turnout excluded the younger generation. Sad too because, after all, it is clear that global warming is going to impact future generations most harshly. When Mattea stepped up to the platform to speak, the participants in the crowd grew silent and reverent. The 40-something singer started her presentation by stating her gratefulness at being there in such a beautiful and spiritual venue—that immediately brought the seemingly colossal issue of global warming down to a personal level. Most sat wondering what a country songstress from days past was doing up there among the ranks of environmentalists and politicians like Al Gore. Mattea addressed this rhetorical question right off the bat. In January of 2006, Mattea saw Al Gore’s slideshow presentation of images from “An Inconvenient Truth” and was irrevocably affected. “I couldn’t sleep at night after that,” Mattea said. “I kept thinking what can I do? I tried to go back to before I had all this information, and I couldn’t.” So Mattea joined the small environmental army that Gore has amassed, “the grassroots training program,” to make the public more aware of global warming. Mattea was in the first training class whereby she was coached on how to present Gore’s slideshow and deliberate on the implications of each slide. The first slide in the presentation was haunting. A picture of our planet sinking into an abyss of black with the haze of pollution surrounding earth, illuminated the screen. With this image, the world looked as if it was disappearing, slowly slipping from our grasp. Mattea went on to present slides of graphs highlighting the increasing amount of carbon dioxide our society is releasing into the atmosphere, clearly explaining the danger associated with increasing CO2 levels. In plain terms, the more CO2, the hotter the Earth’s atmosphere gets; thus, the more sunburns and spells of heat stroke we all get. Now, imagine seeing this explained by a red, wavy-lined graph exponentially skyrocketing. With such a display, my first thought was that we will all be incinerated within weeks. Not only does this accelerating release of C02 heat up the land, but also the oceans, supposedly resulting in bigger storms that hold more water. Hence, “major storms have increased 50%” according to an MIT study. This explains Hurricane Katrina, followed by Hurricane Rita one month after Katrina, and Hurricane Wilma following Rita, also exactly one month later. The next big problem the slides revealed had to do with the melting polar ice caps. Obviously, if the ice caps melt—and these are big ice caps at that—just imagine our world under all that water. One of Gore’s slides graphically depicted just that: lower Manhattan flooding, along with many other cities and continents. According to Mattea, this rapid ice melting phenomena is “unprecedented.” Yet, this seems confusing on a number of levels. Though the visual presentation appalled me and shocked me into a state of panic about the Earth’s current state, I remember reading in science books that this sort of polar ice cap destabilization happened centuries before, and, obviously then it was not as a result of global warming or destroying our environment. According to science journals my remembrance was correct. |