On September 14, Al Gore will launch the Climate Reality Project, or “24 Hours of Reality” — this most recent project will have 24 presentations, done by 24 presenters in 13 languages, each broadcast one hour after the other, representing all the time zones of the world. Al Gore will be connecting the dots of climate change, extreme weather and pollution, among other things — but the innovative thing is that he wants to harness the power of his follower’s social media accounts in order to reach more people.
Gore is asking his supporters to lend him their accounts — the Project will be posting status updates in their name, trying to reach many more people as well as start a dialogue on the subject. Presumably the idea is to use the six degrees of separation in order to reach every social media user out there. But are there problems with this plan? Will harnessing social media seem like advertising, or does Gore have nothing to sell? Is there a reason to be worried about surrendering your online life to another person, or a corporation? Does one need to full-heartedly agree with the message before they choose to donate their account? Or is there simply nothing to worry about, and all that will be accomplished is a healthy, informative session on what could be the biggest problem humanity has ever faced?
My personal opinion lies in the realm of “there’s not much to worry about”, but I still don’t think I’ll be donating my account — I simply haven’t followed Gore closely enough lately to do that — but I support those who will, and look forward to being surprised by the updates reaching me on the 14th. Either way, I will be tuning into the presentation to check out the information.
Will you be donating your account? As I write this, almost 762,000 people already have!
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Featured image: Climate Reality, via Guardian
Maybe you haven’t heard that climate awareness is just a way for people like Al Gore to get reacher than they already are?
I’ve never exactly understood the logic behind that — I’d love it if you elaborated.
From what I can see, climate awareness leads to consuming *less*: you drive less, buy less “stuff” that you didn’t need in the first place, and find a relationship with nature. Perhaps literature is something one can spend money on in this subject. But otherwise, how does it lead to Al Gore, especially specifically, making more money?
I know that to make large-scale changes in climate change we need to mobilize governments and policies — perhaps there is some way there that Al Gore will profit? But then again, wouldn’t the greater good of such changes trump any pennies that Al Gore may somehow make from that (again, I’d love it if you clarified this opinion for me, as I’ve never been sure what the arguments are)?
Watching the presentation sells one nothing (or so I think), and other than that, there’s not much else? Making movies wouldn’t count in my opinion: many people make and profit from movies, it’s a form of art and information dissemination.
Anyhow, before I go on some tangent…would you please clarify? I’d love to hear the reasoning.