By Hannah Kim
It's the year 2012 and the end of the world as we know it has come.
Without major warning (besides the Mayan prognostication), a chaotic onslaught of catastrophes unravels and obliterates all form of life as the Earth's crust destabilizes. At least such cataclysmic pole shift hypothesis is what director Roland Emmerich espoused to portray the Great Deluge in his latest apocalyptic blockbuster, ``2012."
Normally, I would only casually observe a doomsday film like this but my curiosity was aroused watching how people reacted when facing death. I sympathized with the self-seeking Russian billionaire Yuri Karpov when he knowingly jumped into an abyss to his death while desperately trying to get his two sons aboard the Ark.
The movie, however, intrigues me deeper this time. I think perhaps it's because I grew up so near the San Andreas Fault in Southern California and at school we regularly held earthquake drills for the ``Big One" ― and the backdrops in the movie are eerily familiar.
Maybe it's because I live in Washington where I'm occasionally solicited by Greenpeace activists on the street, or because the world's eyes are currently on Copenhagen where the United Nations Climate Change Conference is taking place (Dec. 7 to 18) ― or I'm simply older and more mindful of humanity and posterity.
If anything, it's probably because I can viscerally empathize with Jackson Curtis the over-the-top protagonist in ``2012" and fathom why he fantastically delivers his daughter and son (plus ex-wife) to safe haven ― I'd do the same for my baby brother William.
Speculating that I'd never rid myself of the old Vaio my father bought me for my birthday years ago, Willy shelled out his hard-earned money on Cyber Monday to buy me a netbook because he ``appreciated everything you've done for me all my life." I'm extremely proud of my brother (who at age 17 is in college and a federal employee), and would surpass rings of fire to get him embarked on Noah's Ark.
So for one who has yet to watch ``March of the Penguins," ``the devastating effects of climate change" concern me differently with Will in mind. I'm suddenly perusing articles posted on the COP15 and United Nations Web site. I read with keen interest Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon's visit to the Svalbard Global (Doomsday) Seed Vault. I even watched a video clip of his trip to the Arctic Circle.
Then finally I landed on a write-up on the secretary-general's recent keynote speech at the Women's International Forum. There he kindles images of women ``who will have to forage even farther and longer for wood and water" and "who could see their crop yields fall by half over the next decade" as a result of the desertification and increasingly erratic rainfall linked to climate change.
As a spoiled urbanite, it's relatively difficult to identify with those whose livelihoods and the well-being of their families and communities depend on the environment. The sheer thought of my own mother struggling to carry heavy buckets of water makes me shudder, and I immediately find myself asking ``What can I do?"
This train of thought has led me to arrive at Hopenhagen: Hope in Copenhagen that ``we can build a better future for our planet and a more sustainable way of life." While I don't entirely agree that the conference in Denmark is the ``last major chance the world has to decide on a concrete and effective plan for reducing carbon emissions," I fundamentally agree it's an ``amazing opportunity for humanity and the planet."
Without doubt the debate surrounding climate change is steamy and even stormy. Yet the goal of Hopenhagen is clear: encouraging people to take heart and partake in the political discussion to help ``Seal the Deal" on a fair agreement (before the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012).
Ultimately, whether one is a proponent of Al Gore's ``The Inconvenient Truth" or not, climate change affects us all. And as conscientious individuals we should care for the rest of humanity ― especially because as Ban underscored ``people who have been the least responsible for causing climate change are suffering first and worst from its effects."
At the end of ``2012," Adrian Helmsley, the lead scientist, realizes that the Arks are about to set sail while leaving thousands of people behind to perish. Helmsley poignantly remonstrates that if they forsake all those people, they aren't saving humanity; they are destroying it, since they would ``start the world anew with a horribly cruel act." Subsequently, the heads of states allow the gates to open to admit the cheering crowds on board.
Ruminating on the world's end (no matter how fictional), we owe it to ourselves to look after one another. Just because we're not in Copenhagen doesn't mean we have to ``let it be." Heed Paul McCartney's example: the vegetarian Beatle advocated his ``Less Meat = Less Heat" campaign before the European Parliament to demonstrate what an individual can do to fight climate change.
Surely one of us turning on one less light can somewhere lighten up a water carrier's burden. Recycle, reduce, reuse; be conscious. At the end of the day, we really are on this Ark together.
Hannah Kim is a 2009 master's graduate at the George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management, specializing in legislative affairs. She spearheaded the passage of the ``Korean War Veterans Recognition Act, U.S. Public Law 111-41," which was signed by President Obama on July 27, 2009, 56 years to the day after the Korean War Armistice was signed in 1953. She can be reached at hkim@remember727.org.