An Inconvenient Truth Film Review
Normally, I use this space to review books. But yesterday I saw Al Gore's new movie, An Inconvenient Truth, and I'd be remiss not to recommend it highly to you here.
The movie is essentially a documentary about global warming and climate change, a problem the former vice-president has been encouraging Americans and Congress to fix for at least twenty years. It packages the global warming slideshow he's given about a thousand times with additional live action shots that bring the climate change debate to scary life. Footage of melting glaciers in Antarctica and the North Pole meets animation of projected coastal flooding should massive melting at both poles occur. Persuasive links are made between the increasing temperatures our planet is facing and extreme weather phenomena like Hurricane Katrina in this country, cyclones and typhoons in southeast Asia, and the spreading deserts in Africa. Gore's personal perspective, told through the lens of his son's near-death and his sister's losing battle with lung cancer, turn his story into one every person in the audience where I was attending seemed to connect with.
While not a political diatribe, Gore does make the point that whether we stop global warming or not is a matter of political will as well as personal commitment. Clearly, he believes neither the current Administration nor the Congress will put the United States on a path that would help us reduce significantly the carbon dioxide emissions which cause global warming. The " what you can do" list at the end of the film is long. It includes two key admonitions: to vote for politicians who will support smarter energy policies, and to run for office yourself if that's the only way to keep the planet cool.
(By the way, Vice-President Gore has written a book by the same name that offers essentially the same overview on climate change as the perspective he offers in his film. This is one time I recommend seeing the movie first.)
