An Inconvenient Truth: A Review

So I've been hearing all the buzz and hoopla surrounding Al Gore's Oscar-nominated documentary An Inconvenient Truth and it's been one of those movies I have both looked forward to and dreaded, if that makes sense. I had a pretty good feel for the science behind all the global-warming crusaders and really had no reason to feel they were wrong. But it has been such a topic of conversation lately in so many places, especially talk radio, that I had just grown weary of the whole thing.

Additionally, Al Gore has always gotten on my nerves for some reason. Some of that is pre-conceived opinions based mainly on Darrell Hammond's droll impersonation on Saturday Night Live for so many years. He just seemd boring I suppose. It's not that I disagree with him politically in most cases; I just couldn't imagine he could hold my interest for the length of the movie. I was wrong.

I found myself unfairly lumping this movie- and by association Gore- in with Michael Moore and his increasingly higher levels of insanity. Moore was brilliant with Roger and Me and some subsequent docs, but his manic, disheveled persona has veered into cartoonland. He is the anti-Rush Limbaugh and is equally irritating to me. So anyway, his recent crap had left a bad taste in my mouth and I was afraid Gore was going to tread there as well.

This movie made me sad, angry and frightened all at once. I understand there are more people than not who consider the subject matter to be a simple political issue; the usual Republican versus Democrat and Conservative versus Liberal line that somehow every issue seems to be assigned. The manner in which Gore presents the data is both understandable and sufficiently detailed to make a strong case in favor of humankind's direct and catastrophic contribution to global climate changes. To make it a "He's wrong because he's a Democrat/Liberal" argument is insane, more so when you take into account the recent opinions the recently released IPCC report gives regarding the issue. They only reinforce the data Gore presents here.

Seeing exactly how real and potentially horrible the consequences are is sobering to anyone who takes 90 minutes or so to watch this documentary. It is essentially a filmed version of Gore's traveling global warming slideshow lectures interspersed with some comments and additional footage used to segue from one scene to the next. It could have potentially been a very boring movie, but it transcends that potential by virtue of it's subject matter. Al even interjects some humor in various spots and he is actually a gifted and compelling speaker, despite all the bad press he has gotten.

I would recommend this film to anyone who has any level of morality whatsoever. It is a convicting experience to see what we have done and continue to do. I had no idea of the severity of the issue or of the urgency required to reverse the damage. Seeing that there is a real possibility of a catastrophic event, or combination of events, leading to a rapid 20' rise in the level of the oceans, displacing hundreds of millions of people overnight, is indescribably horrible to try to comprehend. It truly gives you the will to look for steps to take to change things, while simultaneously making you feel like throwing in the towel.

Having watched this movie just a couple of hours ago, the feelings and emotions are all fresh and raw to me. It makes me angry that our government is so stagnated and inefficient that they place so little importance on such a pressing issue. It's criminal. Unfortunately, my gut feeling is that nothing will change until something very big and very bad happens. Katrina was the tip of the iceberg in terms of the severity of a calamitous natural disaster happening in the near future. It's a shame that it will take something even bigger than that disaster to make most of us wake up and smell the coffee.

All the Limbaughs, Bushes and their proponents in cyberspace would do themselves a favor by watching An Inconvenient Truth with an eye towards seeing the evidence for what it is. It is astonishing the number of scientists who confirm global warming as fact and who conclude that we are responsible for it as a race. If you end up drawing a different conclusion, I dare say it's for one of two reasons. You don't understand the data presented to you or you simply are too arrogant to care.