Inconvenient Truth

While most of the world was concerned with higher level technology and higher S&P 500 index, American ex vice president Al Gore had spent years presenting the issue of global warming to the world, from city to city, from person to person, and from family to family, delivering speeches and suggestions that will reduce world pollution. Director Davis Guggenheim takes Gore's presentation and edits it into a documentary film that becomes easily distributed. Through the use of scientific evidence and emotional appeal, Al Gore and Davis Guggenheim demonstrate the problem of global warming by emphasizing the changes throughout history and warn their audiences by presenting scientific projections of the danger that the world faces.

In order to demonstrate the changes that the world has gone through, along with the director's editing, Gore's presentation repeatedly connects the past and the present. The beginning of the film displays clips of nature instead of the prosperity in the industrial world. Doing so appeals to the audience's emotional and logical sense because this scenery calls on the audience's appreciation of the nature's beauty and causes people to reevaluate the relative importance of environment and technology. The capture of the first picture of Earth creates contrast and emphasizes change from a beautiful planet that was free from heavy pollution to planet earth today, which is no longer as gorgeous. Gore also integrates a variety of analogies of earth's problems, including the use of comics and animation. The short clip of a frog animation dehumanizes world's population. Compared to the enormous planet Earth, people are no longer an intelligent species for we act like frogs in the dangerous hot water, where sudden changes may trigger alarm while gradual movements towards death are only ignored. This analogy made understanding the global warming issue much clearer by explaining why many people are reluctant to acknowledge the problem. In order to prove that global warming is happening, Gore satisfies the audiences by making the counterargument that while rumor claims many scientists doubt global warming, there is no scientist who disagree with climate change among over five-hundred randomly selected articles. This statistical evidence of 0 to 500 corrects the misconception that many people had. Through the widely accepted analogy and statistical evidence, Gore proves the existence of global warming, stressing the damage that it has already done to the environment.

The film is not only an analysis of world's environmental history; Gore also uses scientific study results to project the possible future, warning his audience of possible disaster if no action is taken. The continuous scenes of drought, pollution, melting ice, storms, and hurricanes serve to amplify the strength of each disaster. Altogether, the film provides an unfortunate prediction of the possible future. In order to achieve public acknowledgment of the global warming issue, Guggenheim edits a string of Gore speaking in public, along with shots of focused audiences. These shots indicate Gore's publicity and credibility. When hundreds and thousands of people are convinced by and support Gore, the current audiences will become easier to convince. After establishing Gore's credibility, the film points out several possible symptoms of global warming. While no real clips of the future are available, animation is used to illustrate the dilemma polar bears face, appealing to the ethical values of the audience. The short clip vividly depicts the process of a polar bear's death, which is the consequence of human pollution and climate change. Such conjecture shines light on the guilt many audiences feel, and therefore Gore's argument becomes persuasive. Also through computer generated clips, Gore demonstrated the possible consequence of rising sea water level. The slowly rising of sea water will flood many shore cities including the center of world business-Manhattan, and destroy the homes of millions of people. This projection is especially threatening to businessmen whose occupation depends on a stable economy, but Gore's prediction leads to chaos in the society where businesses cannot survive. By visually showing the amount of world that will disappear from the ocean surface, Gore delivers his message that global warming will cause devastating economical and social consequences.

While the majority of the film focuses on the scientific past, present, and future of earth, Guggenheim and Gore follows a problem-solution organization and Gore suggests possible actions each individual can take to save the world. Through these suggestions, Gore alludes to numerous historical changes that human has made that were thought to be impossible, such as the creation of a democratic nation and abolition of slavery. Through these examples, Gore brings about confidence in the minds of his audiences, and therefore encourages each person to take action in preserving planet earth. As inspiring as Gore's movie is, change happens when a large number of people all take action. When each person spends a second to recycle, the world population of 7 billion people can make a difference.