Film confirms global warming reality

When former Vice President Al Gore arrived on campus a couple of years ago to offer his spiel on the ongoing saga of global warming, I, like many, didn’t pay much attention.

Not necessarily because I was of the popular school that claimed Gore had gone off his rocker after the his botched election in 2000, or because I was politically opposed, but simply because I didn’t think it to be a productive use of my valuable time.

Movies, on the other hand, have always taken precedent atop my list of priorities. So, when I heard about the new documentary by Davis Guggenheim, which follows Gore on his environmental tour, I figured I’d see what I missed.

“An Inconvenient Truth,” as the documentary is aptly titled, is not nearly the propaganda megaphone that many right-wingers might think it to be. And its narrator, Gore, is far from being the radically leftist fat man that so many Republicans are afraid to watch.

On the contrary, Gore, using a mixture of scientific data and logical reasoning, offers nothing more than a fact-laden proposal to halt the ills that are accelerating the deterioration of the Earth’s ecosystem — but it is a pill not easily swallowed.

Besides being interspersed with several of Gore’s personal accounts, the film rotates around Gore’s slide-show presentation, which incorporates charts, graphs and animations chronicling the increase in the detrimental effects that are direct products of global warming.

Some of the facts: Out of 925 peer-reviewed articles, there was not one scientist who disagreed with global warming or its existence. The ten warmest years ever have occurred in the last 14 years. Carbon dioxide is higher than it has ever been in nearly 300,000 years, and is continuing to increase. Katrina went from a Category 3 to a Category 5 as it moved through the Gulf Stream, which was caused primarily by global warming. In addition to Katrina, the rest of the world has been experiencing some of the worst recorded catastrophes in history, all due in part to global warming.

While there is the occasional jab at the current administration, Gore clicks through these mind boggling facts without any political motives. As Guggenheim hints at in the well-placed breaks, the one-time president elect is no longer a man shackled by government speak.

Long before he ever attached his name to Bill Clinton’s ticket, Gore was a crusader for the environment. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, he pleaded with Congress to review the United States’ fuel emission regulations and to look at its increased use of fossil fuels. But admittedly, Gore’s voice waned as his trip to the White House put his environmental efforts on the backburner.

With his loss in the 2000 election, however, his focus was realigned. And although the film is not meant to explore the trials and tribulations of Gore’s life, the personal anecdotes do add to the film’s impact.

For instance, Gore’s sister died of lung cancer, which she contracted from the same tobacco the government was so sure had no correlation to health defects. It took the U.S. decades to connect the dots with tobacco and as Gore points out, global warming is an elusive issue in much the same way — only with global warming, the world is at stake, not just one human life.

Despite the classroom setting, Gore’s delivery is attention grabbing, and the Carthage, Tenn., native does manage occasional humor even with the grave subject matter. Yet the light-heartedness may merely be a nervous reaction to such cataclysmic consequences.

In one animation, Gore rolls a clip of what could happen if Greenland were to continue melting at its current rate. Eventually, it would evaporate and the ocean level would rise 20 feet. While the slides progress, the audience fidgets uneasily as they watch the Hudson Bay engulf the better part of Manhattan. They watch as the World Trade Center is destroyed for a second time, not by terrorists but by water.

About an hour into the film, I couldn’t help but notice a couple walk out of the theater. They didn’t return, and I was a bit perturbed. But at the same time, I was glad they came.

As Americans, we have the right to disagree and to get up and leave. But don’t follow the example I set when Gore came to Knoxville by not even showing up. Don’t let indifference and apathy win you over. Don’t do as I did and let inconvenience get in the way of the truth.

Grade: A