While most of you were wasting your time watching Pirates of the Caribbean, which I have yet to see, I went out and saw an amazing, important film called "An Inconvenient Truth."
I posted one of the trailers for it here.
This movie will floor you. It is an amazing piece of informative work.
It's also non-partisan. It is an objective view (well, as we learned in "This Divided State" there's no such thing as) about the issues and science surrounding global warming and the crisis we face with climate change. It is scary. And I know that when you watch a documentary about a topic as hotly debated as global warming and your narrator is Al Gore, people are going to dismiss it as tripe, but this felt different.
The imagery was amazing. I'm always amazed by documentaries that manage to remain interesting when all they are is basically one guy talking the entire time. Especially a guy that was as boring as I used to imagine Al Gore to be. The filmmakers manage to keep the images moving and well-paced and Al Gore has more personality in this film than I've ever seen from him.
If people saw this Al Gore in 2000, America would be a much different, better place.
After the movie, I actually felt a little bad I didn't vote for him. I also felt even worse about the fact that we drove to Salt Lake to see it and I found out afterwards that it was playing three miles from my house.
Anyhow, go see the movie. YOU HAVE TO GO SEE THE MOVIE.
Here's the films website. Go there.
This film will change your perception about the issue. I went to the film expecting to hear bad things, but nothing could have prepared me for how bad things actually are and how bullshit the excuses people give for it are. Afterwards, you realize there are two types of people: People who understand that Global Warming and Climate change is an incredibly pressing issue, so pressing that it's an emergency and in the other corner are dumb people and oil tycoons. (well, that's sort of an oxymoron, oil tycoons are dumb people.)
Speaking of people in that second category, as soon as we came home, my sister-in-law (you know the one I mean) asked what we saw. We told her An Inconvenient Truth and what it was about and instantly started trying to explain why global warming isn't a pervasive issue. And how her professor said, "it's only gone up point one." That's an exact quote. What does that mean? Fucked if I know. I explained to her, or tried to, that in the film they explain that in 650 thousand years, Carbon Dioxide has never exceeded 300 parts per million. Now, because of our reckless disregard for the environment (courtesy of assholes like George Bush and Ronald Reagan), we are currently double that (or more) and it's supposed to increase exponentially in the next fifty years unless we do something about it. The science is also factual that temperature is tied directly to the amount of Carbon Dioxide in the environment.
Her response? "You're listening to the guy who said he invented the internets. That's just stupid."
I left at that point.
Long story short: Go see the movie.
Now.
UPDATE:
I think the thing that pisses me off the most is that we have the technology to fix the problem now, but the politicians don't want to do anything about it.
14 comments:
I believe what your sister-in-law was saying was that the average global temperature has only gone up .1 degrees in the past million years or whatever.
The number I've heard is 1 degree, which doesn't sound like a big deal to the layman, but ask a biologist and they'll go ape-crap over it.
I'll probably see it. But I don't know if I'll be able to give the film a fair chance, since I am unable to shake the nagging suspicion this movie is a prelude to Gore's 2008 presidential campaign...
To be honest, aside from one spot in the movie that talked about that guy in the Bush cabinet who was revising reports to eliminate global warming from them, there is no political angle to the film. It was like watching Nova or something.
And the point about the Bush administration official was relevant.
I'll watch it, but I'm sure I will have a problem watching Mr. Gore and taking him seriously. I don't believe he has anything to say that isnt a theory.
Nova is on PBS. Conservatives consider that the fringe of liberal media, so there may be no convincing them that this movie is non-partisan.
I was this picture and thought it was thought provoking and scary.
Yes, Al Gore has a personality in this one but I, too, believe his involvement is clearly only one of the stepping stones he is using for his next presidential bid in 2008.
As far as the comment that someone left with regards to Al's doing this prior to the 2000 campaign and his "winning" the white house (if he did), I have to say that none of us knows whether this world would be a better, or safer place! The terrorists would have bombed NYC regardless of who was in office. If you remember correctly... they attacked us under Clinton, too, but Clinton and Gore did very little to thwart those attacks.
Lastly, you will hear that this is the most important issue for our planet and that may be. But after seeing 8 years of Gore doing little... I would hope he would continue in his save the planet issues instead of trying again in 2008. He just isn't "President" material.
He was good in this, though, and I highly recommend it to all earths inhabitants!
Ummm...
It's a lot easier to take Al Gore seriously than George Bush. Bush is a total assclown.
That, and these aren't theories. Watch the movie and I guarantee, you'll be convinced.
The fact that America would be both different and better if Al Gore had been installed in the presidency, as the votes of the people insisted should happen, is inarguable.
George Bush has made this county a laughing stock across the world and turned the American Way into something sick and immoral.
Also, he hates the poor.
And we would be safer since we wouldn't be in Iraq.
wow. i just wrote my review of it before reading your review. you said pretty much the exact same things (thought perhaps a little better).
we should make babies.
As a Brit I won’t get the opportunity to see this until its release here in September, but I’m looking forward to it. The only comment I would make about Al Gore is that he’s been travelling the globe making this PowerPoint presentation to all who would listen for many years without, it appears, any motive other than being a subject that the has real concern and passion for, not to mention considerable knowledge. As to whether he has his eye on the 2008 Presidency; well at least your President would be someone with intellect who could command respect rather than ridicule from the rest of the world.
I often read blogs and comments from Americans about global warming with a sense of unease. The only reason I can see that you have a debate ongoing is your willingness to remain in thrall to big business, in particular the energy companies, who have spent years financing a campaign of deception on the issue. Perhaps we are just more sceptical and can recognise bullshit when we hear it. I’d rather trust the hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific reports than advertising campaigns by this lot:
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science/skeptic-organizations.html
For the majority of the rest of the world the debate is over and we are attempting to tackle the problem. Here in the UK we have reduced our emissions whilst increasing our GDP, not by huge amounts but with the resource and will of America imagine what could be achieved.
An Inconvenient Truth is amazing.
If I remember the film correctly, it's 1 degree at the equator and 12 degrees at the poles.
The Repugs have been rehashing the stupid internet myth forever. (debunk: http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp)
You should piss off your sister-in-law by buying her compact fluorescent lightbulbs for Christmas: http://community.livejournal.com/planetcooldown/3738.html
Al Gore is my man! I should send him a copy of TDS so he can chill out and enjoy my movie!
I can't take that Albert Einstein guy seriously everything he has to say about gravity and space-time curvature is just a theory. Also, Bryan please inform your sisinlaw that while a senator in the late eighties Mr. gore had the vision and foresight to write and sponsor a bill that procured funds to develop the military's arpanet into what we now call the internet.
No offense intended, but your sister-in-law is just a dingbat .. Mr. Gore's movie has finally managed to somehow make it to my little corner of the world this week .. I'm going to see it today and really looking forward to it
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