There are a lot of people who go straight from denial to despair without pausing on the intermediate step of actually doing something about the problem.
-- Al Gore
Let's face it: If you're reading my blog (and you didn't come here via a Google search string like "evil French liberal Kerry"), you already know that global warming is real, and that the byproducts of human industry are contributing to massive and potentially catastrophic changes in Earth's climate. You know that in order to combat this problem, human beings will have to meet our energy needs in a cleaner and more efficient way than we do now, that the more developed and industrialized nations will have to take the lead in this, and that we have collectively been slow in meeting that responsibility.
Knowing all these things that you know, clever person that you are, should you still go see the new documentary film An Inconvenient Truth?
Yes. Yes, you should.
The content of Truth is simple and perhaps already known to you: Al Gore explains what global warming is, how we know it's happening and why it's possible and necessary to stop it. The film is based around a presentation on global warming that Gore has been giving to audiences around the world, and it primarily draws its material directly from the presentation itself, interwoven with the stories of Gore's own life, personal and political. It might sound boring. It ain't.
Like a lot of bloggers who've seen this movie, I'm torn between two impulses: The impulse to write a thorough review detailing just how it is that the movie has managed to be both good and important and commenting on everything that I think calls for comment, and the impulse to write up something quickly in order to encourage you to see it. The latter has mostly won the day, and I will write rapidly, if perhaps not as concisely as humanly possible.
Truth is devastatingly clear and thoroughly argued--it's an ideal laying-out of the global warming issue both for the already convinced and for the "skeptic." It also makes the case that we do not have to choose between environmental regulation and economic prosperity. If you know someone who Just Isn't Sure about global warming, please take them to see this movie. I believe it can change minds. I also believe, because the movie had this effect on me, that it is necessary for a lot of us who know about this issue already to remind ourselves of how pressing it is, and how much there is still to be done.
It's funny--Gore is warm, clever, accessible. There's a Futurama clip (a show, of course, for which his daughter wrote), and shades of that humor style in some of Gore's later lines, as when he shows a graphic originally used to suggest the "balancing" of the environment and the economy, showing a giant scale: On the one side, he points out, "Bars of gold! Mmm, mmm, mmm. That gold sure looks good. I'd like some of that. Mmmmm. And on the other side. . . The entire earth."
It's heartbreaking--the seemingly endless images of disappearing glaciers, ecosystems thrown out of balance, thriving areas of human habitation that will become unlivable if sea levels rise, keep the gasps coming even when the movie is near its end. If we don't truly or concretely grasp the meaning of disappearing glaciers or drowning polar bears, we cannot help but be stopped in our tracks by the prospect of the human refugees--as many as a hundred million--who could be displaced by rising sea levels if the ice of Antarctica and Greenland continues to melt.
A smaller but more personally accessible heartbreak is contained in the segments that refer to the 2000 election or illustrate the failure of the current administration and the GOP in general to deal with this crisis. For me, the shades of a presidency that should have been are most painfully visible when we see Gore meeting with scientists and students in China and talking in voice-over about the shared interest that our two countries have in this issue. It made me want to go out and vote for Gore again, and I hope to have the opportunity to do just that.
Finally, it's inspiring--it will remind you of the urgency of this problem, but it will not leave you feeling helpless. Gore and the filmmakers will show you, with charts and graphs and circles and arrows and moving appeals to our moral responsibility, simple--but not always easy--ways to avert the crisis that we now face. Since they can't tell us everything in one movie, they point us in the closing credits to the companion website, which is packed with useful information and links. They also show, interspersed with the first few minutes of credits, quite a few suggestions for the concerned individual. "Recycle," for instance. "Drive a hybrid car." "Tell your representatives in congress to act on this issue."
"If they don't listen, run for congress."
As the production credits rolled and the audience slowly trickled out of the cinema, a number of us, myself included, had not quite thought of something to say to our moviegoing companions, as is often the case after a truly affecting movie experience. In the low hum of quiet conversation and shuffling of jackets and backpacks, the gentleman standing next to me said to his friends quite clearly and decisively, "George Bush is a douchebag."
(I applauded, he apologized, and I said, "Oh, no, don't apologize, I'm blogging that." He then requested my URL, and when I hesitated to give it out because it's difficult to remember, he took out one of those hand-held thingies out of his pocket and emailed my blog's address to himself.)
The world is small, and getting smaller every day. Those of us in the most technologically advanced parts of the world have it easy; information is easy to find, like-minded people are easy to reach. We also have the potential to effect change, as citizens leading our daily lives, that people in different circumstances can only dream of. And we have a responsibility to make those changes, big and small, because we are human beings.
We can do it, and we must. Our only other option is to live the epitaph for the planet that Kurt Vonnegut wrote in Hocus Pocus; its language was softened by the narrator's voice, but I have always remembered the epitaph suggested rather than the one actually printed:
WE COULD HAVE SAVED IT, BUT WE WERE TOO GODDAMN CHEAP.
