You might remember from the 2000 campaign Gore’s infamous claim to having “invented the Internet.” The trouble is, that isn’t what he said, and what he actually did say about his involvement with the Internet, though maybe poorly worded, isn’t far fetched. His influence was significant enough for Vinton Cerf, one of the “founding fathers of the Internet,” who developed the TCP/IP communications protocols, to write that, “No one in public life has been more intellectually engaged in helping to create the climate for a thriving Internet than the Vice President. Gore has been a clear champion of this effort.” (http://www.spectacle.org/1100/gore.html). The point is that while today’s politicians quibble on how to tax Internet transactions, Mr. Gore’s record speaks to a more visionary approach to Internet applications. The bigger point is that there is more substance to Mr. Gore than one might have thought, given reports of his alleged exaggerations.
And just as he became an undeserved punch-line for his work on promoting the Internet, Al Gore has been wrongly painted as a frothy environmental extremist. In a clip from the past, An Inconvenient Truth, the senior George Bush complains that if Al Gore had his way, we’d be drowning in owls and suffering from a lack of jobs. But the film shows a different image, that of an intelligent, thoughtful and passionate individual whose clear love of science and the environment is a far cry from lunacy or fringe radicalism. We are also given useful and interesting personal glimpses into his motivations and life outside of politics.
This isn’t to fawn over Al Gore or to induct him into sainthood, but to point out how An Inconvenient Truth raises, albeit indirectly, questions as to how we perceive public figures and how we get the information we use to judge them. Perhaps the authors of that First Monday article have a point when they criticize comedians’ punch-lines for anchoring a particular perspective in the public’s mind, however right or wrong that perspective is.
It’s Getting Hot
The film’s real purpose, however, isn’t to demystify Al Gore, but to explain the threat of global warming. Consisting of footage from Mr. Gore’s recent keynote presentations, interspersed with those personal glimpses into his character, we are introduced to the scientific evidence as well as the human costs underlying extraordinary environmental changes due to greenhouse gases trapping heat in the atmosphere. Director Davis Guggenheim foregoes stunt editing in favor of playing it straight. The result is one of the clearest, most reasonable overviews of the topic — and a fascinating one, too. For one thing, we learn a bit how scientists collect the data that allows them to conclude that global warming is occurring. Particularly interesting is that the conclusion doesn’t derive from only one line of scientific inquiry, but several. Air temperature, water levels, the rate with which glaciers are melting, ocean currents, species extinction, changing ecosystems; there are multiple streams of evidence supporting the conclusion. Added to all that is the sober warning as to the consequences of failing to act, consequences that are very bleak indeed.
There are “skeptics,” of course, who cling to the notion that global warming is either a hoax or merely a hypothesis still being debated. But let me ask this: If I were to offer you a glass of water after pouring a few ounces of Windex in it, would you drink it? Of course not. So why does it seem so ridiculous to accept that pumping chemicals into the atmosphere — chemicals that weren’t being pumped in such high quantities a hundred years ago — can have a devastating effect on the environment? The “skepticism,” which often takes on the tone of a maligned minority of dissidents in the grips of a massive cover-up, serves up numerous arguments that Mr. Gore addresses nimbly. More importantly, he rounds out his presentation by going beyond gloomy warnings and discussing how we as individuals can act. There’s still hope. Naturally, there’s a website, too, and it’s worth visiting: www.climatecrisis.net <http://www.climatecrisis.net> .
An Inconvenient Truth is that rare breed of documentary that balances perfectly passion and reason, never straying from accessible, but not dumbed down, explanations for an often complicated topic. The media has so far done a poor job of communicating scientists’ concerns, preferring instead to indulge a minority of dissidents’ attacks that have all the intellectual honesty of a creationist attack on evolution. An Inconvenient Truth picks up the slack and ranks as a must-see film.
Note: For an interesting discussion of the skepticism underlying critiques of global warming, read this <http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2006/06/letter_inconvenient_truths.html#more> entry in Jim Emerson’s blog. And, incidentally, you can read all about Al Gore and the Internet in First Monday at http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_10/wiggins/index.html.
Entertainment Value: ** (out of two)
Technical Quality: ** (out of two)
…and a gold star for being a must-see.
Paramount Classics presents a documentary featuring Al Gore. Directed by Davis Guggenheim. 100 minutes. Rated PG (for mild thematic elements).
