A quick trip to the video library (what do they call them nowadays DVD libraries?) yesterday revealed that Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth' was finally available after months of always being rented out whenever we were in there.
We settled down to watch it last night with certain expectations. And in the main, they were fulfilled. Even so I do have my reservations. For a start, it'd obviously been dumbed down, although as Matt pointed out, this may be a good thing as it means more people/Americans will get the message, fair enough. I concede that the sometimes humourous and clear presentation was possibly the best way to get the message across. And the one simple point he made that struck me most was that polar bears are dying. They're drowing because there's no longer the ice they need to rest on. They just swim and swim and eventually die through exhaustion.
However, what I think was incredibly badly presented was his several car trips, one in the opening scenes (!) and one later even looked as though he was in a 4x4 (whose idea was that?!). Then we get to hear about how he's travelled around the world investigating 'climate crisis' (read global warming) and giving his slide show. We even get to see him in the airport - I thought this was going to be a tongue in cheek moment, but no, nothing was said as we saw him make his way through airport security on his way to the plane. This contrasts with the actions of a green scientist called Mayer Hillman who I first read about five years ago. He's been advocating the reduction of carbon emissions for years and refuses to fly. Instead, he uses satellite links to attend conferences around the world. I can't help thinking that Gore should've followed his example. Matt disagreed, pointing out that people went to these presentations partly to see Gore in the flesh, if he'd just been on a screen his slide show wouldn't have proved so popular. Hmmmm.
My final reservation was that, even though Gore maintained that this is a moral issue, the film he made still had political overtones, too many for my liking. I would've preferred it if he'd left politics out of it. People educated on this subject can see with their own eyes what the politicians are up to and make up their own mind.
All in all, though, you can't really criticise Gore's attempt to bring climate change to our attention, he's certanly managed that and should be congratulated for it. I just think it could've been done better and given the importance of the subject in question, it should've been.
The film leaves you wondering what would've happened had Gore 'won' the presidency in 2000, and ruing that fact that he didn't. I can't help thinking that he still may change his mind about running again. Perhaps he should see it as his moral imperative to do so.
