AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH
Movie Review: An Inconvenient Truth
By Ben Craw
Last week the brass at TPM sent me to a pre-release screening of Al Gore’s new global warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. My first big field assignment and I couldn’t have asked for something more glamorous! I am informed they will “have my name on the list.” I stride into the Paramount Building in the heart of Times Square and am directed to an elevator to the third floor, where surely the aural crush awaits me: cameras, men in suits, flocks of models shoving and pushing to get in, the possible celebrity, maybe even Al Gore Redux himself (bigger, badder, beardier than the original). The elevator opens to the third floor and I find myself in an empty lobby. No crowds. No aural crush. No guest list. Not even a sign to direct me. I wander through an eerie stillness wondering if I’m in the right place and eventually find some doors into the theatre.The population of the screening room is just slightly denser than that of the lobby. I count four other people when I walk in, which is at around 7:45 p.m. (the movie is scheduled for 8). Even as more people file in there is an air of oppressive quiet and seriousness. I haven’t seen a room this subdued since the time I set up a projector in my living room and invited some friends over for a My Dinner with Andre party. With no sort of introduction or warning, the room suddenly darkens and the movie begins. The movie’s basic engine is footage of Al Gore giving a multimedia presentation to a small audience, the same presentation he has been giving to small audiences across the country since 2001. Various charts, graphics, timelines, and pictures supplement his words, all displayed to support his main argument: global warming is real and is happening, humans play a significant role in what is happening, and if we continue to neglect what is happening the future could bring catastrophe on a global scale. The movie succeeds or fails largely on the strength of Gore’s personality. As portentous as that might sound, this is no longer the Al Gore that Saturday Night Live so aptly captured with its “lock-box” debate back in 2000. Global warming is something Gore cares deeply about, and he succeeds in expressing this passion without being obstreperous or overbearing. He even throws in a few jokes here and there, which are usually more endearing than funny, really.The main presentation is then spliced together with vignettes of Gore’s personal life: his childhood dividing time between a hotel in Washington D.C. and the family farm in Tennessee, the moment in 1989 that inspired his environmental mission when he nearly lost his 6-year-old son to a car accident, and various other musings on life, family, etc., all in the context of valuing the world we inhabit.Then there is intermittent footage of Gore soldiering through his present life as an eco-vigilante, a kind of Charles Bronson from Death Wish, only without the rampant killing: Gore on his laptop, Gore on his cell phone, Gore wheeling his luggage through airports and removing his jacket for the metal detector, Gore gazing reflectively out the windows of various moving vehicles. You get the idea. There is also footage of some of Gore’s erstwhile political opponents, guys like Jim Inhofe calling global warming “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people” and Bush Sr. calling Gore “crazy” for political leverage back in ’92. In the interest of balance I’ll point out that Gore himself has been guilty of allowing politics to dictate his environmental stance: David Remnick of The New Yorker points out that during the 2000 race Gore, in the thrall of his consultants, was reluctant to denounce the construction of an ecologically unfriendly airport in Florida, which may have cost him some votes there. Not that Florida was all that impor-… oh wait, never mind.Certain aspects of the presentation of his argument are a bit ill-conceived. The only saliently groan-inducing point in the movie is when Gore, to underscore a point about icecap melting, notes that for the first time in history scientists have been finding polar bears that have drowned to death. This remark is accompanied by a DreamWorks-style animation of an adorable polar bear struggling to lift itself onto a breaking ice floe (which did in fact elicit an audible “awww…” from at least one audience member). But overall the film avoids doing the one major thing that could damn its effect: overreaching. Yes, in one segment Gore discusses what would happen to certain low-lying regions of the world in the worst-case event of melted icecaps raising the sea-level by twenty some feet. Living on the lower half of Manhattan Island, I happen to be one of those who would be affected (meaning de-mapped). But there are no Day After Tomorrow-style images of a Statue of Liberty with only its torch above water, no broken off chunks of the Empire State Building floating up 5th Avenue. Gore keeps it staid and steady, simply offering up the growing mountain of scientific evidence that backs his argument and occasionally highlighting contrarian views to point out where they may falter in their logic. And while he makes brief note of the current administration’s environmental record (particularly our shirking of the Kyoto Protocol and former administration official Philip Cooney), his words against Bush are not particularly personal or polemical. After all, Gore’s not a politician anymore. He’s not a lobbyist. He started giving this presentation after losing in 2000 and by his own estimation has given it a thousand times… all over the country… free of charge. Gore himself admits toward the end of the movie that thus far he has largely failed in his mission. That with each new presentation he searches for a simpler, clearer way to state his message. With each new group he talks to he tries anew to figure out the obstacles to people’s understanding. Something tells me that the kind of stifled, “nothing-to-see-here” inertia I experienced at the screening (I mean I know I wasn’t at Sundance, but come on, not even a sign in the lobby?) might have something to do with Gore’s dilemma.Whether you are convinced by the message itself or not – whether you believe the world will be a microwave in ten years or dismiss it all out of hand as tree-hugging alarmism (and yes, there is a middle ground) – you come away from the film with a crystalline sense that Al Gore’s sole motivation here is nothing more than a deep moral obligation. Even a cynic can admit that’s admirable. When you look around at the effect it seems to be having, it’s also kind of heartbreaking.
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Apr 28, 2006 -- 07:21:03 PM EST Tags:
Al Gore Environment Global Warming movies
On April 28, 2006 - 7:24pm Tom Wright said:
People will eventually notice changes, if too late. It is the people away from cities, that are intimate with the rhythms of Nature, that are noticing now. Maple sugar farmers notice they are tapping sooner and the season run is shorter. Butterfly watchers in England have charted the northward move of winter ranges. People living in areas commonly hit by tropical storms will not ignore category-5 storms. They have no clout but Inuit and other Arctic peoples are already in trouble.Most importantly, serious money is lining up to ensure access to ice-free northern ports. The famed Northwest Passage is now open in summer.
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On April 29, 2006 - 1:32am calguy said:
The changes are there, and I believe the attention the media is giving the issue is beginning to approach a tipping point. I notice that there is less and less quoting of the climate contrarians who were propped up by the fossil fuel industry. I notice that efforts of the Bush administration to censor government scientists have both failed and backfired, with the possible exception of quieting the hurricane/warming link (last weeks NY Times repeated the idea that there is poor consensus on the issue of increased hurricane intensity under warming--I think this is not the case). Island nations are getting covered (the Maldives on NPR last night). In my own case, I have lectured students about global warming over a ten year period, from a university in Ohio where skepticism dominated to a large university in California where skepticism has never been as large. What has shifted in a decade is that students are realizing this is real and they have to be concerned. There is more fertile ground for acceptance. I hope this movie puts Gore in a more affectionate place in the hearts of the people. I know that with all the damage Bushco has done in five years, many must be wondering `what if Gore had taken that oath?'
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On April 29, 2006 - 9:36am Just Karl said:
Let me first say that I believe global warming is occurring and I believe that it is human induced. Now let me ask why this is a problem? From roughly 1350-1850 we were in a period known as the Little Ice Age. New York Harbor froze. There was a year without a summer. Glaciers advanced to the point of swallowing towns. Is this the preferred global environment? Do people believe that humans can somehow control global temperature? The global temperature is always in flux. There is no "normal" or "average" temperature. The geological history of the Earth is one of constant cooling with slight warming periods. During these periodic warm spells, like the Medieval Warming Period, human populations do very well. Productivity and biodiversity explode. So my point about global warming is so what? Is there a moral difference between human populations migrating to avoid rising sea levels and human populations migrating to avoid advancing glaciers?
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On April 29, 2006 - 10:04am Tom Wright said:
There have been stretches of time (from ice core and other data) with stable climate, as well as periods of slow change, but also periods of wild and dramatic change. This last is what worries climate scientists. Ice cores show that during a teady warmnup after the last ice age there was a sudden drop in temperature and a windy, dry period ensued. Known as Younger Dryas (something like 13,000 years ago) it seems to be when mammoths got frozen into the ice with flowers in their stomachs. The thickening of dust layers argues there was a combination of cold, drought, and wind.This is tentatively explained as resulting from warmup-caused meltwater freshening the North Atlantic and interrupting the Gulf Stream,which is driven by salinity differences. So one ironic risk of a warmup is a cold snap, as Europe and the East Coast would lose their growing season.Also worrisome is that a warm regime means more energy for storms, and the expectation is much higher incidience of category 5 storms. Australia just experienced one.Finally, warm is fine but if it means the Ross Ice Shelf slides off its perch on a seamount, that alone would raise sea levels twenty feet. Good-bye Florida, White House flooded.So there are plenty of reasons to worry about rapid climate change.login or register to post comments link Not yet rated. Top of Form 1Comment viewing options
http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/29332
Movie Review: An Inconvenient Truth
By Ben Craw
Last week the brass at TPM sent me to a pre-release screening of Al Gore’s new global warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. My first big field assignment and I couldn’t have asked for something more glamorous! I am informed they will “have my name on the list.” I stride into the Paramount Building in the heart of Times Square and am directed to an elevator to the third floor, where surely the aural crush awaits me: cameras, men in suits, flocks of models shoving and pushing to get in, the possible celebrity, maybe even Al Gore Redux himself (bigger, badder, beardier than the original). The elevator opens to the third floor and I find myself in an empty lobby. No crowds. No aural crush. No guest list. Not even a sign to direct me. I wander through an eerie stillness wondering if I’m in the right place and eventually find some doors into the theatre.The population of the screening room is just slightly denser than that of the lobby. I count four other people when I walk in, which is at around 7:45 p.m. (the movie is scheduled for 8). Even as more people file in there is an air of oppressive quiet and seriousness. I haven’t seen a room this subdued since the time I set up a projector in my living room and invited some friends over for a My Dinner with Andre party. With no sort of introduction or warning, the room suddenly darkens and the movie begins. The movie’s basic engine is footage of Al Gore giving a multimedia presentation to a small audience, the same presentation he has been giving to small audiences across the country since 2001. Various charts, graphics, timelines, and pictures supplement his words, all displayed to support his main argument: global warming is real and is happening, humans play a significant role in what is happening, and if we continue to neglect what is happening the future could bring catastrophe on a global scale. The movie succeeds or fails largely on the strength of Gore’s personality. As portentous as that might sound, this is no longer the Al Gore that Saturday Night Live so aptly captured with its “lock-box” debate back in 2000. Global warming is something Gore cares deeply about, and he succeeds in expressing this passion without being obstreperous or overbearing. He even throws in a few jokes here and there, which are usually more endearing than funny, really.The main presentation is then spliced together with vignettes of Gore’s personal life: his childhood dividing time between a hotel in Washington D.C. and the family farm in Tennessee, the moment in 1989 that inspired his environmental mission when he nearly lost his 6-year-old son to a car accident, and various other musings on life, family, etc., all in the context of valuing the world we inhabit.Then there is intermittent footage of Gore soldiering through his present life as an eco-vigilante, a kind of Charles Bronson from Death Wish, only without the rampant killing: Gore on his laptop, Gore on his cell phone, Gore wheeling his luggage through airports and removing his jacket for the metal detector, Gore gazing reflectively out the windows of various moving vehicles. You get the idea. There is also footage of some of Gore’s erstwhile political opponents, guys like Jim Inhofe calling global warming “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people” and Bush Sr. calling Gore “crazy” for political leverage back in ’92. In the interest of balance I’ll point out that Gore himself has been guilty of allowing politics to dictate his environmental stance: David Remnick of The New Yorker points out that during the 2000 race Gore, in the thrall of his consultants, was reluctant to denounce the construction of an ecologically unfriendly airport in Florida, which may have cost him some votes there. Not that Florida was all that impor-… oh wait, never mind.Certain aspects of the presentation of his argument are a bit ill-conceived. The only saliently groan-inducing point in the movie is when Gore, to underscore a point about icecap melting, notes that for the first time in history scientists have been finding polar bears that have drowned to death. This remark is accompanied by a DreamWorks-style animation of an adorable polar bear struggling to lift itself onto a breaking ice floe (which did in fact elicit an audible “awww…” from at least one audience member). But overall the film avoids doing the one major thing that could damn its effect: overreaching. Yes, in one segment Gore discusses what would happen to certain low-lying regions of the world in the worst-case event of melted icecaps raising the sea-level by twenty some feet. Living on the lower half of Manhattan Island, I happen to be one of those who would be affected (meaning de-mapped). But there are no Day After Tomorrow-style images of a Statue of Liberty with only its torch above water, no broken off chunks of the Empire State Building floating up 5th Avenue. Gore keeps it staid and steady, simply offering up the growing mountain of scientific evidence that backs his argument and occasionally highlighting contrarian views to point out where they may falter in their logic. And while he makes brief note of the current administration’s environmental record (particularly our shirking of the Kyoto Protocol and former administration official Philip Cooney), his words against Bush are not particularly personal or polemical. After all, Gore’s not a politician anymore. He’s not a lobbyist. He started giving this presentation after losing in 2000 and by his own estimation has given it a thousand times… all over the country… free of charge. Gore himself admits toward the end of the movie that thus far he has largely failed in his mission. That with each new presentation he searches for a simpler, clearer way to state his message. With each new group he talks to he tries anew to figure out the obstacles to people’s understanding. Something tells me that the kind of stifled, “nothing-to-see-here” inertia I experienced at the screening (I mean I know I wasn’t at Sundance, but come on, not even a sign in the lobby?) might have something to do with Gore’s dilemma.Whether you are convinced by the message itself or not – whether you believe the world will be a microwave in ten years or dismiss it all out of hand as tree-hugging alarmism (and yes, there is a middle ground) – you come away from the film with a crystalline sense that Al Gore’s sole motivation here is nothing more than a deep moral obligation. Even a cynic can admit that’s admirable. When you look around at the effect it seems to be having, it’s also kind of heartbreaking.
login or register to post comments
Apr 28, 2006 -- 07:21:03 PM EST Tags:
Al Gore Environment Global Warming movies
On April 28, 2006 - 7:24pm Tom Wright said:
People will eventually notice changes, if too late. It is the people away from cities, that are intimate with the rhythms of Nature, that are noticing now. Maple sugar farmers notice they are tapping sooner and the season run is shorter. Butterfly watchers in England have charted the northward move of winter ranges. People living in areas commonly hit by tropical storms will not ignore category-5 storms. They have no clout but Inuit and other Arctic peoples are already in trouble.Most importantly, serious money is lining up to ensure access to ice-free northern ports. The famed Northwest Passage is now open in summer.
login or register to post comments link Rated 3 by 2 users.
On April 29, 2006 - 1:32am calguy said:
The changes are there, and I believe the attention the media is giving the issue is beginning to approach a tipping point. I notice that there is less and less quoting of the climate contrarians who were propped up by the fossil fuel industry. I notice that efforts of the Bush administration to censor government scientists have both failed and backfired, with the possible exception of quieting the hurricane/warming link (last weeks NY Times repeated the idea that there is poor consensus on the issue of increased hurricane intensity under warming--I think this is not the case). Island nations are getting covered (the Maldives on NPR last night). In my own case, I have lectured students about global warming over a ten year period, from a university in Ohio where skepticism dominated to a large university in California where skepticism has never been as large. What has shifted in a decade is that students are realizing this is real and they have to be concerned. There is more fertile ground for acceptance. I hope this movie puts Gore in a more affectionate place in the hearts of the people. I know that with all the damage Bushco has done in five years, many must be wondering `what if Gore had taken that oath?'
login or register to post comments link Not yet rated.
On April 29, 2006 - 9:36am Just Karl said:
Let me first say that I believe global warming is occurring and I believe that it is human induced. Now let me ask why this is a problem? From roughly 1350-1850 we were in a period known as the Little Ice Age. New York Harbor froze. There was a year without a summer. Glaciers advanced to the point of swallowing towns. Is this the preferred global environment? Do people believe that humans can somehow control global temperature? The global temperature is always in flux. There is no "normal" or "average" temperature. The geological history of the Earth is one of constant cooling with slight warming periods. During these periodic warm spells, like the Medieval Warming Period, human populations do very well. Productivity and biodiversity explode. So my point about global warming is so what? Is there a moral difference between human populations migrating to avoid rising sea levels and human populations migrating to avoid advancing glaciers?
login or register to post comments link Not yet rated.
On April 29, 2006 - 10:04am Tom Wright said:
There have been stretches of time (from ice core and other data) with stable climate, as well as periods of slow change, but also periods of wild and dramatic change. This last is what worries climate scientists. Ice cores show that during a teady warmnup after the last ice age there was a sudden drop in temperature and a windy, dry period ensued. Known as Younger Dryas (something like 13,000 years ago) it seems to be when mammoths got frozen into the ice with flowers in their stomachs. The thickening of dust layers argues there was a combination of cold, drought, and wind.This is tentatively explained as resulting from warmup-caused meltwater freshening the North Atlantic and interrupting the Gulf Stream,which is driven by salinity differences. So one ironic risk of a warmup is a cold snap, as Europe and the East Coast would lose their growing season.Also worrisome is that a warm regime means more energy for storms, and the expectation is much higher incidience of category 5 storms. Australia just experienced one.Finally, warm is fine but if it means the Ross Ice Shelf slides off its perch on a seamount, that alone would raise sea levels twenty feet. Good-bye Florida, White House flooded.So there are plenty of reasons to worry about rapid climate change.login or register to post comments link Not yet rated. Top of Form 1Comment viewing options
http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/29332
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