AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

2007-01-11T13:47:00.000-08:00

Al Gore's No. 1 Best Seller AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH to be Adapted for Young Adults in Co-publishing Partnership Between Rodale and Penguin Young Readers Group

NEW YORK, Jan. 11 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Penguin Young ReadersGroup and Rodale announced a co-publishing partnership today for thepurpose of adapting US Vice President Al Gore's New York Times No. 1

Al Gore's No. 1 Best Seller AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH to be Adapted for Young Adults in Co-publishing Partnership Between Rodale and Penguin Young Readers Group

NEW YORK, Jan. 11 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Penguin Young ReadersGroup and Rodale announced a co-publishing partnership today for thepurpose of adapting US Vice President Al Gore's New York Times No. 1best-selling book, AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH: The Planetary Emergency of GlobalWarming and What We Can Do About It (Rodale Books; Paperback; $21.95; May2006) for young readers. The young adult version, entitled AN INCONVENIENTTRUTH: THE CRISIS OF GLOBAL WARMING (Viking Children's Books/ Rodale Books;Trade paperback; $16.00; hardcover; $23.00; 208 pages; Ages 11 and up;April 2007), adapts Gore's powerful message for a generation that will haveto confront the crisis of global warming. The partnership was crafted by Vice President and Publisher of Rodale,Liz Perl and President of Penguin Young Readers Group, Doug Whiteman. Allof Mr. Gore's profits from the young adult books will be donated tofighting global warming.

Al Gore commented, "There is no doubt that young people today are moreaware of environmental problems than my generation ever was. As this newgeneration comes of age, it faces the enormous challenge of solving globalwarming. That's why I felt it was so important to adapt An InconvenientTruth for them. In order to fix this crisis, everyone needs to be involved.I have faith that young people have both the ability and the enthusiasm toput a stop to global warming." Whiteman commented on the importance of bringing Gore's message to thisnew audience, "As I sat in a theater watching Vice President Gore deliverhis message on film, it struck me that if we are to make an impact on theproblem of global warming in the near future, we must find a way to bringthe message to a younger audience; to the generation that has theopportunity to effect real change. These books are our attempt to do justthat." Perl commented on Rodale's first partnership with a young readers'publisher, "This partnership is in line with Rodale's mission to inspireand enable people to improve their lives and the world around them. Howbetter to protect the future of our planet than to arm our youth with thescience, the knowledge, and the wisdom in books like An InconvenientTruth?"

Rodale's An Inconvenient Truth, released in May 2006, receivedwidespread critical acclaim from an array of leading critics, includingMichiko Kakutani, of the New York Times, who wrote, "An Inconvenient Truthis lucid, harrowing and bluntly effective." Warren Bass of the WashingtonPost wrote, "Galvanizing ... will convince plenty of readers that Earthgenuinely does hang in the balance." With over 600,000 copies in print todate, the book explains the latest intelligence and authoritative research,facts, charts and graphs on global warming from top scientists around theworld. It has spent 31 weeks and counting, on the New York Times bestseller list and received major coverage in the national media arena. AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH - the book and the documentary of the same name-- were inspired by a series of multi-media presentations about climatechange that Mr. Gore regularly delivers to audiences around the world. The Young Readers version of AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH Includes: -- A new introduction by Al Gore -- Chapters entitled: Our Changing Planet; Our Silent Alarm; Cold, Hard Evidence; Hurricane Watch; Extremely Wet, Extremely, Dry; The Ends of the Earth; A New Atlas; The Ocean's Dead Zones; Hazardous to Your Health; Off Balance; A Collision Course; First the Good News; Denial Ain't Just a River in Egypt; Crisis = Opportunity -- Added definitions and explanations of complex terms and scientific concepts specifically for a younger audience --

Over 100 images including full-color photographs, illustrations, and graphs Scientists have proven beyond doubt that the Earth's climate ischanging, and much faster than originally feared. Human beings are thecause of global warming, and if we don't take on the responsibility ofsolving it, our environment will change drastically. Some of those changescould include: polar bears becoming extinct as a result of the shrinkingice cap, forty percent of the people in the world confronting a shortage ofdrinking water, and hundreds of millions of people being forced from theirhomes because of rising water levels. Speaking clearly and directly, using indisputable facts and visualexamples to illuminate the subject for his audience, Gore explains that thecrisis is happening right before our eyes. While human beings are the causeof this worldwide problem, we also have the technology and knowledge tosolve it. Gore declares that the choice is ours: we can watch silently asthe Earth changes forever, or we can take action and stop global warming.

Title: AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH: THE CRISIS OF GLOBAL WARMING ISBN: 9780670062720 paperback 9780670062713 hardcover Author: Al Gore Pub. Date: April 2007 Imprint: Viking Children's Books/ Rodale Books Price: $16.00 paperback $23.00 hardcover Pages: 208 Ages: 11 and up Format: Trade paperback/ hardcover, non-fiction

About the author The Honorable Al Gore, former Vice President of the United States, iscurrently the chairman of both Current TV and the Generational InvestmentManagement. He was elected to the US House of Representatives in 1976 andthe US Senate in 1984 and 1990, and served eight years as vice presidentfrom 1993 to 2000. He is the author of the 1992 best seller, Earth in theBalance: Ecology and the Human Spirit (to be reissued by Rodale Books inNovember 2006). He remains a staunch advocate of environmental awarenessand proactive engagement to meet the challenges of global warming andenvironmental pollution. Mr. Gore promotes the message that we have thetools and technologies to solve global environmental issues and createsustainable solutions, but we must take action now.

He lives with his wife,Tipper, in Nashville, TN.

For more information about An Inconvenient Truth, please visit:

http://www.climatecrisis.net Penguin Group (USA) is the U.S. affiliate of the internationallyrenowned Penguin Group. Penguin Group (USA) is one of the leading U.S.adult and children's trade book publishers, owning a wide range of imprintsand trademarks including Berkley Books, Dutton, Frederick Warne, G. P.Putnam's Sons, Grosset & Dunlap, New American Library, Penguin, Philomel,Plume, Puffin Books, Riverhead Books and Viking, among others. The PenguinGroup is part of Pearson (FTSE: PSON; NYSE: PSO). Pearson is aninternational media company with market leading businesses in education,business information and consumer publishing. For more information, visithttp://www.pearson.com. Rodale Inc. is the authoritative source for trusted content in health,fitness and wellness around the world, reaching nearly 40 million peopleeach month. The company publishes some of the best-known health andwellness lifestyle magazines, including Men's Health, Prevention, Women'sHealth, Runner's World, Best Life, Bicycling, Backpacker, Mountain Bike andOrganic Gardening, and is also the largest independent book publisher inAmerica with a collection of international titles, including The SouthBeach Diet and The Abs Diet franchises, and most recently Al Gore's NewYork Times bestseller An Inconvenient Truth. Rodale's broad range of mediaplatforms includes magazines, books, videos and extensive Web sites. Thecompany is also a leader in direct-response marketing and has more than 26million active customers in its database. http://www.rodale.com

SOURCE Penguin Young Readers Group
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http://www.pearson.com http://www.rodale.com
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2006-12-11T08:35:00.000-08:00

Al Gore in election 2008 an inconvenient truth environment democrats politics

Al Gore Delivers Surprise Speech at Clif Bar & Co.

Monday December 11, 10:00 am ET Former VP's Global Warming Message Coincides With Unveiling of Nation's First Employee Commute Incentive Program to Reward Biodiesel Car Buyers

BERKELEY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Clif Bar & Co. received a surprise visit Friday from former Vice President Al Gore, whose inspiring talk about global warming coincided with the launch of the eco-focused food company's groundbreaking Cool Commute program. Cool Commute is the nation's first incentive program to pay cash to employees who purchase clean-burning biodiesel cars. It also helps them buy high-mileage hybrids and offers a variety of rewards to those who leave their cars at home altogether.
Gore drew resounding applause from the 180 people at Clif Bar's annual meeting as he challenged the company to continue its efforts to reduce its impact on global warming. "There is a hunger in the business community for practical solutions on how to put environmental goals into action," said Gore, whose film documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth, presents a powerful case for addressing global warming. "Companies are searching for pioneers that are examples of positive change."

Clif Bar is a nationally-recognized leader in the fight against global warming--Gore's top priority as an environmental advocate. Clif Bar's new Cool Commute program helps tackle global warming at a personal level by paying $5,000 to employees who switch to biodiesel (B100) cars for their commutes. In addition to a cash incentive for biodiesel, Clif Bar also will pay $5,000 to its people who buy a fuel-friendly hybrid vehicle.
Along with incentives for driving more fuel-efficient cars, the Cool Commute program awards points to Clif Bar people who carpool or leave their cars at home and opt instead to walk, bike or take public transportation to work. Points can be redeemed for tax-free public transit vouchers or gift cards from Whole Foods Market, Peet's Coffee and other local green businesses. Points can also be used to support environmental groups such as American Forests, Clean Air-Cool Planet and NativeEnergy.

"We found that collectively the folks at our company consumed about 29,500 gallons of gasoline commuting more than 700,000 miles to and from work in 2005," said Elysa Hammond, Clif Bar's staff ecologist and co-developer of the Cool Commute effort. "By encouraging our people to rely less on fossil fuels in their commutes, we can make a difference as a business when it comes to arguably the single biggest issue facing us all--global warming."

"Our company measures its success not only on how well we sustain the business, but on how well we help sustain the planet," said Clif Bar CEO Sheryl O'Loughlin, who sought out Gore for the company's annual meeting. "We truly believe you can operate a thriving business that treads lightly on our environment."

"Clif Bar is constantly looking for ways to reduce our ecological footprint," said founder and owner Gary Erickson. "We're using as many organic ingredients as possible, reducing waste in our packaging, 'greening' our office space and offsetting our climate impact by helping build wind farms and planting trees. There's a lot more we can do--and we're committed to that journey over the long haul."

Gore encouraged other businesses to also think beyond quarterly earnings and consider the long term value of environmental stewardship. He said most businesses now "treat the environment as an externality," which results in decisions that "ignore or are actively harmful to the planet."

Cool Commute is the first phase of a larger Clif Bar initiative that will eventually help employees address their environmental impact at home as well as at work, according to Jennifer Freitas, the company's wellness advocate and co-developer with Hammond of the Cool Commute program.

Clif Bar & Co. is a leading maker of all-natural and organic energy and nutrition foods and drinks, including the organic certified CLIF® BAR energy bar delivering nutrition for sustained energy; LUNA®, The Whole Nutrition Bar for Women®; Clif Nectar(TM), the organic fruit and nut bar; and CLiF® ZBaR, the energy bar that nourishes kids in motion.

Committed to sustainability, Clif Bar & Co. works continuously to reduce its footprint on the planet from the field to the final product.
Editor's Note: Photos available upon request.

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/061211/20061211005371.html?.v=1

2006-12-09T16:40:00.000-08:00

Al gore in Election 2008

Al Gore in bid to 'freeze' carbon emissions
Former US Vice President Al Gore says he will start a grassroots political movement next month to seek a "freeze" on carbon emissions that scientists say are to blame for global warming.

Modelled after the nuclear freeze movement of the 1980s, Gore said he planned to enlist groups ranging from entrepreneurs and activists to political leaders to push for stronger policies to limit the growth of greenhouse gases.

"I think we need a carbon freeze," Gore told policy and business leaders at a conference organised by a venture capital firm.
"I intend to launch an ongoing campaign of mass persuasion at the beginning of 2007."

Gore said the grass-roots campaign would put heat on leaders in Washington to come up with more sophisticated policies to address global climate change.

"I think we need a mass movement in the United States. I think it ought to start at the grass roots," said Gore, author of the book, An Inconvenient Truth, which was made into a hit documentary film on global warming.

Gore said the power of the freeze demand is that it can operate at every level of society - individuals can take steps to cut their use of nonrenewable energies, and so can businesses and local and state governments.

As a US senator and arms control expert, Gore had opposed the nuclear freeze movement two decades ago because he thought it was "naive and simplistic."

He said he has since come around to recognise its impact on political leaders.

Gore was appearing at a two-day closed-door meeting of a group called the Greentech Innovation Network organised by Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Silicon Valley's most powerful venture capital firm.

The group, credited with helping convince California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign into law a model carbon emissions cap in September, is made up of environmental entrepreneurs, policymakers and academics.

John Denniston, a Kleiner Perkins partner, told reporters that his firm, which has pledged to invest $US200 million ($A253.9 million) to fund green technology start-ups, is prepared to help finance Gore's political efforts.

Gore spoke on a panel that included Andy Karsner, US assistant secretary for renewable energy.

Karsner said he agrees with Gore's call to make environmental issues a moral imperative, but said the righteous tone of such advocacy was counterproductive.

"In fact, what we lack in abundance is the ability to listen to one another and engage in civic discourse," the Bush administration official said.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/061209/2/11psi.html

2006-11-17T22:22:00.000-08:00

Al gore 2008

Al Gore's truth brigade gets ready to rollIT IS going to be a very long weekend for Felix Riebl.Over the next three days Riebl, a lead singer with the Melbourne band the Cat Empire, will be lucky to snatch a few hours' sleep between late-night gigs and days spent in intensive training to become one of Australia's first "climate messengers".

The former US vice-president Al Gore is running his first climate workshop outside the US in Sydney.The Australian Conservation Foundation chose 85 Australians from 1700 applications to learn how to spread Mr Gore's message, based on the global warming slide show that featured in the documentary An Inconvenient Truth.The radio presenters Merrick Watts and Tim Ross also signed up for the training, which commits them to delivering at least 10 presentations on climate change in the next year.

Riebl says he has grown increasingly concerned about global warming, the slow political response to it, and his own contribution to the problem."We're on a tour bus constantly and catching an enormous number of flights, and as a band we can't take that for granted any more," Riebl said."So we're going to calculate our greenhouse impact as best we can, and try to counter that consumption by raising the issue, raising money for it, and covering our emissions."Riebl said he was already starting to write songs about the issue.He hopes to inspire others to get politically active, particularly in the lead-up to the federal election.The trainees come from all parts of the country and all walks of life.

They include farmers, doctors, property developers, business executives, teachers and environmental activists.A natural heritage consultant, Vic McGrath is from Thursday Island in the Torres Strait. People there are already feeling the effects of climate change, he says."Some time ago we did a report on coastal erosion where we interviewed old people around the place, and they're noticing a lot of changes."People can say that the climate has always changed but it's the acceleration of those changes that has been very noticeable. Over the past eight to 10 years especially there have been big-time changes."Even the traditional indicators, the old ways of recognising weather changes, are going out the window."Mr McGrath hopes that this weekend's training will help him explain the science behind climate change to other Islanders, and what they should and should not be worried about."

People just want to know what's happening as accurately as possible, with no hysteria," he said. "So I'm hoping to glean as much information as I can, so I can come back here, do workshops and tell people what's going on."

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/gores-truth-brigade-gets-ready-to-roll/2006/11/17/1163266787588.html

2006-11-13T20:29:00.000-08:00

Al Gore Visits New Zealand

Al Gore addresses New Zealanders
Nov 14, 2006
On Tuesday Al Gore addressed a handful of politicians and members of the business community as part of his ongoing push for the world to do more to stem global warming.
The former US vice-president is travelling the globe pedalling his influential documentary on climate change An Inconvenient Truth.
Gore came to New Zealand at the invitation of the New Zealand Super Fund Board, which refused to comment on what they would be discussing with him.
Gore is chairman of the London-based Generation Investment Management firm which has been set up to blend traditional equity research with factors such as social and environmental responsibility.
The Green Party applauded the timing of the visit.
Greens co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons says Gore's visit couldn't come at a better time.
She says a recent poll shows nearly 60% of New Zealanders are concerned or very concerned about the effects of climate change.
Fitzsimons says it was unfortunate Finance Minister Michael Cullen chose not to attend Gore's lecture.
She says sending the most senior minister in the country at present would have shown New Zealanders the government is taking the issue seriously.
Gore has now left New Zealand.

http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/411319/891612

2006-09-28T22:48:00.000-07:00

An inconvenient truth

An Inconvenient Truth, the Climate Change film featuring Al Gore, was one of the winners at the annual IVCA Clarion Awards which took place at BAFTA in London on September 29th.

The Awards, presented by Moira Stuart, are given for the best examples of ethical communications and were launched four years ago as the first of their kind in the world to celebrate media responsibility across all delivery platforms.

Mainstream media winners included: BBC’s ‘Woman’s Hour’, ‘Talking Scotland’ and ‘It's Not Easy Being Green’; RTE Ireland's celebration of ‘Samuel Beckett's Centenary’; and The National Theatre in London for both the play 'Southwark Fair' and its 'Connections Programme' for young people.

Among other winners were: Barclay's Bank, Honda, Toyota, Serco, Nationwide and Friend's of the Earth. Vernon Ellis ( International Chairman, Accenture ), Julia Cleverdon ( Chief Executive, Business in the Community ) and Gary Withers ( Chairman & Managing Director, Imagination ) received Champion Awards for their outstanding contribution to ethical communications. The event was attended by senior figures from Government, Business and the Arts. If you have questions regarding information in this press release contact the company listed below. I-Newswire.com is a press release service and not the author of this press release.

The information that is on or available through this site is for informational purposes only and speaks only as of the particular date or dates of that information. As some companies / PR Agencies submit their press releases once per week/month or quarter, make sure check the official company website for accurate release dates as our site displays the I-Newswire.com distribution date only. We do not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of information on or available through this site, and we are not responsible for inaccuracies or omissions in that information or for actions taken in reliance on that information.

http://z10.invisionfree.com/Presidentgore2008ca/index.php?showtopic=15

2006-06-22T18:08:00.000-07:00

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

Al Gore's Global Warming Book ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' Published by Rodale, Hits No. 1 on the New York Times Paperback Non-Fiction Bestseller List

Business Wire - Thursday June 22, 2006

NEW YORK, Jun 22, 2006 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Rodale Inc., the authoritative source for trusted content in health and wellness worldwide, announced today that former U.S. Vice President Al Gore's book "An Inconvenient Truth" will reach No. 1 on the New York Times Paperback Non-Fiction bestseller list the week of July 2.

The book has received widespread critical acclaim from an array of leading critics, including Michiko Kakutani, of the New York Times, who wrote, "An Inconvenient Truth is lucid, harrowing and bluntly effective." Warren Bass of the Washington Post wrote, "Galvanizing...will convince plenty of readers that Earth genuinely does hang in the balance."

"We are thrilled to support the efforts of Mr. Gore to bring the world's climate crisis to the forefront," said Steve Murphy, President and CEO of Rodale, publisher of "An Inconvenient Truth." "The environment is an issue that Rodale as a company has been concerned about for more than 60 years, and we are glad to see that thanks to Mr. Gore's efforts and his authoring of this book the message of the global warming crisis is resonating with a concerned audience."

With 225,000 copies in print, the book, released on May 24, explains the latest intelligence and authoritative research, facts, charts and graphs on global warming from top scientists around the world. To promote awareness of the issue, Mr. Gore has appeared on numerous nationally televised programs, with more to come including David Letterman and Jon Stewart, and is making dozens of personal appearances to promote the book.

In the book, the former U.S. Vice President writes about global warming and shares his personal story about how the issue became of urgent importance to him. His 1992 book, entitled Earth In The Balance, which will be revised, updated and published by Rodale this Fall, was critically praised and became a national bestseller, establishing him as an expert and leading spokesperson on the issue. The subject has become increasingly vital to him in the intervening years.

Both "An Inconvenient Truth" the book and documentary of the same name were inspired by a series of multi-media presentations about climate change that Mr. Gore regularly delivers to audiences around the world. The book and the film were produced to meet the demand for his views about global warming.

Mr. Gore recently launched The Alliance for Climate Protection, a consortium dedicated to ending global warming. The Rodale family and Rodale Inc. have donated $100,000 to the Alliance.

Rodale is utilizing its "Rodale 360" integrated marketing strategies to support the project across its multiple media platforms and distribution channels, including direct marketing to its extensive database of more than 25 million customers, and content placement in its magazines, from Men's Health to Best Life.

In support of Mr. Gore's book, Rodale launched the Web site www.inconvenienttruthbook.com in order to educate readers about climate change and correct misconceptions about global warming. It includes a section on cause and effect, using photographic evidence of global warming; charts and graphs showing the consequences of climate change; and activities people can implement to reverse the course of global warming. The site features the trailer for Mr. Gore's documentary, which opened in theaters last month, and a link to climatecrisis.net, the Web site for the documentary that also includes relevant information on the issue.

"With this Web site, Rodale is laying the foundation for the development of an interactive community of people who want to take action and counter global warming," added Murphy.

This is the first book produced to offset 100 percent of the CO2 emission generated from production activities with renewable energy. By supporting a new Native American wind farm and a new family farm methane energy project through NativeEnergy, a privately held Native American energy company,the publication of this book is carbon neutral. NativeEnergy is a privately held American Indian majority-owned national marketer of renewable energy credits, offering individuals and organizations a means to compensate for their global warming pollution.

Rodale's philanthropic efforts have supported a number of environmental causes, including the Wildlands Conservancy, which seeks to protect wetlands and promote conservation; the Clean Ocean Fund, aimed at protecting New Jersey beaches; The Soil Association, dedicated to protecting the world's soil and food supply; The Organic Farming Institute, a soil conservation/sustainable agriculture organization; and The Bioneers, a group of researchers working on air, water, soil and food supply issues. For more than five decades, the Rodale family's Rodale Institute based in Maxatawny, PA has worked to achieve a regenerative food system that renews environmental and human health. An Inconvenient Truth:

The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It By Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore Rodale Books (co-produced by Melcher Media) On-Sale May 24, 2006 $21.95

328 pages, Paperback with Flaps, 200 full-color photos charts, maps and tables This book has been certified carbon neutral by Native Energy. For more information go to www.nativeengergy.com ABOUT RODALE INC.

Rodale Inc. is the authoritative source for trusted content in health, fitness and wellness around the world, reaching nearly 40 million people each month. The company publishes some of the best-known health and wellness lifestyle magazines, including Men's Health, Prevention, Women's Health, Runner's World, Best Life, Bicycling, Backpacker, Mountain Bike and Organic Gardening, and is also the largest independent book publisher in America with a collection of international titles, including The South Beach Diet and The Abs Diet franchises, and most recently Al Gore's New York Times bestseller An Inconvenient Truth. Rodale's broad range of media platforms includes magazines, books, videos and extensive Web sites. The company is also a leader in direct-response marketing and has more than 25 million active customers in its database.

www.rodale.com. SOURCE: Rodale Inc. For Rodale Inc.:Katrina Weidknecht, 212-573-0218

Copyright Business Wire 2006

http://finance.canada.com/bin/story?StoryId=CrjOvWbKbmtCZyJuXnJ&

2006-06-22T18:06:00.000-07:00

An Inconvenient Truth

AL GORE INTERVIEW ON BBC RADIO

2006-06-22T09:45:00.000-07:00

An Inconvenient Truth

The Threat to the Planet

By Jim Hansen

An Inconvenient Truth:

The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It

by Al Gore

Melcher Media/Rodale, 325 pp., $21.95 (paper)

An Inconvenient Truth

a film directed by Davis Guggenheim

Jim Hansen is Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Adjunct Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University's Earth Institute.

His opinions are expressed here, he writes, "as personal views under the protection of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution."

1.Animals are on the run. Plants are migrating too. The Earth's creatures, save for one species, do not have thermostats in their living rooms that they can adjust for an optimum environment. Animals and plants are adapted to specific climate zones, and they can survive only when they are in those zones. Indeed, scientists often define climate zones by the vegetation and animal life that they support. Gardeners and bird watchers are well aware of this, and their handbooks contain maps of the zones in which a tree or flower can survive and the range of each bird species.

Those maps will have to be redrawn. Most people, mainly aware of larger day-to-day fluctuations in the weather, barely notice that climate, the average weather, is changing. In the 1980s I started to use colored dice that I hoped would help people understand global warming at an early stage. Of the six sides of the dice only two sides were red, or hot, representing the probability of having an unusually warm season during the years between 1951 and 1980. By the first decade of the twenty-first century, four sides were red. Just such an increase in the frequency of unusually warm seasons, in fact, has occurred. But most people —who have other things on their minds and can use thermostats—have taken little notice.

Animals have no choice, since their survival is at stake. Recently after appearing on television to discuss climate change, I received an e-mail from a man in northeast Arkansas: "I enjoyed your report on Sixty Minutes and commend your strength. I would like to tell you of an observation I have made. It is the armadillo. I had not seen one of these animals my entire life, until the last ten years. I drive the same forty-mile trip on the same road every day and have slowly watched these critters advance further north every year and they are not stopping. Every year they move several miles."

Armadillos appear to be pretty tough. Their mobility suggests that they have a good chance to keep up with the movement of their climate zone, and to be one of the surviving species. Of course, as they reach the city limits of St. Louis and Chicago, they may not be welcome. And their ingenuity may be taxed as they seek ways to ford rivers and multiple-lane highways.

Problems are greater for other species, as Tim Flannery, a well-known Australian mammalogist and conservationist, makes clear in The Weather Makers. Ecosystems are based on interdependencies—between, for example, flower and pollinator, hunter and hunted, grazers and plant life—so the less mobile species have an impact on the survival of others. Of course climate fluctuated in the past, yet species adapted and flourished. But now the rate of climate change driven by human activity is reaching a level that dwarfs natural rates of change. And barriers created by human beings, such as urban sprawl and homogeneous agricultural fields, block many migration routes. If climate change is too great, natural barriers, such as coastlines, spell doom for some species.

Studies of more than one thousand species of plants, animals, and insects, including butterfly ranges charted by members of the public, found an average migration rate toward the North and South Poles of about four miles per decade in the second half of the twentieth century. That is not fast enough. During the past thirty years the lines marking the regions in which a given average temperature prevails ("isotherms") have been moving poleward at a rate of about thirty-five miles per decade. That is the size of a county in Iowa. Each decade the range of a given species is moving one row of counties northward.

As long as the total movement of isotherms toward the poles is much smaller than the size of the habitat, or the ranges in which the animals live, the effect on species is limited. But now the movement is inexorably toward the poles and totals more than a hundred miles over the past several decades. If emissions of greenhouse gases continue to increase at the current rate—"business as usual"—then the rate of isotherm movement will double in this century to at least seventy miles per decade. If we continue on this path, a large fraction of the species on Earth, as many as 50 percent or more, may become extinct.

The species most at risk are those in polar climates and the biologically diverse slopes of alpine regions. Polar animals, in effect, will be pushed off the planet. Alpine species will be pushed toward higher altitudes, and toward smaller, rockier areas with thinner air; thus, in effect, they will also be pushed off the planet. A few such species, such as polar bears, no doubt will be "rescued" by human beings, but survival in zoos or managed animal reserves will be small consolation to bears or nature lovers.

In the Earth's history, during periods when average global temperatures increased by as much as ten degrees Fahrenheit, there have been several "mass extinctions," when between 50 and 90 percent of the species on Earth disappeared forever. In each case, life survived and new species developed over hundreds of thousands of years. The most recent of these mass extinctions defines the boundary, 55 million years ago, between the Paleocene and Eocene epochs. The evolutionary turmoil associated with that climate change gave rise to a host of modern mammals, from rodents to primates, which appear in fossil records for the first time in the early Eocene.

If human beings follow a business-as-usual course, continuing to exploit fossil fuel resources without reducing carbon emissions or capturing and sequestering them before they warm the atmosphere, the eventual effects on climate and life may be comparable to those at the time of mass extinctions. Life will survive, but it will do so on a transformed planet. For all foreseeable human generations, it will be a far more desolate world than the one in which civilization developed and flourished during the past several thousand years.

2.The greatest threat of climate change for human beings, I believe, lies in the potential destabilization of the massive ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. As with the extinction of species, the disintegration of ice sheets is irreversible for practical purposes. Our children, grandchildren, and many more generations will bear the consequences of choices that we make in the next few years.

The level of the sea throughout the globe is a reflection primarily of changes in the volume of ice sheets and thus of changes of global temperature. When the planet cools, ice sheets grow on continents and the sea level falls. Conversely, when the Earth warms, ice melts and the sea level rises. In Field Notes from a Catastrophe, Elizabeth Kolbert reports on the work of researchers trying to understand the acceleration of melting, and in his new book and film An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore graphically illustrates possible effects of a rising sea level on Florida and other locations.

Ice sheets waxed and waned as the Earth cooled and warmed over the past 500,000 years. During the coldest ice ages, the Earth's average temperature was about ten degrees Fahrenheit colder than today. So much water was locked in the largest ice sheet, more than a mile thick and covering most of Canada and northern parts of the United States, that the sea level was 400 feet lower than today. The warmest interglacial periods were about two degrees Fahrenheit warmer than today and the sea level was as much as sixteen feet higher.

Future rise in the sea level will depend, dramatically, on the increase in greenhouse gases, which will largely determine the amount of global warming. As described in the books under review, sunlight enters the atmosphere and warms the Earth, and then is sent back into space as heat radiation. Greenhouse gases trap this heat in the atmosphere and thereby warm the Earth's surface as we are warmed when blankets are piled on our bed. Carbon dioxide (CO2), produced mainly by burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas), is the most important greenhouse gas made by human beings. Methane (CH4), which is "natural gas" that escapes to the atmosphere from coal mines, oil wells, rice paddies, landfills, and animal feedlots, is also an important greenhouse gas. Other significant warming agents are ground-level ozone and black soot, which arise mainly from incomplete combustion of fossil fuels and biofuels.

In order to arrive at an effective policy we can project two different scenarios concerning climate change. In the business-as-usual scenario, annual emissions of CO2 continue to increase at the current rate for at least fifty years, as do non-CO2 warming agents including methane, ozone, and black soot. In the alternative scenario, CO2 emissions level off this decade, slowly decline for a few decades, and by mid-century decrease rapidly, aided by new technologies.

The business-as-usual scenario yields an increase of about five degrees Fahrenheit of global warming during this century, while the alternative scenario yields an increase of less than two degrees Fahrenheit during the same period. Warming can be predicted accurately based on knowledge of how Earth responded to similar levels of greenhouse gases in the past. (By drilling into glaciers to analyze air bubbles trapped under layers of snow, scientists can measure the levels of each gas in the atmosphere hundreds of thousands of years ago. By comparing the concentrations of different isotopes of oxygen in these air bubbles, they can measure the average temperature of past centuries.) Climate models by themselves yield similar answers. However, the evidence from the Earth's history provides a more precise and sensitive measure, and we know that the real world accurately included the effects of all feedback processes, such as changes of clouds and water vapor, that have an effect on temperature.

How much will sea level rise with five degrees of global warming? Here too, our best information comes from the Earth's history. The last time that the Earth was five degrees warmer was three million years ago, when sea level was about eighty feet higher.Eighty feet! In that case, the United States would lose most East Coast cities: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and Miami; indeed, practically the entire state of Florida would be under water. Fifty million people in the US live below that sea level. Other places would fare worse. China would have 250 million displaced persons. Bangladesh would produce 120 million refugees, practically the entire nation. India would lose the land of 150 million people.

A rise in sea level, necessarily, begins slowly. Massive ice sheets must be softened and weakened before rapid disintegration and melting occurs and the sea level rises. It may require as much as a few centuries to produce most of the long-term response. But the inertia of ice sheets is not our ally against the effects of global warming. The Earth's history reveals cases in which sea level, once ice sheets began to collapse, rose one meter (1.1 yards) every twenty years for centuries. That would be a calamity for hundreds of cities around the world, most of them far larger than New Orleans. Devastation from a rising sea occurs as the result of local storms which can be expected to cause repeated retreats from transitory shorelines and rebuilding away from them.

Satellite images and other data have revealed the initial response of ice sheets to global warming. The area on Greenland in which summer melting of ice took place increased more than 50 percent during the last twenty-five years. Meltwater descends through crevasses to the ice sheet base, where it provides lubrication that increases the movement of the ice sheet and the discharge of giant icebergs into the ocean. The volume of icebergs from Greenland has doubled in the last ten years. Seismic stations reveal a shocking increase in "icequakes" on Greenland, caused by a portion of an ice sheet lurching forward and grinding to a halt. The annual number of these icequakes registering 4.6 or greater on the Richter scale doubled from 7 in 1993 to 14 in the late 1990s; it doubled again by 2005. A satellite that measures minute changes in Earth's gravitational field found the mass of Greenland to have decreased by 50 cubic miles of ice in 2005. West Antarctica's mass decreased by a similar amount.

The effect of this loss of ice on the global sea level is small, so far, but it is accelerating. The likelihood of the sudden collapse of ice sheets increases as global warming continues. For example, wet ice is darker, absorbing more sunlight, which increases the melting rate of the ice. Also, the warming ocean melts the offshore accumulations of ice—"ice shelves"— that form a barrier between the ice sheets and the ocean. As the ice shelves melt, more icebergs are discharged from the ice sheets into the ocean. And as the ice sheet discharges more icebergs into the ocean and loses mass, its surface sinks to a lower level where the temperature is warmer, causing it to melt faster.

The business-as-usual scenario, with five degrees Fahrenheit global warming and ten degrees Fahrenheit at the ice sheets, certainly would cause the disintegration of ice sheets. The only question is when the collapse of these sheets would begin. The business-as-usual scenario, which could lead to an eventual sea level rise of eighty feet, with twenty feet or more per century, could produce global chaos, leaving fewer resources with which to mitigate the change in climate. The alternative scenario, with global warming under two degrees Fahrenheit, still produces a significant rise in the sea level, but its slower rate, probably less than a few feet per century, would allow time to develop strategies that would adapt to, and mitigate, the rise in the sea level.

3.Both the Department of Energy and some fossil fuel companies insist that continued growth of fossil fuel use and of CO2 emissions are facts that cannot be altered to any great extent. Their prophecies become self-fulfilling, with the help of government subsidies and intensive efforts by special interest groups to prevent the public from becoming well-informed.

In reality, an alternative scenario is possible and makes sense for other reasons, especially in the US, which has become an importer of energy, hemorrhaging wealth to foreign nations in order to pay for it. In response to oil shortages and price rises in the 1970s, the US slowed its growth in energy use mainly by requiring an increase from thirteen to twenty-four miles per gallon in the standard of auto efficiency. Economic growth was decoupled from growth in the use of fossil fuels and the gains in efficiency were felt worldwide. Global growth of CO2 emissions slowed from more than 4 percent each year to between 1 and 2 percent growth each year.

This slower growth rate in fossil fuel use was maintained despite lower energy prices. The US is still only half as efficient in its use of energy as Western Europe, i.e., the US emits twice as much CO2 to produce a unit of GNP, partly because Europe encourages efficiency by fossil fuel taxes. China and India, using older technologies, are less energy-efficient than the US and have a higher rate of CO2 emissions.

Available technologies would allow great improvement of energy efficiency, even in Europe. Economists agree that the potential could be achieved most effectively by a tax on carbon emissions, although strong political leadership would be needed to persuasively explain the case for such a tax to the public. The tax could be revenue-neutral, i.e., it could also provide for tax credits or tax decreases for the public generally, leaving government revenue unchanged; and it should be introduced gradually. The consumer who makes a special effort to save energy could gain, benefiting from the tax credit or decrease while buying less fuel; the well-to-do consumer who insisted on having three Hummers would pay for his own excesses.

Achieving a decline in CO2 emissions faces two major obstacles: the huge number of vehicles that are inefficient in their use of fuel and the continuing CO2 emissions from power plants. Auto makers oppose efficiency standards and prominently advertise their heaviest and most powerful vehicles, which yield the greatest short-term profits. Coal companies want new coal-fired power plants to be built soon, thus assuring long-term profits.

The California legislature has passed a regulation requiring a 30 percent reduction in automobile greenhouse gas emissions by 2016. If adopted nationwide, this regulation would save more than $150 billion annually in oil imports. In thirty-five years it would save seven times the amount of oil estimated by the US Geological Services to exist in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. By fighting it in court, automakers and the Bush administra-tion have stymied the California law, which many other states stand ready to adopt. Further reductions of emissions would be possible by means of technologies now being developed. For example, new hybrid cars with larger batteries and the ability to plug into wall outlets will soon be available; and cars whose bodies are made of a lightweight carbon composite would get better mileage.

If power plants are to achieve the goals of the alternative scenario, construction of new coal-fired power plants should be delayed until the technology needed to capture and sequester their CO2 emissions is available. In the interim, new electricity requirements should be met by the use of renewable energies such as wind power as well as by nuclear power and other sources that do not produce CO2. Much could be done to limit emissions by improving the standards of fuel efficiency in buildings, lighting, and appliances. Such improvements are entirely possible, but strong leadership would be required to bring them about. The most effective action, as I have indicated, would be a slowly increasing carbon tax, which could be revenue-neutral or would cover a portion of the costs of mitigating climate change.

The alternative scenario I have been referring to has been designed to be consistent with the Kyoto Protocol, i.e., with a world in which emissions from developed countries would decrease slowly early in this century and the developing countries would get help to adopt "clean" energy technologies that would limit the growth of their emissions. Delays in that approach—especially US refusal both to participate in Kyoto and to improve vehicle and power plant efficiencies—and the rapid growth in the use of dirty technologies have resulted in an increase of 2 percent per year in global CO2 emissions during the past ten years. If such growth continues for another decade, emissions in 2015 will be 35 percent greater than they were in 2000, making it impractical to achieve results close to the alternative scenario.

The situation is critical, because of the clear difference between the two scenarios I have projected. Further global warming can be kept within limits (under two degrees Fahrenheit) only by means of simultaneous slowdown of CO2 emissions and absolute reduction of the principal non-CO2agents of global warming, particularly emissions of methane gas. Such methane emissions are not only the second-largest human contribution to climate change but also the main cause of an increase in ozone—the third-largest human-produced greenhouse gas—in the troposphere, the lowest part of the Earth's atmosphere. Practical methods can be used to reduce human sources of methane emission, for example, at coal mines, landfills, and waste management facilities. However, the question is whether these reductions will be overwhelmed by the release of frozen methane hydrates— the ice-like crystals in which large deposits of methane are trapped—if permafrost melts.

If both the slowdown in CO2 emissions and reductions in non-CO2 emissions called for by the alternative scenario are achieved, release of "frozen methane" should be moderate, judging from prior interglacial periods that were warmer than today by one or two degrees Fahrenheit. But if CO2 emissions are not limited and further warming reaches three or four degrees Fahrenheit, all bets are off. Indeed, there is evidence that greater warming could release substantial amounts of methane in the Arctic. Much of the ten-degree Fahrenheit global warming that caused mass extinctions, such as the one at the Paleocene-Eocene boundary, appears to have been caused by release of "frozen methane." Those releases of methane may have taken place over centuries or millennia, but release of even a significant fraction of the methane during this century could accelerate global warming, preventing achievement of the alternative scenario and possibly causing ice sheet disintegration and further long-term methane release that are out of our control.

Any responsible assessment of environmental impact must conclude that further global warming exceeding two degrees Fahrenheit will be dangerous. Yet because of the global warming already bound to take place as a result of the continuing long-term effects of greenhouse gases and the energy systems now in use, the two-degree Fahrenheit limit will be exceeded unless a change in direction can begin during the current decade. Unless this fact is widely communicated, and decision-makers are responsive, it will soon be impossible to avoid climate change with far-ranging undesirable consequences. We have reached a critical tipping point.

4.The public can act as our planet's keeper, as has been shown in the past. The first human-made atmospheric crisis emerged in 1974, when the chemists Sherry Rowland and Mario Molina reported that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) might destroy the stratospheric ozone layer that protects animal and plant life from the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays. How narrowly we escaped disaster was not realized until years later.

CFC appeared to be a marvelous inert chemical, one so useful as an aerosol propellant, fire suppressor, and refrigerant fluid that CFC production increased 10 percent per year for decades. If this business-as-usual growth of CFCs had continued just one more decade, the stratospheric ozone layer would have been severely depleted over the entire planet and CFCs themselves would have caused a larger greenhouse effect than CO2.Instead, the press and television reported Rowland and Molina's warning widely. The public, responding to the warnings of environmental groups, boycotted frivolous use of CFCs as propellants for hair spray and deodorant, and chose non-CFC products instead. The annual growth of CFC usage plummeted immediately from 10 percent to zero. Thus no new facilities to produce CFCs were built. The principal CFC manufacturer, after first questioning the scientific evidence, developed alternative chemicals. When the use of CFCs for refrigeration began to increase and a voluntary phaseout of CFCs for that purpose proved ineffective, the US and European governments took the lead in negotiating the Montreal Protocol to control the production of CFCs. Developing countries were allowed to increase the use of CFCs for a decade and they were given financial assistance to construct alternative chemical plants. The result is that the use of CFCs is now decreasing, the ozone layer was damaged but not destroyed, and it will soon be recovering.

Why are the same scientists and political forces that succeeded in controlling the threat to the ozone layer now failing miserably to deal with the global warming crisis? Though we depend on fossil fuels far more than we ever did on CFCs, there is plenty of blame to go around. Scientists present the facts about climate change clinically, failing to stress that business-as-usual will transform the planet. The press and television, despite an overwhelming scientific consensus concerning global warming, give equal time to fringe "contrarians" supported by the fossil fuel industry. Special interest groups mount effective disinformation campaigns to sow doubt about the reality of global warming. The government appears to be strongly influenced by special interests, or otherwise confused and distracted, and it has failed to provide leadership. The public is understandably confused or uninterested.

I used to spread the blame uniformly until, when I was about to appear on public television, the producer informed me that the program "must" also include a "contrarian" who would take issue with claims of global warming. Presenting such a view, he told me, was a common practice in commercial television as well as radio and newspapers. Supporters of public TV or advertisers, with their own special interests, require "balance" as a price for their continued financial support. Gore's book reveals that while more than half of the recent newspaper articles on climate change have given equal weight to such contrarian views, virtually none of the scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals have questioned the consensus that emissions from human activities cause global warming. As a result, even when the scientific evidence is clear, technical nit-picking by contrarians leaves the public with the false impression that there is still great scientific uncertainty about the reality and causes of climate change.

The executive and legislative branches of the US government seek excuses to justify their inaction. The President, despite conclusive reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the National Academy of Sciences, welcomes contrary advice from Michael Crichton, a science fiction writer. Senator James Inhofe, chairman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, describes global warming as "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people" and has used aggressive tactics, including a lawsuit to suppress a federally funded report on climate change, to threaten and intimidate scientists.

Policies favoring the short-term profits of energy companies and other special interests are cast by many politicians as being in the best economic interests of the country. They take no account of the mounting costs of environmental damage and of the future costs of maintaining the supply of fossil fuels. Leaders with a long-term vision would place greater value on developing more efficient energy technology and sources of clean energy. Rather than subsidizing fossil fuels, the government should provide incentives for fossil-fuel companies to develop other kinds of energy.

Who will pay for the tragic effects of a warming climate? Not the political leaders and business executives I have mentioned. If we pass the crucial point and tragedies caused by climate change begin to unfold, history will judge harshly the scientists, reporters, special interests, and politicians who failed to protect the planet. But our children will pay the consequences.

The US has heavy legal and moral responsibilities for what is now happening. Of all the CO2 emissions produced from fossil fuels so far, we are responsible for almost 30 percent, an amount much larger than that of the next-closest countries, China and Russia, each less than 8 percent. Yet our responsibility and liability may run higher than those numbers suggest. The US cannot validly claim to be ignorant of the consequences. When nations must abandon large parts of their land because of rising seas, what will our liability be? And will our children, as adults in the world, carry a burden of guilt, as Germans carried after World War II, however unfair inherited blame may be?

The responsibility of the US goes beyond its disproportionate share of the world's emissions. By refusing to participate in the Kyoto Protocol, we delayed its implementation and weakened its effectiveness, thus undermining the attempt of the international community to slow down the emissions of developed countries in a way consistent with the alternative scenario. If the US had accepted the Kyoto Protocol, it would have been possible to reduce the growing emissions of China and India through the Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism, by which the developed countries could offset their own continuing emissions by investing in projects to reduce emissions in the developing countries. This would have eased the way to later full participation by China and India, as occurred with the Montreal Protocol. The US was right to object to quotas in the Kyoto Protocol that were unfair to the US; but an appropriate response would have been to negotiate revised quotas, since US political and technology leadership are essential for dealing with climate change.

It is not too late. The US hesitated to enter other conflicts in which the future was at stake. But enter we did, earning gratitude in the end, not condemnation. Such an outcome is still feasible in the case of global warming, but just barely.As explained above, we have at most ten years—not ten years to decide upon action, but ten years to alter fundamentally the trajectory of global greenhouse emissions. Our previous decade of inaction has made the task more difficult, since emissions in the developing world are accelerating. To achieve the alternative scenario will require prompt gains in energy efficiencies so that the supply of conventional fossil fuels can be sustained until advanced technologies can be developed. If instead we follow an energy-intensive path of squeezing liquid fuels from tar sands, shale oil, and heavy oil, and do so without capturing and sequestering CO2 emissions, climate disasters will become unavoidable.

5.When I recently met Larry King, he said, "Nobody cares about fifty years from now." Maybe so. But climate change is already evident. And if we stay on the business-as-usual course, disastrous effects are no further from us than we are from the Elvis era. Is it possible for a single book on global warming to convince the public, as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring did for the dangers of DDT? Bill McKibben's excellent book The End of Nature is usually acknowledged as having been the most effective so far, but perhaps what is needed is a range of books dealing with different aspects of the global warming story.Elizabeth Kolbert's Field Notes, based on a series of articles she wrote for The New Yorker, is illuminating and sobering, a good book to start with. The reader is introduced to some of the world's leading climate researchers who explain the dangers in reasonably nontechnical language but without sacrificing scientific accuracy. The book includes fascinating accounts of how climate changes affected the planet in the past, and how such changes are occurring in different parts of the world right now. If Field Notes leaves the reader yearning for more experience in the field, I suggest Thin Ice by Mark Bowen, which captures the heroic work of Lonnie Thompson in extracting unique information on climate change from some of the most forbidding and spectacular places on the planet.[1] Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers puts needed emphasis on the effects of human-made climate change on other life on the planet. Flannery is a remarkable scientist, having discovered and described dozens of mammals in New Guinea, yet he writes for a general audience with passion and clarity. He considers changes in climate that correspond to what I have defined as the business-as-usual and alternative scenarios. Flannery estimates that when we take account of other stresses on species imposed by human beings, the alternative scenario will lead to the eventual extinction of 20 percent of today's species, while continuing with business-as-usual will cause 60 percent to become extinct. Some colleagues will object that he extrapolates from meager data, but estimates are needed and Flannery is as qualified as anyone to make them. Fossil records of mass extinctions support Flannery's shocking estimate of the potential for climate change to extinguish life.

Flannery concludes, as I have, that we have only a short time to address global warming before it runs out of control. However, his call for people to reduce their CO2 emissions, while appropriate, oversimplifies and diverts attention from the essential requirement: government leadership. Without such leadership and comprehensive economic policies, conservation of energy by individuals merely reduces demands for fuel, thus lowering prices and ultimately promoting the wasteful use of energy. I was glad to see that in a recent article in these pages, he wrote that an effective fossil energy policy should include a tax on carbon emissions.[2]

good energy policy, economists agree, is not difficult to define. Fuel taxes should encourage conservation, but with rebates to taxpayers so that the government revenue from the tax does not increase. The taxpayer can use his rebate to fill his gas-guzzler if he likes, but most people will eventually reduce their use of fuel in order to save money, and will spend the rebate on something else. With slow and continual increases of fuel cost, energy consumption will decline. The economy will not be harmed. Indeed, it will be improved since the trade deficit will be reduced; so will the need to protect US access to energy abroad by means of diplomatic and military action. US manufacturers would be forced to emphasize energy efficiency in order to make their products competitive internationally. Our automakers need not go bankrupt.

Would this approach result in fewer ultraheavy SUVs on the road? Probably. Would it slow the trend toward bigger houses with higher ceilings? Possibly. But experts say that because technology has sufficient potential to become more efficient, our quality of life need not decline. In order for this to happen, the price of energy should reflect its true cost to society

Do we have politicians with the courage to explain to the public what is needed? Or may it be that such people are not electable, in view of the obstacles presented by television, campaign financing, and the opposition of energy companies and other special interests? That brings me to Al Gore's book and movie of the same name: An Inconvenient Truth. Both are unconventional, based on a "slide show" that Gore has given more than one thousand times. They are filled with pictures—stunning illustrations, maps, graphs, brief explanations, and stories about people who have important parts in the global warming story or in Al Gore's life. The movie seems to me powerful and the book complements it, adding useful explanations. It is hard to predict how this unusual presentation will be received by the public; but Gore has put together a coherent account of a complex topic that Americans desperately need to understand. The story is scientifically accurate and yet should be understandable to the public, a public that is less and less drawn to science.

The reader might assume that I have long been close to Gore, since I testified before his Senate committee in 1989 and participated in scientific "roundtable" discussions in his Senate office. In fact, Gore was displeased when I declined to provide him with images of increasing drought generated by a computer model of climate change. (I didn't trust the model's estimates of precipitation.) After Clinton and Gore were elected, I declined a suggestion from the White House to write a rebuttal to a New York Times Op-Ed article that played down global warming and criticized the Vice President. I did not hear from Gore for more than a decade, until January of this year, when he asked me to critically assess his slide show. When we met, he said that he "wanted to apologize," but, without letting him explain what he was apologizing for, I said, "Your insight was better than mine."

Indeed, Gore was prescient. For decades he has maintained that the Earth was teetering in the balance, even when doing so subjected him to ridicule from other politicians and cost him votes. By telling the story of climate change with striking clarity in both his book and movie, Al Gore may have done for global warming what Silent Spring did for pesticides. He will be attacked, but the public will have the information needed to distinguish our long-term well-being from short-term special interests.

An Inconvenient Truth is about Gore himself as well as global warming. It shows the man that I met in the 1980s at scientific roundtable discussions, passionate and knowledgeable, true to the message he has delivered for years. It makes one wonder whether the American public has not been deceived by the distorted images of him that have been presented by the press and television. Perhaps the country came close to having the leadership it needed to deal with a grave threat to the planet, but did not realize it.

Notes[1] Henry Holt, 2005. See the review by Bill McKibben, "The Coming Meltdown," The New York Review, January 12, 2006.[2] See "The Ominous New Pact," The New York Review, February 23, 2006.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19131

2006-06-22T09:36:00.000-07:00

An Inconvenient Truth

Gore film warns about global warming

6/17/2006 12:32 PM

By: Glenn Bolin, News 14 Carolina Video

CHARLOTTE -- Hundreds of people turned out Friday night to view the Al Gore documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," which tackles the issue of global warming.More than 500 people prepaid for tickets at the Ballantyne Village Theater, the only theater in the area that is showing the film.

“We can’t just do any kind of carpool; we needed to do a hybrid carpool so that we weren’t polluting the air when we were going to see a movie about global warming,” said June Blotnick of the Carolina Clean Air Coalition.

The documentary is being billed as the “scariest movie you’ll ever see,” and some say it did paint a frightening picture for future generations.

“I’m interested in learning about what’s happening to the Earth and what we can do to help it be here for our families in the future,” said moviegoer John Yankech.

The film's detractors have criticized some of the facts, figures and projections used by the former vice president.

"An Inconvenient Truth" will run throughout the day Saturday with screenings every 40 minutes.

http://www.news14charlotte.com/content/top_stories/default.asp?ArID=121970&addvid=79194

2006-06-21T15:28:00.000-07:00

An Inconvenient Truth

Al Gore's "Truth" Needs to Be Acted Upon Now

by Judy Ettenhofer

When "Fahrenheit 9/11," the Michael Moore screen diatribe against our current president, arrived in Madison theaters shortly before the 2004 presidential election, people sympathetic to its message couldn't get enough of it. They flocked to screenings and breathlessly implored their friends to see the movie that bolstered all their reasons for hating George W. Bush.

It is my profound hope that the same kind of passionate evangelism occurs as a result of a much, much more crucial film that arrived at Westgate and Eastgate cinemas last weekend.

"An Inconvenient Truth," former Vice President Al Gore's sobering look at the pressing danger of global warming, truly is a must-see movie. It won't massage your political biases, it will rock your world view.

Unless, of course, you are one of those who have been suckered by certain right-wing groups that have conducted a startlingly successful propaganda campaign to sow doubt among the public about global warming. Gore describes this effort in the film, having obtained an internal memo from one such group that openly reveals its disinformation strategy.

"An Inconvenient Truth" will rightly dispel any doubts. Of nearly 1,000 peer-reviewed scientific articles about global warming, not one takes a contrary view of the growing risks we face from the continued warming of our atmosphere due to our fossil fuel use.

The brutal reality is this: If we don't stem the carbon dioxide emissions, we will see nations' entire coastlines under water from the rise in sea levels due to melting glaciers, other nations with such severe droughts that their populations risk starvation, and the extinction of millions of species that cannot adapt to radical temperature changes in their habitats.

Some scientists say the severity of Hurricane Katrina, which powered up from a category 1 to a category 5 storm while passing over the warm Gulf of Mexico, can be linked to global warming and signals more catastrophic hurricanes to come.

"The moral imperative to make big changes is inevitable," Gore says of the need to face global warming seriously. "It is deeply unethical if we allow this to happen." Two hundred western U.S. cities set high temperature records last year. Just last week, the Western Governors Association, whose states contain major coal and oil reserves, passed a resolution acknowledging the need to reduce global warming.

But the most important point to take away from "An Inconvenient Truth" is that global warming is not a problem that's "out there" somewhere else. It is a problem each of us contributes to each day we live on this planet. Yes, we need our elected officials to take action and stop burying their heads in the sand about this threat, but we as individual citizens also must take action to reduce our fossil fuel use.

In fact, Wisconsin bears a disproportionate share of the responsibility for global warming. Six Midwest states, including Wisconsin, contribute 20 percent of the U.S. global warming pollution, from our coal plants. Three-quarters of Wisconsin's electricity generation comes from coal. Even with the obvious detriments of continued coal use, Wisconsin utilities are currently building two new coal plants.

Let's bring the climate crisis even closer to home: If you want Madison Gas & Electric to meet its goal to stop burning coal at its Blount Street plant by 2011, if you want to slow the expansion of high-voltage power lines by American Transmission Co. across Dane County, you have to act now.

At a minimum, every single local resident should:
• Replace your regular incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs.
• Get a setback thermostat that allows you to program your heating and cooling for optimum savings.
• Turn your air conditioner up 2 degrees and your furnace down 2 degrees. Heating and cooling account for half of your home's energy use
• Sign up for your electric utility's green energy option. MGE, Alliant Energy and Wisconsin Public Power Inc. offer such programs, which charge customers a bit extra to support renewable energy sources like wind power.
• Make sure your car's tires are properly inflated, to get the best gas mileage. On WIBA/AM radio Monday morning, WKOW-TV meteorologist Brian Olson urged listeners to see "An Inconvenient Truth." He said he had gone to the theater over the weekend a bit skeptical about the threat posed by global warming, and come out a believer. We all need to believe.

Throughout the film, Gore talks about the lack of political will to address this threat that may well devastate our planet. Action will have to start with each of us, one by one. If we build enough momentum, our politicians will be forced to act. "It is your time to seize this issue," Gore says. "It is our time to secure our future." Judy Ettenhofer is opinion editor of The Capital Times.

E-mail to: jettenhofer@madison.com

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0621-26.htm

2006-06-20T06:37:00.000-07:00

An Inconvenient Truth

Re-invented Gore re-emerges on the scene

By Bonna de la Cruz,

The Tennessean and Bill Theobald, Gannett News Service

He's walking the red carpet as the star of a new film. He chatted with Jay Leno on late night television. He's made the cover of Vanity Fair. And he kicked off an episode of Saturday Night Live by talking about all the world's problems he would have solved as President Gore.

Of course, Al Gore isn't the leader of the free world, but the way he's been popping up all over the national landscape lately, you could believe he's been thinking about it. Gore, 58, has been devoting himself to a more-than-30-year passion — the threat of global warming — as he promotes his new film and book, "An Inconvenient Truth." Some speculate Gore is, once again, refining his image — so long stiff and dull, hello witty and relaxed — to set up another run for national office.

The Democrat, for his part, said he does not intend to run in 2008. "I'm not making any plans to run for president again," Gore said in an interview with The Tennessean.

"I haven't made a Sherman statement because it just seems inappropriate," he said, a reference to the quote, "If nominated, I will not run; if elected, I will not serve," famously made by Civil War Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman.

"I haven't reached the point where I'm willing to say, 'Under no circumstances and the rest of my life would I ever think of such a thing,' " Gore said.

Gore has settled into a Nashville home with his wife, Tipper, spending his time doing "all the normal stuff," he said, like going to movies, spending time with friends and visiting the family farm in Carthage, Tenn.

He's also building a business empire. He launched an upstart television network geared toward youth, Current TV, and an environmentally conscious investment firm, and he has been lecturing around the country.

"It's not exactly an explicitly political path, so you could call it a redefinition," political scientist John Geer said.

"Is he being himself or reinventing himself? Critics will say he's reinventing himself. Supporters will say he's the real Al Gore," said Geer, a Vanderbilt University professor. If Gore makes a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, possibly pitting him against former first lady and U.S. senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton. If he wins, he would be following the path of Republican Richard Nixon. Nixon, who like Gore also was a vice president, lost a close race to John F. Kennedy in 1960 and sat out the next presidential election before winning in 1968.

By declining to rule out a political comeback, Gore is keeping his options open, said Bob Tike, a Gore friend who is chairman of the Tennessee Democratic Party.

"It would take an overwhelming mandate," Tuke said. "People presently being considered, saying, 'I will not run against Al Gore.' It would take almost a rising by Democrats.

" Public once again The story behind Gore's re-emergence is the tale of melting glaciers and violent hurricanes.

It's a narrative he's told ever since he learned about global warming pollution as a college student. He later polished the story into a traveling slide show that is now a full-length documentary. The film has earned about $4 million since it opened May 24.

"It's the most serious challenge human civilization has ever faced," Gore said. "It has the potential for literally threatening the future of all civilizations. That sounds shrill to some ears, but unfortunately it's true."

Gore is taking his message to the masses, urging them to become more knowledgeable about global warming. A good start: Reading his book and seeing his movie. The aim is to inspire people to cut back on the amount of pollution they generate through wasteful habits. Hopefully the enlightened will become activists.

"Here he is as the world's spokesman on something that is a world issue," Tuke said.
"Some can make the argument that that is much more important than being president of the United States," Tuke said.

"If Al Gore could be some kind of world leader in this admittedly enormous problem we have to deal with, maybe that's his calling.
Maybe Al Gore is the guy to show the world how to survive." Most observers in Washington, D.C., are taking Gore at his word that he has no plans right now to run for president.

Charlie Cook, of the influential Cook Political Report, said he interpreted recent Gore answers to the presidential question as "totally disavowing any possibility of running without actually uttering those words."

"He said he could not conceive of a set of circumstances in which he would run. Sounds to me that we should take him at his word," Cook said in an e-mail response. Cook thinks the speculation about a presidential bid gets in the way of Gore's message on global warming.

"If Gore were perceived as using the issue as a vehicle to run for president, it would hurt the acceptance of the message."

Someone who has known Gore as long as anyone, Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Nashville, also sees little chance of a Gore presidential run. "I'm proud that people are supporting his ideas, I'm proud that people are supporting him, " Cooper said. "My theory of politics is that you only get one or two chances, and he's had his one or two chances."

Limited political action The Gores have not contributed much money to political campaigns in recent years — something that is nearly mandatory for someone running for national office. Recent records in the key presidential states of Iowa and New Hampshire show no contributions.

Overall, Al Gore has given about $16,000 since 2002, according to PoliticalMoneyLine, a service that compiles campaign finance data. Contributions have included $5,497 to the Tennessee Democratic Party; $4,000 to the Senate campaign of former White House aide Erskine Bowles; and $10,000 to his own campaign committee.

Wife Mary Elizabeth "Tipper" Gore has donated $19,000 during the same period, including $1,000 each to John Kerry's and Howard Dean's presidential campaigns and $10,000 to her husband's committee. More interesting than the contributions themselves are the various occupations that Al and Tipper have listed when making the donations.

Al Gore refers to himself as "Self-employed/Former VP," "Consultant," "Teacher," "Author," and "Retired." Tipper variously defines her occupation as "Author," "Photographer," "Housewife," and "Lecturer."

In Nashville, the former vice president's rising profile drew chuckles from the state Republican Party. "Is that guy still around?" said Bob Davis, chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party. "I mean no ill will or disrespect to Al Gore, but a chameleon can change colors in a brief second, and I'm guess that's what Gore is trying to do," Davis said.

Nancy Lynn Nagy, who lives in Lewis County and is a data analyst in the health care industry, said she is thrilled about Gore's comeback. She has supported Gore since he first caught her attention in 1980s when he was talking about global warming. "I think he has taken the leash off and has finally realized he is not playing the game anymore," Nagy said of his resurgence.
Those who know Gore scoffed at the notion that he has "reinvented" himself — a word that conjures up bad memories of his much-ridiculed campaign strategy of switching to earth tones.
"This is absolutely, not remotely, a reinvention," said Heather Marabeti, 36, who worked as an executive and special assistant to Gore when he was vice president. She is now executive director of staff development for development and alumni relations at Vanderbilt University.

"He's not the vice president anymore. He doesn't have the weight-of-the-world feeling on his shoulders. Maybe that's the part of it." Contact Bonna de la Cruz at bdelacruz(at)Tennessean.com and Bill Theobald at wtheobal(at)gns.gannett.com. On the Web

www.climatecrisis.net, site for "An Inconvenient Truth."

www.current.tv, Current TV.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-06-18-gns-gore_x.htm

2006-06-20T06:21:00.000-07:00

An Inconvenient Truth

He's back - big time

Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore is enjoying unexpected celebrity

Julie Smyth, National Post

Published: Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Al Gore should be yesterday's man, confined to the history books as the guy who didn't become president. Yet, despite losing the controversial 2000 election, Al Gore is suddenly back. In a big way.

In fact, life couldn't be much better for him: his documentary on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, is drawing sell-out crowds, he's been featured in Vanity Fair and was the cover story in several American magazines recently, he's done the rounds on late night shows, including Jay Leno and Saturday Night Live, was the talk at Cannes and the Sundance Film Festival, and is being touted as a possible saviour for the Democratic Party in 2008.

His sudden celebrity is inexplicable to some, but the former vice-president can certainly draw a crowd. Tonight he will speak at a gala dinner at the Canada 2020 Progressive Policies, Practical Solutions conference, in Mont Tremblant, Que. It is understood he will be paid US$80,000, plus expenses. More than 150 people, including Liberal leader Bill Graham and MPs such as Belinda Stronach, are expected to be there. Some delegates are attending just his dinner, booking tables at a cost of $300 a head.

The organizers are making hay of his appearance. A blog on the conference Web site boasts: "As you can imagine, the anticipation of having Al Gore is almost too much..."Canada 2020, a non-partisan event (though with a lot of Liberal and small-l liberal supporters), is put on by an organization whose advisory board includes former Liberal Cabinet ministers John Manley and Anne McLellan, as well as Rudyard Griffiths of the Dominion Institute, Rick Anderson, long-time advisor to Preston Manning, and Justin Trudeau, son of the former prime minister.

It is being held just as Mr. Gore's film rolls out from 77 cinemas to 400 across North America. His talk -- on the same theme as his documentary -- will not be open to the press, even though he has been doing a media blitz lately.

"Gore's people stipulated his presentation be off the record," said Susan Smith, a spokesperson and co-founder of the conference.

"It allows him, in their point of view, to be more relaxed and free flowing," she said, but pointed out there is nothing to stop reporters asking delegates for details after his speech.

Mr. Gore's handlers are likely aware that a media ban will only generate more interest.In the United States, some commentators are baffled by the enormous hype about Mr. Gore. From New York magazine, which ran a cover story calling him the Un-Hillary, this headline: "The Comeback Kid: As Democrats worry about their 2008 chances, out of the wilderness comes a stranger to save them. Wait a minute. That's no stranger. That's . . . Al Gore!?!

"From a piece in The Philadelphia Inquirer: "What's going on here? Isn't this the same guy who was widely reviled by his party for losing the '00 election by a margin of one Supreme Court justice? Who couldn't even parlay eight years of peace and prosperity into a victory? Who then grew a beard and disappeared? Who resurfaced as a techie entrepreneur and futurist? Whose best line became the verbal equivalent of a kick-me sign ('I'm Al Gore, and I used to be the next president of the United States')?"

From the New York Observer: "After more than a year in self-imposed exile from politics -- a time of media ridicule, intra-party recriminations and public abandonment by major supporters because of his flawed, failed presidential campaign in 2000 -- Candidate Gore is back from the dead. With his New York-centric fundraising network springing into action, his well-placed political allies on notice and a newfound determination to insert himself back into the national political dialogue, Mr. Gore is acting like someone who wants another shot at the presidency. For better or worse, he might just get it.

"The former vice-president denies renewed political ambition but also says he finds it hard to say never.Whether he runs or not, the speculation is bolstering his career. There are Web sites backing him to run. One, which appears to have been updated from 2004 and claims it is part of a grassroots organization, declares in bold letters: "America needs Al Gore" and seeks donations to "help draft Al Gore in 2008."

Though Mr. Gore has put on weight and aged a bit, he has acquired star status (USA Today went as far as to call him "hot") that even he seems slightly puzzled by.He joked to Time magazine about an encounter with Australian heartthrob Hugh Jackman at Cannes last month. "It was just a random comment, and here's how I remember it -- Hugh Jackman saying, 'Well, I look forward to your movie,' and I thought to myself, Oooo-kay.

"In Toronto, "he was a rock star" at the screening of his documentary, suggested a National Post article. He got a standing ovation, as he did in major U.S. cities, either through genuine enthusiasm or well-orchestrated planning. (He is being managed, in part, by movie executives these days).

Since losing the 2000 election, Mr. Gore, now 58, has given talks around the world, often earning in the same US$100,000 range as Bill Clinton, has been spotted at private Democratic party fundraisers, attacked the Bush administration over the economy, the environment and its terrorism strategies, published a book -- a spinoff of his documentary -- lectured at various universities, been an advisor to Google, launched Current TV, a youth-oriented cable network, set up Generation Investment Management, and served on the board of Apple. The rumour in Washington is that Mr. Gore has picked up a large amount of Google stock. Forbes reported he has Apple options worth $2-million.Even if he does not have another go in 2008, Mr. Gore appears to be back on the political stage for a while.

Tonight he will likely attack the Conservative government over global warming and Kyoto. During a recent media tour, he told CTV Vancouver: "If somebody would have told me there was going to be a third nation to go into the dunce box with the U.S. and Australia, and say, 'Guess which nation is going to walk out on its international obligations,' Canada would be the last country I would guess.''Even for those who don't agree with his views, it will be hard to ignore him.

jsmyth@nationalpost.com

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=6d42887e-85e3-4277-9804-d218615c3e9f&p=1

2006-05-07T22:33:00.000-07:00

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

Gore promotes his 'ultimate action movie'
May 5, 2006
BY LAURA EMERICK
Staff Reporter

Contrary to rumor, Al Gore does have a sense of humor. Here to stump for his new documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," which outlines the threat of global warming, the former vice president was quick with the quips: "Lawrence Bender, who made all of Quentin Tarantino's movies, produced this documentary, and the production schedule was so grueling, I told him he ought to call this one 'Kill Al, Vol. 1.'" "An Inconvenient Truth," scheduled to open here June 2, grew out of Gore's "traveling global warming show" -- a multimedia call to arms. "This is the ultimate action movie," Gore said Thursday. "I hope it will move the audience to action, and the action taken by the American people when they see it . . . will change the way our government works." Despite what political pundits might claim, Gore insists he's not using "An Inconvenient Truth" as a springboard to another presidential run. "I have no intention of being a candidate. Anyone who checks the political traps in any of the 50 states will find there's no evidence of a renewed campaign." He also waves away "Ozone Al" depictions, such as the recent "ManBearPig" episode of "South Park" that satirized his environmental concerns. "Those guys are nuts," Gore said. "Their comic sensibility is aimed at a different demographic than the one I inhabit, but I still find a lot of what they do hilarious." Cartman and Kyle aside, Gore embraces his mission. "Yes, I'm on a campaign, but it's a different kind of a campaign -- a campaign to change the country's mind. Global warming is a moral, not a political issue."
lemerick@suntimes.com

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-gore05.html

2006-05-07T22:31:00.000-07:00

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

Sellout crowd fetes Gore at film screeningWarm greetings from an ex-VP: An inconvenient truth

Peter Kuitenbrouwer, National PostPublished:
Friday, May 05, 2006

Al Gore warned against a "passive-aggressive" approach by Canada on the Kyoto protocol on global warming, as he bathed in the adulation of a sellout crowd at a Toronto movie theatre last night.Mr. Gore, the former vice-president of the United States, won a standing ovation at the premiere of the new film An Inconvenient Truth, a documentary about his crusade to stop global warming.The film has been generating buzz since the recent Sundance Film Festival, and has helped rekindle a movement for Mr. Gore to run for president again in 2008.But Mr. Gore, who lost the 2000 presidential election after a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to stop a recount in Florida, told the audience in a question-and-answer session after the screening that he is not planning to run for president again.Mr. Gore said the planet faces a "climate crisis," and Canada has a key role in the debate."Were Canada to adopt an official policy of passive aggression to Kyoto, if Canada were to functionally abandon its commitment to Kyoto, if Canada did not reassert its historic belief that we are a community of nations, and were to abandon those ideals, then other nations that do not have the noble traditions of Canada will find it more difficult to do what's right," he said.Mr. Gore has spent the past five years taking his message to school auditoriums and hotel conference rooms, but he was a rock star in Toronto last night."My friend just called me a half-hour ago, so I just rushed over," said Jake Kovnat from Rochester, N.Y., who is studying film at the University of Toronto.Mr. Kovnat hurried to the Sierra Club of Canada table at the theatre. "I'm with Democrats Abroad," he said. "Can I get a ticket?" He could not.Sculptor Annie Mandlsohn and photographer Tim Campbell were luckier -- they got free tickets from the Sierra Club, thanks to their donations.Ms. Mandlsohn, also active in Greenpeace, said the film may cause people to change their ways in order to stop the planet from overheating. "When Greenpeace in the early '80s came out with a save the whales movie, that had an incredible impact."Ontario's Environment Minister, Lauren Broughtan, attended the screening last night. Elizabeth May, of the Sierra Club, introduced her, saying, "She told the federal Minister of Finance, Jim Flaherty, today that Canada must continue to fight global warming."As members of the audience waited last night for the film to start, they mulled over the predicament of the planet. "All these right-wing guys were telling us 10 years ago that global warming was a myth," one man told a woman. "They're all pretty quiet now -- because it's all melting."Mr. Gore, who continues his visit to Toronto today, urged the crowd to get friends out to watch the film. An Inconvenient Truth opens in Toronto in June

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/to...fc-4fd02d0cfef2

2006-05-07T22:30:00.000-07:00

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

'An Inconvenient Truth'

Gore brings a warning:

It's getting hot out there 'An Inconvenient Truth' -

May 24 (Eric Lee / Paramount Pictures)

Director Davis Guggenheim (Mel Melcon / LAT)By Tina Daunt"An Inconvenient Truth," a documentary about global warming, is being marketed as "the most terrifying film you will ever see." And indeed the message, delivered by Al Gore, is scary: We have just 10 years to clean up our acts before the Earth's climate system falls into a tailspin of epic destruction.The film — which opens in Los Angeles and New York on May 24 — is based on a slide show Gore has been giving to audiences since 1990. After environmentalist Laurie David and movie producer Lawrence Bender saw the presentation in Los Angeles early last year, "We were all convinced that the moving truth of what Gore was demonstrating needed to be experienced on a much larger scale," Bender says.They quickly put together a creative team that included director Davis Guggenheim, "Got Milk?" mastermind Scott Z. Burns and Participant Productions founder Jeff Skoll. They set up a meeting with Gore in San Francisco, where they asked if he would be interested in making a documentary.Gore jokes: "They had me at hello." But he had one request: He wanted the film to include scientific data — lots of it. They agreed, and Guggenheim went to work crafting a movie that was packed with facts about global warming, while also painting an intimate portrait of Gore."It has a few lapses of mise-en-scène," New Yorker Editor David Remnick wrote recently in a "Talk of the Town" column. But as a means of education, Remnick said, the movie is a "brilliantly lucid, often riveting attempt to warn Americans off our hellbent path to global suicide."

http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/cl-ca-t...?coll=cl-movies

2006-05-07T21:49:00.000-07:00

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

Gore's 'green scare' to portray environmental urgency

May 2nd, 2006

John Baer, a regular columnist

Ladies and gentlemen, Al Gore is back, and surprisingly, it’s not to launch a second run at the nation’s top office (at least not yet, anyway.) The one-time “should’ve been” presidential candidate has chosen instead to move into the realm of celluloid and box office numbers. Gore has made a movie. Upon hearing this, I was admittedly not all that surprised. I assumed that in a desperate attempt to grab some publicity he wrote an embittered screenplay depicting a malevolent political conspiracy that robbed him of the presidency. Perhaps Bill Pullman would be portraying the former vice president in all his wooden glory. Alas, while such a premise would’ve undoubtedly been entertaining, at least at some guilty pleasure level, it was not to be. Gore has gone back to his roots for this one: addressing pressing environmental issues. Set for release this summer, the film is titled “An Inconvenient Truth,” and the public can now watch the trailer online. In the ad, creepy, intense music and extreme, in-your-face claims like “By far, the most terrifying film you will ever see!” and “If you love your planet, if you love your children, you have to see this film” cascade across the screen while juxtaposing Gore giving a slideshow lecture of “this will happen, unless … ” scenarios. While I never thought of Gore himself as being all that scary, his subject material certainly is. The “truth” that the movie professes is one that everyone has heard at some point in his or her life. In a nutshell, humans are causing global warming, which leads to disasters like Hurricane Katrina, and which will eventually lead to the polar ice caps melting, which will then lead to inland flooding in low sea level places like Shanghai, Calcutta, and Manhattan. Even though I might not understand all the facts behind everything being claimed, because of Gore’s gripping trailer, I really want to see his movie. In fact, I think I have to see it. I need to understand more about the impending global dangers coming our way because I’m now utterly afraid of what might happen. So now the first step in preventing worldwide catastrophe is to fork over nine bucks to see Gore’s movie this June.Is this what he and director/producer Davis Guggenheim had in mind for capturing an audience — scaring us into theaters based on a guilty desire to change? A controversy over this approach has been brewing since the trailer’s release, and critics are biting at the bit to downplay Gore’s doomsday environmentalism – or “green scare,” as it is being called. Jonah Goldberg of the National Review Online writes that the movie will be “the most adept piece of scaremongering ever captured on film, making “‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ seem like ‘Toy Story 2’.” Harsh criticism, but is scaring people with all the bombast of Hollywood terror the only way that remains for creating changes in global warming? Other films have tried the same approach with very few visible results. Documentaries like Morgan Spurlock’s “Super-Size Me” and Michael Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine” attempted to both scare and amuse people off fast food and guns, respectively, but despite the success of both of these films, the trends of obesity and gun violence are still very high in America. But Al Gore doesn’t just want America to change — although that is obviously his target market. He wants the whole world to change. An ambitious goal for a man who has essentially become a political pariah since his 2000 election defeat. This should not be an issue, however, in focusing on his message: an impending global crisis that threatens our way of life. I am not criticizing Gore for making this film. I think that with his limited political visibility, this is the best way for him to reach the biggest audience. Gore has likely made similar presentations on CSPAN-2, PBS and other low-viewer mediums. By taking it to the next level, he is increasing the exposure of something that he undoubtedly feels very strongly about. But will shocking people into seeing the movie really work how he wants it to? He’ll be lucky if it does. At best, he can hope for drastic environmental legislation to arise out of the public uproar he wants to create with this film. At worst, he will face more harsh ridicule from those who will be unwilling to swallow his message. All I know is I’ll be seeing “An Inconvenient Truth” when it comes out. How could I miss it? I do love my planet, after all

http://www.collegiatetimes.com/news/2/ARTI...2006-05-02.html

2006-05-07T21:44:00.000-07:00

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

A terrifying, Gore-splattered frightfest!

Chris Knight, National PostPublished

Friday, April 28, 2006

With the Hot Docs film festival starting its 10-day run in Toronto today, the Trailer Tracker turns its gaze to another new documentary that looks at the hot topic of global warming."It will shake you to your core," it begins, spelling out the words in a font that must be Helvetica Ominous. "If you love your planet ... If you love your children ... You have to see this film."And then comes the voice. Not the deep trailer voice, but the slightly more nasal and southern-sounding voice of Al Gore, the also-ran (and also-won) of the 2000 presidential election. His latest stump speech is not to get elected, but to save the planet: "If you look at the 10 hottest years ever measured," he says, "they all occurred in the last 14 years, and the hottest of all was 2005."An Inconvenient Truth is director Davis Guggenheim's documentary about Gore's pro-Earth, anti-warming message of hope and, some say, more than a little fear. The trailer flashes through quick images of floods, fires, melting ice, hurricane-force winds and general catastrophe to the sound of beating kettle drums, while Gore intones: "This is really not a political issue so much as a moral issue."The printed message picks up again by asking, "Last August ... Did the planet betray us ... Or did we betray the planet?" The shots of smoke rising from New Orleans seem like an echo of the smoking towers of New York on 9/11, a point Gore drives home by asking, "Is it possible we should prepare against other threats besides terrorists?"Finally, as the scary music swells, we see the effects of rising ocean levels on Florida, Shanghai, Calcutta and lower Manhattan, which would become lower-than-sea-level Manhattan. "Think of the impact of a couple of hundred thousand refugees," Gore says, "and then imagine 100 million."The trailer can be seen at www.apple.com/trailers. The film opens on June 2. It should be a hot ticket.©

National Post 2006

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/ar...528263f&k=17904

2006-05-07T21:37:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-07T21:35:00.000-07:00

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

an inconvenient truth

I went to a screening of an inconvenient truth (IMDb). an inconvenient truth is a film directed by Davis Guggenheim about global warming and Al Gore's life long effort to learn about and educate the world about the reality and risk of global warming.My position on global warming had always been that it was probably a bad thing. Pollution was clearly increasing and it increased the risk of some non-linear event occurring. Having said that, I wasn't THAT concerned and thought that there was still some dispute in the scientific community.Watching this film has caused me to change my opinion. I now believe that global warming our most urgent and important crisis and something that we all need to rally behind. The movie presents a scientific, moral and political argument that is convincing and also fun to watch. I also felt I got to know Al Gore through the movie in a completely new way.I've always been a big fan of both Davis and Al Gore, but this movie has really solidified my respect for both of them. I urge everyone to go see this movie. It opens in select theaters on May 24, but the big opening is the first weekend in June. Your turnout to the movie will determine how broadly the movie ends up playing. Considering the importance of this film, it would be great if the maximum number of people possible saw it.

Comments (17) TrackBack (0) Technorati (0) del.icio.us Comments1- cam c. @

May 3, 2006 09:23 AMA quick scan of Google News with search terms like "al gore 2008" shows that a lot of people are already suggesting he would be the Democrat's best pick for the next election... this is a really interesting development; not many filmmakers have the potential to turn a successful movie into an election campaign.I'd just like to hear him introduced at the Democratic convention in 2007 as "Academy Award winner, Al Gore"2-

Alex Krupp @

May 3, 2006 09:44 AMGreat post. I am definitely voting for Gore in 2008 if he runs. 3- Joi Ito @

May 3, 2006 09:50 AMIf I were a US citizen I would definitely vote for Al Gore.4- Jim O'Connell

@May 3, 2006 12:09 PMAlso look around for a BBC documentary called "Global Dimming":

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dimming_prog_summary.shtmlScary stuff.5- Roland Dobbins

May 3, 2006 01:19 PMIt's inconvenient nonsense.1. We're pretty sure that warming on some parts of the planet is occurring. Most of it took place before 1800 - prior to the invention of the steam engine, much less internal combustion. There is zero evidence that any warming taking place is anthropogenic in nature.2. We also know that cooling has taken place within historical times - Greenland used to be -green-, it was settled because of its then-verdant climate. Obviously, it's now a heck of a lot colder in Greenland than it was a few centuries ago.3. We're seeing evidence of warming on Mars and Jupiter, too - please explain to me how -that- can be anthropogenic in nature? The far more likely explanation is solar variability, perhaps combined with the procession of our solar system through regions of space with varying gas densities. 4. We just don't -know- what's causing this, and the unscientific, politically-motivated propaganda film you cite adds nothing to our body of knowledge. The problem is that this issue has been hijacked by leftists using supposed environmental concern as a way to push forward their controlling political agenda.5. We don't know if the warming is a bad thing, either - in fact, there's quite a bit of circumstantial evidence that it would be a net gain in terms of arable land, habitable climes, etc.6. Many of the same people braying about 'global warming' today were braying about 'global cooling' and an 'imminent Ice Age' as recently as 20 years ago. Draw your own conclusions.7. Al Gore, like most politicians of all stripes, is a moron. The fact that you hold him in such high esteem detracts from my opinion of your perspicacity.8. This is far too important an issue to leave to the demagogues (like Al Gore). Sadly, I'm unconvinced the issues can be depoliticized and approached in a scientific manner.6-

Roland Dobbins

@ May 3, 2006 01:22 PMOh - and there *is* considerable dissension on this issue within the scientific community. Your propaganda film asserts otherwise, but that's what propagandists do. They've no regard for the truth.7-

Gerald Buckley @ May 3, 2006 02:22 PM

Joi -I'll see the movie a. because it has better entertainment prospects than most b. I might just learn something in the process and c. because to know a topic is to listen to all sides (no matter how radical they may seem).But, please, don't be so smitten with one compelling side that you lose interest in the possibility others may be equally right (or, maybe, just may be totally right)... Remember, the earth was flat once (and was also the center of the universe). Lots of compelling SCIENCE placed those ideas in vogue.Is Al Gore really a Columbus? A Copernicus? An Aristotle?Who am I to say? Might be. Gotta admire a person with that kind of conviction and passion... Who was the last ambivalent person you know who changed the world?8-

Marc Oesch @ May 3, 2006 02:42 PM

Ronald, yes, there is "considerable dissension" in the academic community on this issue, so why not keep it on that level ?Why label the movie "nonsense" ? (I wonder, did you even see it ? ) Why call the "other" side "demagogues" and "morons" ?We all need keeping up with new findings from the scientific community and problem-solving in my view.I wished you had sticked to rational arguments presenting your POV instead of ad-hominem attacks. This issue is potentially too important to resort to name calling.Or short and old-school: Audiatur et altera pars.

9- Joi Ito @ May 3, 2006 03:47 PM

I suggest that people, especially those who are skeptics, should watch the movie. It really does dig into the science and presents facts that you can dig into. I have begun to do more reading to check on claims in the film and am finding it quite interesting.Gerald: Al Gore is one of the visible spokes people, but it is clear from the film that he represents the view of a broad scientific community.Ronald: Can you cite any scientific peer reviewed papers (not main stream media) which support your points?

10- Cory Doctorow @ May 3, 2006 04:07 PM

Greenland was never green. Greenland was named "Greenland" as a ruse by Erik the Red after he was exiled from Iceland. I don't know about whether warming took place prior to 1800, but if your evidence for that is as shaky as your etymology, I'll stick with Al Gore.

11- Luke Razzell @ May 3, 2006 04:32 PM

Hi Joi,Does your post mean that you're going to quit living on a jet plane, then? ; )weaverluke

12- Joi Ito @ May 3, 2006 05:17 PM

I've written about this before, but jets are a big contributor to global warming and there is very little being done about it. There are several good reports out about this. I am torn about this issue in all seriousness, but I think that I can contribute more to the world by traveling at this point than grounding myself.

13- Boris Anthony @ May 3, 2006 07:14 PM*

Everything* can be debated.. to death. And this is one case where debating too much longer will result in just that. To those who rather debate and question and name-call: have fun. The rest of us look at the data and think "hrm... what IF what we are doing really IS killing the planet?"This is NOT a gamble anyone should take as lightly as "oh those crazy scientists..."Sustainable development. It's time, Joi, that we take everything we know about communication technology and awareness raising techniques and help out those who's information NEEDS to get out. We already started with the free speech, citizen journalism and human rights crowds; now it's time we start talking to people like David Suzuki and others who have been fighting for sustainable development for decades. (I mention David because he knows his stuff AND he's been in media for a looong time.)Furthermore, on the "Joi flies too much" crap. There is no room for extremism. There is no point in grounding all jetliners tomorrow. An enormous part of the influence and power of people like Joi comes from the fact that he CAN reach around the globe (practically and not only financially) and meet and talk to and change the minds of other influential people. Also, and it's been said before, there are much more valid candidates for being grounded... if we're going down that road... like anyone who visits a third world country just to exploit the local population and economy. Or webmasters who housesit in exotic locations... ahem...

14- Mike B. @ May 3, 2006 10:35 PM

My concern is that Al Gore has shown a tendency to abandon the intensity of his convictions in favor of what he perceives as necessary measures for political self-preservation. Too often, he has drifted

http://joi.ito.com/archives/2006/05/03/an_...ient_truth.html

2006-05-07T21:33:00.000-07:00

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

INCONVENIENT TRUTH

Posted by Venkat

I had an opportunity† to screen An Inconvenient Truth on Tuesday night in Seattle. As a special bonus, Al Gore gave some closing remarks about the film. Also present were King County Exec. Ron Sims, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, and Governor Chris Gregoire. The FilmThe film chronicles Al Gore’s involvement with the Global Warming issue, and the turning points in his crusade. It has limited political overtones and focuses on his efforts to convince people this is an issue we need to care about and address. It’s more or less centered around a “slide show” (power point) presentation he has obviously given countless times. The film takes a look at his childhood, his political career, his loss in 2000, his post-2000 efforts, and some personal events that influenced his decision to plough his energy into this with renewed efforts. The slide show feels pretty compelling, particularly given that one gets the sense – quickly – that this is not an issue that he’s using to score any political points. Gore is no Michael Moore, at least when it comes to this issue. It’s something he would care deeply about regardless of his station in life. Three points in Gore’s personal life that renew his commitment to this cause underscore his genuine concern for this issue: (1) the near death of his son, which makes him realize the transitory nature of life and of our natural resources – which once lost we will not be able to recreate for our children; (2) the loss of his older sister to lung cancer – which prompts his father to abandon tobacco farming and makes Gore realize the effect of a powerful lobby; and (3) the 2000 loss which sends him back to his coccoon and back to that which he cares most deeply about. This last point is poignant. He could be doing a lot of different things, but after a profound loss such as the 2000 election he is so beaten that he’s forced to retreat to issues he’s most committed to. The film is worth seeing both for its underlying message and because it depicts a politician who exhibits a deep commitment to his issue.

Al Gore Gore’s 30-40 minute talk after the film was spectacular. First, it seemed that he was just there to promote the film and talk about Global Warming. He wasn’t there to set the stage for 2008 (although a few people in the audience were definitely cheering him to this direction). Second, Gore was truly inspirational. He analogized the Global Warming situation to some of the major crises Americans have faced before. We have, in the past, risen up, gone beyond ourselves (and beyond partisanship) and have risen to the occasion. According to Gore, our realization and action in this area should be a moral imperative. Gore went on that once we’ve taken action in this area, it will open us up to so many other challenges out there (e.g., Darfur/HIV). According to him there are many many issues in the world that could benefit from American leadership. Right away when Gore started his talk it was impossible to not draw two comparisons. First, the obvious comparison with President Bush. GW was the guy everyone said they wanted to have a beer with. He just seemed to get along with those around him (his amicability quotient seems to be declining steadily, at least in the media). That may well be true, but Gore demonstrated that he would be equally fun to hang out with – maybe more so. Gore was incredibly fun, and more importantly, he exuded intelligence – but not in that wonky way people bashed him for in years past. Gore even knowledgably cited to the Sopranos! (when talking about the GOP gas rebate proposal). The second comparison – which isn’t really fair, given that the person he is being compared to is (for me at least) lapsing into some sort of wacky caricature of this guy – is of course with the current veep. The movie didn’t spend too much time on the “big loss” – not the loss of his sister or the almost loss of his son, but – the crushing blow that was the 2000 election. The movie spent barely enough time to convey how serious and debilitating of a loss this must have been for him. One comes away thining that it made perfect sense that Gore would retreat back into the issues that really drove him. (His speech was so uplifting that it didn't allow you to think about any "what could have been" scenarios.)The movie is worth checking out – go see it! If nothing, Gore conveys such passion and intelligence that it’s worth seeing what he has to say on this issue, regardless of how you feel about it.As far as the 2008 prospects it’s way too early to tell. But Gore seemed as relaxed, funny, and poised, as he’s been described in the press lately. Maybe because he has no plans to run as of yet or because he’s continuing to work on an issue that he cares deeply about.A related 2008 observation: Gore’s point is that addressing the Global Warming issue is or should be a moral imperative, and the US should be leading the charge on these types of issues. But what’s interesting is that when he puts it in those terms you realize the current moral imperative may not have the resilience some hope it does. And when its sheen wears off the American people may achieve a level of clarity. And when this happens Gore’s currency will only increase. __† Thanks to Kate from Special Ops Media for the passes to the screening. Also, props to Apple for their product placement. Al Gore seems to love his PowerBook.

http://www.beggingtodiffer.com/archives/2006_05.html#003422

2006-05-07T21:31:00.000-07:00

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

An Inconvenient Truth

Alex Steffen

The Means of Expression - Media, Creativity and Experience see all posts in this category

Team Worldchanging got a chance to see a sneak preview of An Inconvenient Truth last night. We all left stunned.An Inconvenient Truth is mostly footage of Al Gore giving his now-famous lecture on why we know climate change is real, here and serious. It's not flashy, but AIT is the most important film of the year. We believe that this film will change the American debate on climate change, and that will change everything.This movie will change the American debate on climate, if people get a chance to see it. But in order for them to see it, it needs to do well its first weekend. If you are an American and read this site, it is your duty to go see this film the weekend it opens. Last weekend, the movie R.V. took in $16.4 million, making it the top-grossing film in America. That's not that much money: if every person who reads this blog went to see AIT on the opening weekend, and brought three friends, this film would very likely open as the number one film in the country -- and that means other theaters will show it, and more people will talk about it, and climate change may well wind up where it ought to be: at the top of our national agenda. (Obviously the third of us who live outside the US will have longer trips to the theater... but you get the point.)But why should Worldchangers, who have a variety of concerns, invest themselves in the success of a movie about carbon measurements, melting ice caps and worsening hurricanes? Al Gore himself answered that question at last night's screening: because the same frozen moral perspective that prevents us from addressing climate change makes us see all sorts of other planetary challenges -- from poverty to HIV/AIDS to genocide to corruption -- as insolvable problems, rather than as artifacts of a broken political system, problems we lack only the will, not the means, to solve. Somewhere, the ice jam has got to melt. Some time, we have to warm to the possibility of a future which is sustainable, prosperous and fair to all. An Inconvenient Truth may help build a bright green future.(Thanks to our friends at Climate Solutions and Participant!)
(Archive on climate change)

Posted by Alex Steffen at May 3, 2006 09:43 AM

TrackBack comments

I'll watch out for it on June 2nd when it opens in Toronto. It's interesting that (from the clips in the preview) the film demonstrates that you needn't believe that human actions are causing global warming to understand that we need to act to prevent/mitigate further catastrophes. I hope that widens the film's appeal: here comes the true terror. There's an interesting essay on why U.S. Homeland Security should reallocate spending from 'guessing the terrorists next move' to emergency response here: http://www.schneier.com/essay-088.htmlAs the author says, whether we fear disaster from 'Acts of God' or acts of terrorists, federal $$ is best spent on emergency response.

Posted by: Margaret at May 3, 2006 12:00 PM

Nicely done website for the movie, with a showings list and the opportunity to pledge to see the flick: http://www.climatecrisis.net/

Posted by: Shiva Polefka at May 3, 2006 12:11 PM I had the opportunity to watch it at a screening in San Francisco and was impressed. Gore showed genuine passion about the environment that I saw in folks like Ray Anderson (of Interface). It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if Katrina was in 1999 and this film came out in 2000 what the impact it would have made in the political landscape. also Alex you noted that the 1/3 readers from outside the US will have longer trips. did you see the study released today showing that due to rising gas prices it's cheaper to fly than drive (I have a NY to London flight for $250 next week). For all you UK readers, can you say weekend in NY?

Posted by: Cameron Sinclair at May 3, 2006 06:15 PM

Cameron, this Gore is the same guy who wrote Earth in Balance in 1993. He's always had this passion. Unfortunately, the American public wasn't ready for him; it really did take a Cat 5 hurricane wiping an American city off the map before they would really be ready. In that respect your comment/question about Katrina in 1999 is well taken - but we are still left here and now with convicing another 30 to 40% of Americans that Gore is right as are the scientists whose works underpin his opinion. They cared little enough about science the first time they voted for the current administration, only reinforcing it the second time along with the damage done by jettisoning science.

Posted by: Rayne at May 3, 2006 07:56 PM

Here's hoping for screens in Winnipeg....

Posted by: Rod Edwards at May 3, 2006 10:31 PM

Thanks for the outstanding review and call to action. The Newsweek interview with Al Gore about the movie is well worth a read as well: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12535460/site/newsweek/

Posted by: Bill Perkins at May 3, 2006 11:46 PM

On the off chance that someone from ClimateCrisis is reading these comments ... I went to the site and for firefox/ubuntu it is broken. The pledge form doesn't load and there's no showing info. There isn't even any contact info for them.

Posted by: Phil Mitchell at May 4, 2006 08:33 AM

Since that, uh, well-done site is in Flash, I thought a deep link to the theatre listing might be useful:http://www.climatecrisis.net/theaters.html

Posted by: Jeremy Dunck at May 4, 2006 09:33 AM

The movie certainly intrigues me, and the call to action here is compelling. However, I'm worried that it will be a partisan shill. I never saw Fahrenheit 911 b/c, while it may have exposed some truths, it appeared to be more stark partisanship with little that would actually move us forward in a constructive manner. I have not heard or seen anything about Inconvenient Truth to make me think that it will be like this... except for the fact that there's a known partisan politician leading the film. What do you guys think? Is this a movie featuring a smart guy who used to be a politician, or a movie featuring a smart politician?

Posted by: Stephen A. Fuqua at May 4, 2006 09:59 AM

Well, Stephen, the movie makes a real attempt to not be all that partisan, and Gore himself spoke at length about the fact that this *used* to be a bi-partisan issue, but there's just no getting around the fact that the current American administration and their more conservative allies in Congress are the most reactionary politicians on the planet when it comes to this issue.That said, this is no Michael Moore film.

Posted by: Alex Steffen at May 4, 2006 10:15 AM

Thanks
Alex.
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004384.html

2006-05-06T20:48:00.000-07:00

New Updated Version of An Inconvenient Truth Slides Show

http://electgore2008.com/Test9B/SlideShow.swf

2006-05-05T12:02:00.000-07:00

New Version of An Inconvenient Truth Slides Show

http://electgore2008.com/Test9Temp/SlideShow.swf

2006-04-07T12:14:00.000-07:00

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH SLIDES --- UPDATED 4/6/2006

http://electgore2008.com/ANINCONVENIENT-TRUTH4/SlideShow.swf

http://electgore2008.com/ANINCONVENIENT-TRUTH4/SlideShow.swf

2006-04-07T12:02:00.000-07:00

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH MOVIE TRAILER FROM AOL

http://movies.aol.com/movie_exclusive_an_inconvenient_truth

2006-03-23T10:50:00.000-08:00

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH -- Laurie David : Waking Up America about Climate Change

Interviewed by Jim MotavalliLaurie David had a long and interesting career in the entertainment business, serving as David Letterman's talent coordinator and forming her own management company that handled many top comedians and comedy writers. She has produced comedy specials for HBO, Showtime, MTV and Fox, served as vice president of comedy development at a division of Fox, and developed sitcoms for Twentieth Century TelevisionNot necessarily the resume of a committed environmental activist, but David's epiphany came during a break in her career, after her marriage to Larry David of Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld fame. Today, if you haven't seen an information-crammed environmental special produced by Laurie David, it's because you aren't paying attention. Her live Earth to America special featured Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Robin Williams, Will Ferrell and many others. Her excellent and sober (no rock music, no celebrity voice overs) HBO documentary Too Hot Not to Handle will air on Earth Day, April 22 (7 p.m. Eastern Time, 8 p.m. Central). And Participant Productions' An Inconvenient Truth, featuring former Vice President Al Gore talking about global warming, is coming soon to a theater near you. She's featured in the March issue of Vogue, and in May she's guest-editing the "green" issue of Elle. David has a communicable sense of urgency, and it's no wonder considering the inexorable pace of climate change. E Magazine: How did you become an environmental activist? Laurie David: I think it started seriously when I became a mom. I had been working my whole life, and I stopped to have a baby. At the same time, about eight years ago, I happened to meet Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and John Adams, then the head of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). I had breakfast with them, and Bobby started talking about the environment as the civil rights movement of our time. It really struck a chord with me. I just started to read everything that I could, and then I had an epiphany. I was out on the street walking the carriage around for hours at a time because I had a colicky baby, and everywhere I looked I saw these huge SUVs. It disturbed me because I knew that they got poor fuel economy. And all of my smart friends who understand these implications were all driving them. The car manufacturers were spending millions and millions of dollars convincing everybody that if you cared about your kids you'd put them in this big car. How ironic that was as a marketing campaign, because SUVs turned out not to be that safe. And, of course, they're also are rolling back our fuel economy performance by 20 years. And if you increase fuel consumption you double the carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. So I started to get really active. I had the luxury at the time to do it because I wasn't working full time, and there you go. Is that when you got involved in Arianna Huffington's Detroit Project, which targeted the poor environmental performance of SUVs? Yes, that's when we came up with those commercials. That was an amazing thing because it really sparked the debate. Within a day of releasing those ads we were being ridiculed and mocked on every right-wing radio and TV show in the country. It forced people to discuss it. Right now, the President of the United States is saying we are addicted to oil, and where is our oil money going? We are supporting the Middle Eastern countries that hate us. That is exactly what we said in those ads four years ago. Have you heard of plug-in hybrids? Right now, a number of entrepreneurs are working on versions of the Prius or Ford Escape Hybrid that can run on pure battery power and extend the range of the vehicle, in effect creating a 100 to 150 mile-per-gallon car. They're being made by home engineers and so they are not really close to production in any real sense. The ones that are being built are designed to show the car companies that they could do it if they wanted to. Well, it seems like this is the wave of the future. There are still waiting lists for these hybrid cars, so I would think they'd be kicking into gear and making more of them. I think it's great what people are doing. There is a lot going on in this country from the business level and the individual level. The problem is that we are seeing no federal action. But in lieu of that at least there are things being shaken up. Can you describe your strategy in producing the HBO climate change documentary Too Hot Not to Handle, the comedy special Earth to America for TBS, and the film An Inconvenient Truth, featuring Al Gore, which is headed for theaters? It seems you've hit on a way of making climate science palatable to the public. Well, I consider that a compliment. It has been my goal this year to permeate popular culture with this issue, and to use all of the resources that I have available to me to make that happen. One of those resources is my relationships with comedians and my ability to produce comedy. And then, obviously, my relationship with HBO. Just using everything I can to take this issue off the science pages and put it on the front pages. My feeling is that if people don't start demanding change, the government is not going to change. My crowning achievement was a prime time Fox special this year, The Heat is On. Fox did a really good job. We have to reach everybody; we can't keep talking to ourselves. I've given up on that strategy completely after the last election. My goal has been to reach people that wouldn't normally be seeking the information. Your documentary Too Hot Not to Handle is going to be airing on Earth Day, April 22, on HBO. Are you trying to organize viewing parties? There are actually going to be viewing parties all over the country. We are giving copies of the documentary to all the mayors who have signed onto the climate change protocol, an ad hoc, grassroots version of the Kyoto Accords. So, every mayor who signed onto that is going to get a copy of the documentary to premiere in their city or town, and hopefully there's going to be lots of watching parties all over the country. You said your goal is to penetrate popular culture and that's a really tall order. Do you think that if people were to sit down and watch Too Hot Not to Handle, or if they maybe notice on Curb Your Enthusiasm that Larry David drives a Prius, do you think these things are gradually adding up? Are they convincing people that global warming is real and other environmental problems should be taken seriously? I think that's happening, along with what people are experiencing day to day in terms of extreme weather events. In Washington, D.C., the first week of March it was 85 degrees. You know there is something wrong. There were 113 tornados in Kansas at the beginning of tornado season. We are two or three months away from the next hurricane season. So I am hoping that people will start connecting the dots between what is happening out there and this issue, and the only way to get them to do that is to try and educate them a little bit. I feel strongly about this. Decisions are being made today that are going to impact our lives for the next decade. And in about five years everyone is going to be resenting those decisions—because they were the wrong ones. Cars are being made today that are going to be on the road for the next five to 10 years, and they're polluters. Power plants are being built that we are going to be getting energy from for the next couple of decades. They're dirty and they don't have to be emitting as much carbon dioxide as they do. So there is an urgency here to really get people aware of this issue and make this a priority of the American people. The rest of the world is engaged on global warming. How much do you think Hurricane Katrina was a wake-up call for people? I think it was a giant wake-up call for people, and I'm a little fearful about what is going to happen with the next hurricane season. Warmer oceans are steroids for storms; that's global warming. I can't even imagine what is going to happen next. I mean, 2005 was the hottest year on record. We are increasing our carbon emissions; we're certainly not decreasing them. So what is 2006 going to be like? My impression is that people have reached the point where they understand that global warming is real, but they are still in the phase where they think that it's not really going to affect them. They see it as slow acting, down the road, maybe affecting their children's children. That is complete and total misinformation. Scientists are the most cautious humans on the planet, and they are now all saying that they have underestimated everything. They are saying we now have less than 10 years to start slowing this down. Less than 10 years. If you need a better wakeup call then that, I don't know what it is. And if they are saying less than 10 years, my feeling is that it's probably five years. If you read books like The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler, basically he thinks global warming will interact with the end of cheap oil to present an unprecedented human crisis. I personally believe the crisis is here now. And there are so many examples of it. One is in Ohio. I spoke to two maple farmers. Their families, since right after the Civil War, have been making maple syrup. Well, the trees are so confused there that the buds came too early, and there won't be any syrup coming out of Ohio this year. That's right now. What's happening to the ski industry, where kids come home from winter break and lose their jobs at ski resorts because there is no snow? That's right now, too. Look at what's going on in Arizona, with the drought and the dust storms. That's going to affect everything. Too Hot Not to Handle points to the impact being felt right now in the U.S., and that's why I think it's such a powerful show and why it's so important that everybody watch it. The truth is there is not another issue that is going to directly impact people's lives in the same way as global warming. Not Iraq, not terrorism. Are you finding the TV networks more receptive to this message than they were, say, a few years ago? It seems things are shifting a little bit. There is so much evidence, and such a consensus on this issue that it's overwhelming. Every month that goes by with this crazy, extreme weather convinces more people. I think you are definitely seeing more attention in the media—60 Minutes, Fox, ABC, CNN are all covering it. It's a good thing and not a second too soon.

http://www.emagazine.com/view/?3132

2006-03-18T17:21:00.000-08:00

An Inconvenient Truth

Al Gore, Sundance's Leading Man

PARK CITY, Utah -- Has ever a little indie filmfaced a greater hurdle? Imagine this sales pitch:Babe, it's a movie about global warming. StarringAl Gore. Doing a slide show.Improbable? Perhaps. So it's all the more amazingthat "An Inconvenient Truth" had its worldpremiere at the Sundance Film Festival onTuesday night before an enthusiastic audiencethat gave the former vice president and hismovie a big standing O.

Here is the slide

http://electgore2008.com/AnInconven-Truth3/SlideShow.swf

2006-03-18T17:16:00.000-08:00

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH SLIDES

http://electgore2008.com/AnInconven-Truth3/SlideShow.swf

2006-03-18T14:32:00.000-08:00

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

Al Gore, Sundance's Leading Man
'An Inconvenient Truth' Documents His Efforts To Raise Alarm on Effects of Global Warming
By William BoothWashington Post Staff WriterThursday, January 26, 2006; Page A01
PARK CITY, Utah -- Has ever a little indie film faced a greater hurdle? Imagine this sales pitch: Babe, it's a movie about global warming. Starring Al Gore. Doing a slide show.

With charts.

Hours before the filming of "An Inconvenient Truth," former vice president Al Gore works with a team to choose the best from among 400 slides and animations from his environmental show. (Participant Productions)
Sundance Film Festival

About "soil evaporation."
Improbable? Perhaps. So it's all the more amazing that "An Inconvenient Truth" had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on Tuesday night before an enthusiastic audience that gave the former vice president and his movie a big standing O.
Among the film's lessons: Earth's glaciers are melting, the polar bears are screwed, each year sets new heat records. Al Gore sometimes flies coach. He also schleps his own bags.
The morning after his debut as leading man, Gore pronounces this whole Sundance thing "a most excellent time." He is wearing earth tones again. He seems jolly . He brought Tipper and the kids. He is attending parties and posing for pictures with his fans and enjoying macaroni and cheese at the Discovery Channel soiree. He's palling around with Larry David of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," who says, "Al is a funny guy." But he is also a very serious guy who believes humans may have only 10 years left to save the planet from turning into a total frying pan.
The core of the film is a one-man, ever-evolving multimedia slide show that Gore assembled himself. A little-known fact: Since his defeat by George W. Bush in 2000, Gore has traveled the globe with his bar graphs, staging event after event for small, invited audiences. Free of charge. And he's presented one version or another of this slide show, by his own estimation, a thousand times.
The official Sundance Film Festival guide calls the documentary a "gripping story" with "a visually mesmerizing presentation" that is "activist cinema at its very best."
In the film, Gore presents the latest evidence to demonstrate how the accumulation of carbon dioxide and other pollutants of the industrial age are increasing temperatures. In addition to timelines and bell curves and stuff about oxygen isotopes in Greenland ice cores, Gore includes several cartoons, one featuring a Mister Sunbeam trapped by the bullies known as Greenhouse Gases.
Gore argues -- with scientific evidence projected on big screens at his back -- that global warming may soon lead to catastrophic sea level rises, which could inundate cities such as New York (flooding the former site of the World Trade Center), producing scary nonlinear runaway spasms of extreme weather (bigger, badder hurricanes and typhoons), global pandemics and, depending on where you live, torrential rains or decade-long drought. It is not a pretty picture.
But the film's director, Davis Guggenheim (husband of actress Elisabeth Shue), captures another side of Gore, showing the former veep hitting the road, part Cassandra, part Willy Loman, working out of dreary hotel rooms, pecking away on his Apple laptop, crisscrossing the continents to tell his story over and over.
"I'm interested in choices characters make, especially when they hit against an obstacle," says Guggenheim as Gore sits beside him during an interview yesterday morning. "As I got into Al's story, I see a human being who's made some tough, tough choices in his life. After the 2000 election? To go back deeper and deeper into this issue? To decide that it is the most important thing he can do. . . . I see how tireless he is. That, to me, is so dramatic, so inspiring."
The film touches briefly but with emotion on three events in Gore's life and how they inspired his environmental activism: the car accident that almost took the life of his son; his defeat in Florida to Bush; and perhaps most foreboding, the death of his sister, a lifelong smoker, from lung cancer ("That's not one of the ways you want to die," Gore says in the film in a voice-over) and the fact that his family farmed tobacco and didn't stop until after her death. Gore underscores that this is the way people are, that it is hard to change old habits, be it smoking or growing tobacco or emitting carbon dioxide, but that without change, the bell tolls.
The film came about after Laurie David, wife of Larry David, saw Gore's slide show in New York after the 2004 premiere of the mega-budget global-warming feature film "The Day After Tomorrow" (starring Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal). Laurie David gathered a team, including Lawrence Bender (producer of Quentin Tarantino films, including "Pulp Fiction") and Jeffrey Skoll, the billionaire eBay founder and movie mogul. They met with Gore. "We said you have to let us make this into a movie," David says in an interview over breakfast.
It took some convincing. The slide show, she says, "was his baby, and he felt proprietary about it and it was hard for him to let go." Now, David says, the filmmakers are in discussion with three or four distributors, hoping for a sale.
"This isn't about box office," David says. "None of us are going to make a dime." What is at stake, she says, "is, you know, the planet."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/25/AR2006012502230.html

2006-03-18T14:27:00.000-08:00

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

Gore campaigns at Sundance with global-warming documentary
By DAVID GERMAIN, AP Movie Writer
Friday, January 27, 2006

(01-27) 00:02 PST Park City, Utah (AP) --
Al Gore is not all that comfortable being a star of the Sundance Film Festival. He's far more concerned that the celebrity watchers hear what he has to say.
The former vice president came to town for the premiere of "An Inconvenient Truth," a documentary chronicling what has become his crusade since losing the 2000 presidential election: Educating the masses that global warming is about to toast our ecology and our way of life.
Gore has been saying it for decades, since a college class in the 1960s convinced him that greenhouse gases from oil, coal and other carbon emissions were trapping the sun's heat in the atmosphere, resulting in a glacial meltdown that could flood much of the planet.
Americans have been hearing it for decades, wavering between belief and skepticism that it all may just be a natural part of Earth's cyclical warming and cooling phases.
And politicians and corporations have been ignoring it for decades, to the point that unless drastic measures to reduce greenhouse gases are taken within the next 10 years, the world will reach a point of no return, Gore said.
He sees the situation as "a true planetary emergency."
"If you accept the truth of that, then nothing else really matters that much," Gore said in an interview with The Associated Press. "We have to organize quickly to come up with a coherent and really strong response, and that's what I'm devoting myself to."
"An Inconvenient Truth" takes its title from the notion that consumers, politicians and corporations hooked on energy-inefficient vehicles and emission-heavy power sources may not want to hear the facts, Gore said.
The film centers on the elaborate slideshow presentations Gore conducts around the world for live audiences on the perils of global warming. He presents alarming images of ice-cap meltdowns and graphs linking the rise and fall of atmospheric carbon-dioxide to rising and falling temperatures.
If the pace of pollution continues, Gore's projections for carbon-dioxide levels are off the charts within a few decades.
Among the worst-case consequences: A new ice age in Europe, and massive flooding of regions in India, China and elsewhere that could make refugees of tens of millions of people.
Gore makes his case using copious scientific data and a surprising amount of humor for a politician who found it necessary during campaigns to poke fun at his own stiff image.
"I benefit from low expectations," Gore joked.
As part of his act, Gore follows his scientific introduction to the research with a hilarious segment called "Global Warming: Or None Like It Hot" from the animated TV show "Futurama."
"An Inconvenient Truth" also lays out events in Gore's personal life and how they influenced his global-warming mission: A car accident that nearly killed his young son, his sister's death from lung cancer after 30 years as a smoker, his family's legacy as former tobacco farmers, the photo finish of the 2000 election.
Calling himself a "recovering politician," Gore reiterated to a Sundance audience at the film's premiere that he would not run for office again.
"What really attracted us to this presentation is the tone Al strikes," said "An Inconvenient Truth" director Davis Guggenheim. "It's not righteous. It doesn't have a political agenda. It lands right in the middle, and Al just lays out what is this inconvenient truth. And I think that's why the audience is willing to receive it. If they felt like, well, this is a tool for some other motive, they would be more suspicious."
Gore said U.S. government and business leaders must follow the lead of other nations that have enacted stricter mileage standards for cars. Utility companies worldwide must adopt cleaner methods of burning fossil fuels and focus on renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power, he said.
The filmmakers brought "An Inconvenient Truth" to Sundance hoping to land a distributor that will put the documentary in theaters.
"I'm thrilled to have a chance to get this message to a broader audience, because doing it retail a few hundred people at a time is pretty exhausting," Gore said. "I'm committed to it and I'm continuing to do it, but if we can get it before a much larger audience more quickly, that serves the larger purpose."
___
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/01/27/state/n000203S88.DTL

On the Net:
Sundance Film Festival:
"An Inconvenient Truth":
festival.sundance.org/2006
www.climatecrisis.net

2006-03-18T14:18:00.000-08:00

DAVIS GUGGENHEIM

Davis Guggenheim (1964-) is a director and producer.
He was an executive producer on the movie Training Day and has directed a feature film called Gossip, both for Warner Bros. His television directing credits include recently completed episodes of The Shield, Alias, and 24 as well as such critically acclaimed programs as NYPD Blue, ER, and Party of Five. He is currently a producer and director of the 2004 HBO dramatic series Deadwood.
Guggenheim is the son of Charles and Marion Guggenheim, and has one sister, Grace, and one brother, Jonathan.
He is married to actress Elisabeth Shue and has two children: a son, Miles William (born 1997) and a daughter, Stella Street (born 2001).
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis_Guggenheim"

2006-03-18T14:09:00.000-08:00

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

Paramount Picks Up "An Inconvenient Truth"
From Rebecca Murray,Your Guide to Hollywood Movies.FREE Newsletter. Sign Up Now!
Feb 14 2006
Paramount's New Specialty Division Acquires the Global Warming DocumentaryParamount's new specialty arm has purchased the worldwide distribution rights to the global warming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," directed by Davis Guggenheim and featuring Al Gore.
"An Inconvenient Truth" was a big hit at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. The documentary received a standing ovation following its world premiere at the festival. The film focuses on the need to reverse the effects of global warming in order to save our planet.
In a statement issued by Paramount Pictures, Paramount Specialty Division President John Lesher said, "This movie is a visually mesmerizing and shocking look at the serious and dire state of our planet. We are very proud to help Al Gore expose the urgency of global warming to the widest possible audience."
Gore said, "I decided to take part in this documentary because the filmmakers convinced me that it was the best way to get the word out to as large an audience as possible, and to convince more people to look at the truth of our circumstances.

We are recklessly, mindlessly destroying the Earth. As Lincoln said, 'We must disenthrall ourselves. And then we will save our country.' And our planet."
Director Davis Guggenheim was quoted as saying, "Al Gore strips his presentations of politics, laying out the facts for the audience to draw their own conclusions in a charming, funny and engaging style, and by the end has everyone on the edge of their seats, gripped by his haunting message."
Paramount's specialty division plans on releasing "An Inconvenient Truth" on May 26, 2006.
Source: Paramount Pictures

http://movies.about.com/od/moviesinproduction/a/truth021406.htm

2006-03-18T14:02:00.000-08:00

Vice President Al Gore

Al Gore was inaugurated as the 45th Vice President of the United States on January 20, 1993. President Clinton and Vice President Gore were re-elected to a second term in 1996, and Vice President Gore was sworn in again on January 20, 1997. Together, they have led this country into the longest period of sustained economic growth in American history -- marked by 22 million new jobs, and real incomes rising for the first time in a generation.
Vice President Gore serves as an advisor to President Clinton, a Cabinet member, President of the U.S. Senate, a member of the National Security Council, and head of a wide range of Administration initiatives.
Vice President Gore was born on March 31, 1948, and is the son of the late U.S. Senator Albert Gore, Sr. and Pauline Gore. Raised in Carthage, Tennessee, and Washington, D.C., Vice President Gore received a degree in government with honors from Harvard University in 1969. After graduation, he volunteered for enlistment in the U.S. Army and served in Vietnam. Returning to civilian life, Vice President Gore became an investigative reporter with The Tennessean in Nashville. He attended Vanderbilt University Divinity School and Vanderbilt Law School.
Vice President Gore began his career in public service in 1976 when he was elected to represent Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives (1977-1985). He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1984 and was re-elected in 1990 (1985-993). A candidate for the Democratic nomination for President in 1988, he won more than three million votes and Democratic contests in seven states.
Vice President Gore is married to the former Mary Elizabeth "Tipper" Aitcheson. They have four children: Karenna (born August 6, 1973), married to Drew Schiff; Kristin (born June 5, 1977), Sarah (born January 7, 1979), and Albert III (born October 19, 1982). The Gores also have one grandchild -- Karenna and Drew's son Wyatt, born last summer on the Fourth of July.
Vice President Gore owns a small farm near Carthage, and the family attends New Salem Missionary Baptist Church in Carthage.

2006-03-18T14:00:00.000-08:00

An Inconvenient Truth

OVERVIEW
Genre: DocumentaryLanguage: EnglishCountry of Origin: USAProduction Status: World premiere at the Sundance Film Festival
CAST & CREW
Director: Davis GuggenheimProducers: Laurie David, Lawrence Bender, Scott Z. BurnsExecutive Producers: Jeff Skoll and Davis Guggenheim
SYNOPSIS
Director Davis Guggenheim eloquently weaves the science of global warming with Mr. Gore’s personal history and lifelong commitment to reversing the effects of global climate change. A longtime advocate for the environment, Gore presents a wide array of facts and information in a thoughtful and compelling way. “Al Gore strips his presentations of politics, laying out the facts for the audience to draw their own conclusions in a charming, funny and engaging style, and by the end has everyone on the edge of their seats, gripped by his haunting message,” said Guggenheim. An Inconvenient Truth is not a story of despair but rather a rallying cry to protect the one earth we all share. “It is now clear that we face a deepening global climate crisis that requires us to act boldly, quickly, and wisely,” said Gore.
An Inconvenient Truth premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.

2006-03-18T13:57:00.000-08:00

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

Extreme poverty, intractable wars, virulent disease, hatred of all stripes–these are a few of the scourges we live with today. And yet global climate change trumps them all; for if it's not addressed, all life on the planet will be devastated, regardless of geography, class, race, or creed. The Inconvenient Truth is the gripping story of former Vice President Al Gore, who became interested in this startling issue while at college 30 years ago, and now devotes his life to reversing global warming. Traveling the world, he has built a visually mesmerizing presentation designed to disabuse doubters of the notion that climate change is debatable. The heart of Davis Guggenheim's film is this elegant multimedia lecture itself, where Gore indisputably correlates CO2 emissions with exponentially rising temperatures, already responsible for dramatic climactic shifts like ice-cap melting, drought, and rising sea levels. Interwoven with this riveting public address are intimate moments revealing the poetic, searching side of Gore as he struggles to define his purpose in the aftermath of the 2000 election. This is activist cinema at its very best, for it serves to popularize and demythologize a problem long obscured by those most threatened by the solution. With humor and searing intelligence, Gore outlines crucial steps we must take to avert impending disaster and proves that inaction is no longer an option–in fact, it's immoral.— Caroline Libresco