An Inconvenient Truth. Review of David Guggenheim’s climate change film starring Al Gore

international | environment | opinion/analysis Thursday September 21, 2006 01:33 by Martin Hogan - NUI Senate Candidate info at martinhogan dot ie

An Inconvenient Truth

Gore places the scientific facts of global warming in a real life context that captures the attention of all but the most apathetic.

Watching Al Gore walk out to deliver his lecture, you can’t help but feel some sympathy for a man who nearly was president of the world’s most powerful nation. But by and large party politics are kept out of this eighty minute documentary, which adds convincingly to the message Gore is trying to convey

Through a series of images of vanishing glaciers, Gore clearly links the effect of rising CO2 levels with its impact on the planet. A clever use of hard scientific facts coupled with real examples is used to focus attention on the reality of global warning now and in the future. We are taken from Gore’s college life when a lecturer first highlighted the potential effects of increasing CO2 emissions to Gore earning the remark from George Bush senior: "This guy is so far out in the environmental extreme, we'll be up to our necks in owls and outta work for every American. He is way out, far out, man".

From an American audience’s perspective Al Gore’s environmental concerns could seem extreme and sensationalist even today. Watching him raise off the ground in a hydraulic lift to illustrate where carbon emissions are headed does seem theatrical but Gore’s belief in the facts he is relaying never falters. Nor does he leave the audience with a sense of despondency but succeeds in provoking a belief that the means to change things are already available and that a practical effort is required from all of us.

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