An Inconvenient Truth

The most powerful movie I’ve seen lately is Al Gore’s documentary about the dangers of global warming called An Inconvenient Truth. It is a pity that Channel Four don’t put it out to counter their appallingly sensationalist programme dismissing the whole topic of global warming. At least Channel Four’s HQ is near enough to The Thames so that when that river finally rises up it will be obliterated!

Back to the reality of Gore’s film. It won an Oscar for best documentary, and is an object lesson in how to make a serious subject interesting without trivializing it.  It is based on a slide show that he has now presented over 1,000 times around the world as he goes from country to country to spread the word that global warming will lead finally to global disaster.

It was a crusade he took up after losing the American presidential election in 2000, after a dodgy count in Florida, where George Bush’s brother was Governor. After he challenged the result in the courts and lost, he decided it was time to take off in another direction, and recalled his days at college, where he had a professor who first talked about the danger to humanity and the earth of CO2 emissions. He called up the professor and they got together. By then further research had produced more devastating evidence about the effects of CO2.

The endearing thing about An Inconvenient Truth is the insight it gives you into Gore’s own life, warts and all. The disappointment of losing to the dreaded Bush is there to be seen. He admits to being devastated, and how long it took to get over it. He was brought up on a farm and shows pictures of it from years ago, and his happy boyhood, but he also goes through the battle to save his six year old son’s life after he had been run over, and the awful pain of losing his sister to lung cancer at an early age.

It was an event that had an immediate and direct effect upon his family. His father, whose livelihood depended upon growing tobacco gave up growing it over night, and Gore recalls now that despite the American Surgeon Generals findings that tobacco was harmful how the big American tobacco companies ganged up financially and laughed the idea off the front pages. He likens this battle to that now facing those like him who are leading the fight against global warming. There are many powerful lobbies and countries who do not want to hear anything about it. Who, like the Channel Four programme, try and laugh the idea out of court, and call it sensationalising science.

Yet with a mixture of scientific facts and dramatic filming the director Davis Guggenheim drives home Gore’s views. We see whole areas of the world drying up, and others being swamped by flooding. We see the ice at the Antarctic melting, and polar bears having to swim 60 miles to find a block of ice to live on.

But it is the political effect of all this that should really worry us. Only now are the New Labour government starting to face up to the gross entry of immigrants into our country. Now they are to line up with Australia and introduce a points system, so that we get those with skills, or whom we really need.

Much of the Sudan crisis can be traced to the drying up of lakes, and the economic movement of the people. Gore argues that this will happen more and more as millions of people will have to leave the newly dried up and arid areas of the world, in search of water and food. This will cause wars, and a far worse threat than the current politicians obsession with international terrorism. Up to 40 million people could be involved. Water and food will become the must haves of society, as the seas rise removing huge areas of land. Those who have water and food will defend it against those who do not. The whole shape  and character of the world will change.

Do rent or borrow the DVD of An Inconvenient Truth. I promise that it will change your outlook upon life.

You can purchase An Inconvenient Truth from Amazon for £5.97.