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Two
summers ago, in 2004, the press heraldedThe
Day After Tomorrow as the film with the
potential to seriously impact the outcome of
the election. Of course that was before
Tomorrow opened – and became one of the
summer’s biggest bombs. And we all know what
happened in November.
Now, two summers later, An Inconvenient
Truth has arrived with graphics more real
and haunting than most CGI-laden
popcorn-blockbusters. Just as with Hurricane
Katrina last summer, this documentary
directed by Davis Guggenheim (but more often
referred to as “Al Gore’s movie”) might well
be the alarm clock that wakes an
oversleeping populace.
Please let it be so – for it’s nearly
impossible to sit through Gore’s compelling
recitations about global warming and all its
attendant calamities without feeling
seriously nauseous that we have allowed
ourselves to come this close to the brink.
The facts and graphs are sobering, but as
suits a visual medium, it’s the photographs
which are often nearly heartbreaking. So
much catastrophe: floods, droughts,
epidemics, heat waves, hurricanes and
typhoons. A litany of disaster, and even
more sobering to acknowledge that it’s
happened in our lifetime. The sixty to
eighty years we are given on this planet –
and this is what we have done with our time?
As Gore makes clear, no longer do we have
the luxury of imagining global warming to be
only a political issue. Any moral being on
this planet should understand that the only
political issue is believing that nothing
should be done. In point of fact, we already
possess everything we need to alter the
march to complete planetary destruction –
and primary amongst them is the moral
obligation to do so.
What saves An Inconvenient Truth from being
a doomsayer’s apocalyptic tale is Gore’s
focus on the future and his belief that once
we are aware of the problem, we will work
together to solve it. With knowledge comes
power – and responsibility – and for all
those who have ever been inspired by the
planet’s beauty, whether from high atop
Kilimanjaro or deep in Patagonia, or merely
alongside the river which runs through the
back forty, the time is now. We owe it to
Earth.
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