It's hard spending 90 minutes with Gore-on-film, and then another half hour or so with Gore Live In Person, and not feel a great deal of sadness for what could have been. Without spinning out elaborate alternative history scenarios, I can just return to the fundamental reasons why I hoped that Gore would be elected in 2000: that a few more years of relatively responsible and sensible use of our nation's resources could put our country on a sustainable path to long term prosperity.
But An Inconvenient Truth isn't about what might have been, it's about what needs to be. I'm always a bit wary of Chicken Littles. I've written before about the tendency of many people of all ideologies to have an unhealthy obsession with their own personal belief in an inevitable impending End Times. Whether your favorite bringer of doom is the Rapture, environmental catastrophe, nuclear war, a cataclysmic economic event, plague, general breakdown of civil society, etc... depends in large part on your ideology. But whatever that ideology is, many people seem to have a strikingly sharp belief that the End Is Nigh unless people Understand The Truth They're Preaching.
So, what is The Inconvenient Truth? That global warming is real and serious. That human activity is causing it. That potential catastrophe is near term. That while potential catastrophe is near term, it is not too late to solve the problem.
Gore makes the case compellingly in a surprisingly entertaining movie. It's 1 part Gore's need to make the perfect presentation, the convincing presentation, the one that makes people understand just what it is he's so concerned about in a way which makes them concerned about it too. It's 3 parts a version of that presentation. And, finally, it's one part a personal story of Gore's path through life.
They've done as good a job as probably could be done creating an involving and entertaining movie about global warming, and I don't mean to damn it with faint praise. It is an involving and entertaining movie about global warming. It is a movie you should convince people to go see.
And, while it wasn't its purpose, it's also a movie about what might have been.
