On Watching "An Inconvenient Truth"

I went with nclib and struggle4progress to see An Inconvenient Truth last night at the Varsity Theatre in Chapel Hill. This being opening day here, I was afraid it would sell out so I bought tickets earlier in the evening before we met for dinner. Good thing too. The theatre was about 3/4 full at the 9:30 showing we attended.

Folks, this is the Al Gore we always knew was there and have been waiting to see. He is engaging and thoughtful and compassionate and kind, about the whole earth. About all of us. He's shown speaking to American and Chinese audiences, and yes, going through the strange ritual that has become airport security on every continent. Decade after decade, Al Gore has plodded along, reminding us to care about our mother planet. He's been scoffed at, rebuffed (brutally at times), made fun of at nearly every turn. But still Al Gore presses on. And, I'll say it because I'm spiritual, God Bless You for it, Al.

This film, despite or perhaps along with it's glowing reviews, is sometimes jokingly referred to as "Al Gore's PowerPoint Presentation"

Don't believe it. It's so much more than that.

Part witness, part personal journey, part economics, science lecture and extended NOVA episode all rolled into one, this is a thing of dark beauty that wholly embodies and yet transcends the person who created it. Interspersed with the presentation are Al Gore's personal reflections about why this topic of the environment and climate change has stayed with him over the years. He pays homage to an inspiring Harvard professor, Roger Revell, who did some of the first work recording the climate over time, starting in 1952. He decided to concentrate on the levels of C02 emissions. What they found is what has stuck with with Al Gore since college: a jagged graph line that slowly has been inching its way up, from left to right over the years as more and more C02 has been dumped into our atmosphere. It's jagged because the earth metaphorically "breathes" every year and the C02 levels recored ed in Revelle's work show that. In short, the earth can no longer absorb all the C02 that is being produced. The graph keeps going up.

He makes the point that 10 of the HOTTEST of the past 350,000 years (including the very recent rise of human civilization), have all come within the past 14 years. The stormiest years have also been the hottest, ergo, Katrina is a perfectly predictable outcome.

Polar bears even now sometimes drown because they can't always find a convenient ice flow. The ice is disappearing from the poles. And the more ice that disappears, the faster the earth will heat because the ice used to provide a mirror, deflecting the sun's energy that would otherwise cook our "little blue marble," as Carl Sagan used to put it.

This might sound alarmist, and it is. But Al doesn't leave us there. He and filmmaker, David Guggenheim, do two things:

In between the "little slide show," segments -- Gore's words--, we get glimpses of the things that have motivated Al Gore over his life. His father's work as a farmer congressman and summers spent at the Gore family farm in Tennessee gave Al an intimate appreciation of nature. The reverence in his voice is very plain in these Tennessee idylls. Having grown up in in a rural patch in neighboring North Carolina, these episodes resonated heavily with me: taking the time to really see a river or a creek roll by unhurried and unconcerned with human desires. Days and nights spent lying on a patch of open field and looking up at the clouds or the stars, and just wondering "what else is out there?" Caring for animals that give us so much affection and sustenance in return. Though it was unspoken, those of us who grew up this way know a truth that is being forgotten very quickly in our increasingly urbanized culture: When you take care of the Earth, it takes care of you. You can't work a patch of ground and not realize this. His sister's too early death from lung cancer ended the family's tobacco business. A car accident nearly killed his young son.

All these things added up to what kind of future did he want to leave the world? He always returned to the climate work of Dr Revelle. Folks, this isn't a guy with a talking point on his way to the next election. I don't know if he is or not. But that definitely is not the point of An Inconvenient Truth. If you think that's true, then your hatred of Al Gore is bigger than your willingness to see the larger picture. Would I vote for him again? Absolutely. Does he want to run again? I don't know. Frankly, I wouldn't blame him if he didn't. The way this country has acted the past five years, we don't deserve him. He's too good for what we have allowed ourselves to become.

But we can deserve him, or one like him, again, if we get our collective heads out of our asses. We were right to form a government based on written human rights. We were right to abolish slavery. We were right to grant women's suffrage. We were right to fight for civil rights and to go to the moon.

The second thing he ends with, is to remind us about all the things we can do as individuals. Again it's unspoken, but very plain. Here's that old chestnut: Think globally; act locally. It's a chestnut because it's true and it will work. These things include recycling, being energy efficient, investing in mass transit. If you can afford it, buy a hybrid car. Invest in alternative fuels.

To freepers, if you dared to read this far, I issue the following challenge: Go see it. If you live in Raleigh-Durham, I'll go with you. Hell, I'll buy your ticket. No, I'm not a wealthy elitist liberal. I'm just a working stiff who wants to see us become better people.

they ran with how he "sighed" into the microphone. that sigh comes from his heart. a true humanitarian.

love your post. this film cannot help but awaken the sleeping dragon.

And I'll tell you right now, anybody who does this wants to think about the small and the inconsequential at the expense of the noble and the righteous.

http://www.climatecrisis.net/

link to theaters near you also there at the next to last link on the right side.

the city closest to me.

As of right now (I copied the list from their website into an Excel file and it contains 519 theaters). Last week it was playing at 122 theaters -- So "Inconvenient Truth" has played/is playing at 641 theaters - that is GOOD NEWS!!

It played at 4 theaters it's first weekend.
Something like 79 theaters it's second weekend.
Then 122 theaters last weekend.

We've got to keep talking it up and attending and taking our friends to get that up into the 2,000-3,000 theater range. Most blockbusters open in over 3,000 theaters nationwide.

:bounce:

On edit: Frieds, friends, what's a little spelling error between us? :shrug:

:bounce: :bounce:

That way the movie will keep percolating in theatres for a long time. It would be fab if it stuck around for the mid-term elections. :D

at 1,000's of house parties around the nation by the time the elections roll around.

:hi:

I just gave a sigh too and it was from the heart. I wish that our duly elected but not inaugurated president could be in the White House right now.

:-)

It's rather sad to see so plainly what we could have had and the vile people we really get stuck with. x(

The members of the Supreme Court, of those 4 voted against the resolution, so George
Bush was elected President with 5 votes.

but not by much.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=105&topic_id=2937874

They started in 04 with the moral majority, trying to convince people not to believe their
lying eyes. To convince us that somehow liberal values are extreme right wing and that supporting the Iraq War is a return to core Democratic values. The same with our politicians,
which Dems are praised the most. The ones that parrot GOP values. We are slowly coming out of
our trance to realize that it's not us that are wrong, we have been given a snow job.

Moral Majority - Christian = Republican - that started in 1980.

So did winning elections by appealing in obvious ways to racists - Reagan kicked off his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi (where Schwerner, Goodman, and Cheney were killed).

So did using voter suppression as a lever to steal elections ->

Paul Weyrich is the Father of the Reagan Revolution, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation and Free Congress Foundation. Weyrich & Richard Viguerie worked together on the first successful direct-mail campaigns for Ronald Reagan.

Weyrich, speaking in private to a church to Republican activists said this: “How many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome? Good government! They want everybody to vote! I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections, quite candidly, goes up as voting populace goes down.” (This is an audio recording played often by Thom Hartmann on his radio show.)

Weyrich & Richard VIGUERIE worked together on the first successful direct-mail campaigns for Ronald Reagan.

Weyrich has a very different message in an article entitled Easy Voting Brings Low Participation online: "Former Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter have come up with a series of recommendations aimed at increasing participation in national elections. Among the proposals the former presidents have put forth are (a) to hold elections on a national holiday, such as Veterans Day; (b) to make convicted felons eligible to vote after they have served time; (c) to permit people who aren't on the voter rolls on Election Day to vote, sorting out their eligibility in the days after the election…. I am glad that Pres. Bush’s reaction has been lukewarm…. The truth is simply this: The easier we have made it to vote, the lower the voter participation.”

I believe you are right, much of this started back then when George Herbert Walker Bush was VP.

To me Al Gore is the president-in-exile.

I saw it too and agree with everything you said.
And I had a republican friend with me!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=2667296

:thumbsup:

I often wonder, given the repuke attack machine and the corrupt media, how effective Gore would have been as president, pre-Katrina.

Al Gore is the man for our times.




Cher

Even if I had to pay for my own ticket :toast:

for the evening crowd. :hi:

:kick:

He's so excited, he's a bit of a science nut, so I'm sure he'll love it.

My stepdad saw it last week and sent an email that highly recommended it and also wondered where that Al Gore was in 2000. Sigh.

Let me know what you think of it! :D

We just got home. My son is on climatecrisis.net right now, looking up ideas for how to save the planet. We decided that he will make a one-page list of things families can do, to pass out at his summer camp on Monday. (His favorite so far, "Eat fewer cows!")

That movie was stunning; I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't know a lot of the facts about global warming. The FACTS are simply staggering.

One of the most telling statistics was the one about how 100% of the peer-reviewed scientific articles agreed that global warming is in fact a crisis, but 53% of the major media articles over the same period expressed skepticism. Unbelievable.

We drove home very carefully in our hybrid car, coaxing as much mileage as we could from it. :)

God bless Al Gore. I hope he runs, because he's brilliant, but I also think he can do as much or more good from outside the government.

:patriot: :kick: :patriot:

I really liked the personal anecdotes from Gore's life, too. How anyone could call the guy stiff and not personable after seeing this, I don't know.

It really makes you sad to think that someone who was actually smart and gave a damhn about anything besides himself and his rich friends should be president of this country.

.....guess he's not a democrat?! :shrug:


http://www.weatherunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comm...

-snip-

The excessive details on Al Gore's life make the movie too long, and his insistence on using the movie as something of a campaign ad detracts from its message.



An Inconvenient Truth as a campaign ad

Gore has repeatedly said that he has no intention of running for president again, and that this movie was created as part of his life-long passion to protect the environment. Gore undoubtedly does care very deeply about the planet, but this movie very much looks like a campaign ad. We are shown many scenes of Gore being applauded, Gore traveling the globe to present his slide show, and Gore working to uncover evidence of Republican shenanigans to alter or suppress climate change science. Gore is portrayed as a humble and tireless crusader for good, and if the movie is not intended to promote his political ambitions, it is certainly intended to benefit the Democratic Party. All this gets in the way of the movie's central message.

An Inconvenient Truth is now showing at the Kentucky Theater in Lexington Ky. It should be there through Thursday the 23.

The movie was great. Al was great and would make a wonderful president. Tipper would be a fabulous First Lady.

That said, I have to say that this country doesn't deserve him. The people believe the lies of the repubs, they are fat and lazy and stupid for most of the time. Nobody cares, except folks like us and we obviously don't count.

A Gore presidency is almost too wistful to even think about. That kind of integrity and greatness is just out of our grasp as a country. We have to be better, and we're not.

She kept saying how great it was, that someone like Gore understood how a person can become attached to a piece of land. Her parents are going to sell the family cottage, where she spent nearly all of her summers growing up. At first she wondered if there was something wrong with her, because she has been depressed and uncertain about this -- but since seeing the movie, she says that she feels better knowing that she's not the only one, to feel emotional about something which, in our society today, is simply viewed as "real estate" or "property".