An Inconvenient Truth

An Inconvenient Truth (2006) Lee tells me this film was offered free of charge to a school district or districts, and was turned down. Let something like this in the door, was the reasoning, and we’ll have to start showing all kinds of other stuff, and you may not like that stuff. Sadly, I have to agree, though the content of the film is something that everyone should be shown, including students. There is no reasoned opposition to the facts presented here. The disgraceful handful of “scientists” who dispute them are being well paid to do so. The planet is warming up; believe it. The consequences of this warming are certainly debatable, as are the steps needed to deal with it, and the pace of the solutions and many other aspects. That is the political process, and this is a political film, which is why it should not be shown in public schools. But the reason this critical issue is political is simple and shameful. The current administration, bought and paid for by the mega-corporations who care only for the next quarter’s bottom line, has denied scientific findings it doesn’t like more than anyone since the days of Stalin’s Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union. They have called global warming “a great hoax.” The media have fallen in line, somehow buying the line that it hasn’t been proven. It has been proven, my friends, as surely as evolution, gravitation, and the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of neo-con Republicans.

As a film, it works very well, considering it is basically just a long lecture. But one of the things done to make it less daunting, to break up what might become monotonous, is personal asides from Al Gore that often resemble a campaign commercial. As a man who ran for president and who might run again, I would have to oppose showing this for free to public school students, or else Pat Robertson might ask for equal time … and be justified in doing so. What I would like to see is a re-edit, removing Al Gore and using someone else to present the facts. Again, sadly, because here we see a passionate Gore that I don’t recall seeing in the 2000 campaign. Where was he hiding his charisma? Did he only find it after he got cheated out of the White House?