An Inconvenient Truth

I'm going to make this quick as I decided that THIS HOUR I'M GOING TO SPEND TIME ON MY WRITING. (Nothing fancy. I'm in the midst of compiling every decent poem I've ever written into a personal anthology in the hopes of picking up some good patterns to eventually publish a chapbook... eventually is the word.)

So I mentioned that on Sunday we saw a movie. It was An Inconvenient Truth, the Al Gore movie about global warming.

Just a few thoughts:

1. At times it seemed too biographical. That's too easy a way to alienate Republican viewers.

2. Critics have said that Al Gore exaggerates too many things in the movie. For example, I heard one person on NPR say that when we see how the earth would flood if certain glaciers melt, it "appeared" to this critic that New York would be flooded within a matter of just a few years or even less. I completely disagree with that criticism. The movie was quite clear with its statistics of what exactly we do and don't know with precise numbers.

3. The movie was somewhat boring, to its credit. It would have been very easy to play some convenient emotional wildcards to really upset people. These were kept to a noticeable minimum. Hurricane Katrina was one devastating event that was mentioned, but its screen time was kept minimal. Also, there is a scene in which an animated polar bear is shown out of breath and swimming for miles, desparately looking for a piece of ice strong enough to support its weight. This image absolutely broke my heart, but again, was just an animation. More photos of devastation and sadness, though powerful, would have manipulated. Mr. (was-almost-president) Gore respected his audience enough to speak to us intelligently rather than push our buttons.

(I must add, though I prefer to keep it separate from the movie, that U. and I had a very gratifiying conversation afterwards about how much we appreciated being respected in that way, and that we had never known true condescension for the current presidency. "If there's a TERRORIST of course we've got to GET HIM. DUH!" A made-up quote, but I think a decent illustration nonetheless.)

4. Finally, I feel I do quite a lot already, pretty much everything I can, do be environmentally prudent. I did resent a little the "inspiration" at the end of, "Are you ready to CHANGE?" However, I do feel inspired to try again and increase environmental awareness in the school.