The first thing that must be said about “An Inconvenient Truth,” the big-screen version of Al Gore?s global warming lecture, is that it is incredibly boring.
Many movie reviewers, political pundits and lefty bloggers disagree. Since it premiered at Cannes, the buzz says the film is a riveting, even scary, call to action to avert a “climate crisis.” Someone at Salon.com said viewers “may be surprised by [Gore?s] soulfulness, sense of humor and professorial charisma.”
If one A) still smarts from the Supreme Court?s “selection” of George W. Bush as president, and B) already shares Al Gore?s position on the need to address global warming with energetic government action, it?s understandable how watching this movie would cause one to write such drivel.
But for the rest of us, watching “An Inconvenient Truth” is just like having to sit through a PowerPoint presentation by your clueless boss. Or a sermon from an excessivelysanctimonious minister.
From his opening joke (“I used to be the next president of the United States.”) Gore works very hard to be effortlessly affable and informative. We?re pointed to dozens of snazzy charts and graphs. We see lots of clips of big chunks of ice splashing into the sea. We?re even treated to some cartoons. My favorite one depicted a polar bear drowning, but the one showing the sun?s rays melting the North Pole and replacing it with a burning ring of fire caught my attention, too.
Technically effective, it lacks evidence to convince a skeptic that the data and, just as importantly, the images, aren?t cherry-picked. And throughout it all, Gore?s pedantic voice drones.
The sermon sometimes gives way to segments in which Gore tells us how great Gore is for becoming a full-time environmental evangelist. Gore trudges through airports and spends tireless hours pounding away at his computer. He visits the family farmstead in Carthage, Tenn., where he tells us his how his son?s near-fatal 1989 accident impelled him to begin his crusade to save the earth.
Though that seems, to me at least, like an oddly impersonal response to a family crisis, it?s nothing compared to how Gore was affected by his sister?s death. While standing in Sen. Albert J. Gore Sr.?s now-empty tobacco barn, Gore tells us that her 1984 death from lung cancer turned him into a tireless anti-smoking campaigner.
“An Inconvenient Truth” does not contain the clip from his 1988 presidential campaign of a full-throated Gore boasting to a North Carolina audience, “Throughout most of my life, I raised tobacco. I want you to know that with my own hands, all of my life, I put it in the plant beds and transferred it. I?ve hoed it. I?ve dug in it. I?ve sprayed it, I?ve chopped it, I?ve shredded it, spiked it, put it in the barn and stripped it and sold it.”
The narcissism keeps dripping as Gore compares himself to Winston Churchill, the lone prophet who turned out to be right about the gathering storm of Nazism and the Holocaust. Gore also crassly compares a hypothetical flooding of Manhattan to the terrorist murders of Sept. 11, 2001.
Gore demands we have faith in his message because there is absolutely no scientific disagreement on the facts and conclusions he?s presented to us. And we know all the scientists qualified to speak on global warming agree with Gore because Gore tells us so.
In fact, plenty of real scientists disagree about global warming. Look up climate scientist Robert Lindzen and hurricane experts William Gray and Neil Frank when you get a chance. Also, read Michael Crichton?s novel “State of Fear,” which uses lots of data and research to back up the author?s claim that the global warming scare might be a hoax.
But, if you are already a convert, your faith in Gore?s gospel probably won?t be shaken. Just as Gore didn?t convince me that economic and personal liberty ? in the United States or the developing world ? should be sacrificed on the altar of his uncertain vision.
Aaron Keith Harris writes about politics, the media, pop culture and music and is a regular contributor to National Review Online and Bluegrass Unlimited. He can be reached at [email protected].
