Perhaps devote fans of Al Gore could make a case
against my point-of-view, but An Inconvenient Truth
smells strongly to me of a commercial-attempt to build
sentiment towards a “Gore in 2008” Run for President.
While this didn’t affect my opinion of the film, per se,
it certainly made me question the motivations behind the
production. If Gore was really, truly always passionate
about Global Warming, the subject which An
Inconvenient Truth treats him as an expert on, then
why didn’t he bring it to the forefront of debate in his
attempt to win the 2000 Presidential Election? Having
this in mind while watching the film, I became slightly
cynical in accepting Gore’s argument as a long-time
one-man-battle rather than a clever mark of paroxysm.
Regardless, I found passages of the documentary to be
fascinating.
Much of An Inconvenient Truth’s
effectiveness is a result of its straightforward
presentation. The majority of the film’s duration
consists of footage of Gore giving a presentation about
Global Warming’s consequences on the Earth. He claims to
have given the presentation “at least 1,000 times” and
certainly has it down to a science. In fact, I found
much of the raw data featured in it to be highly
jarring. Gore’s argument that there is detrimental
global warming rapidly occurring on Earth and that
scientists are in universal agreement regarding such
will win all but the most naïve of viewers over.
However, the case he makes for human activity causing
the bulk of this problem is far easier to poke holes in.
Gore’s presentation includes charts which claim that the
Earth is now hotter than it ever was leading up to
previous Ice-Ages, but I question whether or not this is
valid proof that humans are causing the
temperature-increase. Gore supports his argument by
claiming the increase has been directly caused by an
exponential growth of carbon emitted by the world,
particularly the huge amount of such that the United
States is responsible for. However, he makes no mention
of the fact that, in the last fifty years, other types
of equally-pertinent chemical-emissions have reached
record-lows due to new technologies developed by
modern-science. An Inconvenient Truth doesn’t
claim to be a two-sided look at its subject of focus,
but it can certainly be faulted for straying from
addressing the arguments against the points that claims
to prove.
I was also slightly irritated by the amateurishness
of the techniques that director Davis Guggenheim employs
to adapt Gore’s presentation into a feature-length film.
In attempts to spice the material up, Guggenheim
intersperses staged bits of Gore researching
global-warming on the internet (some last so long that I
am tempted to dub it A Man and His Macintosh: The Al
Gore Story), taking “important phone calls” related
to the subject, and commenting on how different moments
in his life have put the issue into perspective for him.
These bits come off as canned and cheesy; Gore’s actual
presentation is polished enough that it would have been
more cinematic without being accompanied by such
excess. Whether I bought into his claim that human
activity is causing the majority global warming, the
politician’s depiction of its effects on my planet never
ceased to bewitch me.
Despite Gore’s claim in An Inconvenient Truth
that passing legislation (such as the glamorized Kyoto
Protocol) to decelerate the process of global warming is
more of a moral than a political issue, it is undeniable
that the movie was made with campaigning in mind.
Nevertheless, Gore both presents involving information
and raises several provocative questions in the film.
Would tighter energy and emission regulations actually
stimulate the economy rather than hinder businesses’
production levels? How much of the United States’
political-system should take scientific research into
consideration? Because of its mere ability to encourage
people to become involved in their government—although
its clear political bias certainly doesn’t help this
ability—I wholeheartedly recommend An Inconvenient
Truth to the Mass Public.
-Danny, Bucket Reviews (6.23.2006)