Film Review (Doc): An Inconvenient Truth (2006)

Its high time that people be forcibly shackled to armchairs occasionally, their cellphones switched off, and them be placed in front of a screen that plays a formidable documentary - in this case, an eloquent lecture of An Inconvenient Truth, by Al Gore. Since we live in a free world, I suppose that I'm reduced to begging; begging every fossil energy-guzzler in the planet to see this film i.e. on an average, the more consumerist and rich you are, its likely that its that much more mandatory to see the evidence presented by Al Gore. People who "invest" so that their grandchildren can live off their business acumen and think that money can perhaps buy utopia, if not immortality, need to imagine a world that could change over a few seasons into an unrecognizable planet. Natural disasters - everyone knows their names and whereabouts by now - are on the rise every year and I am willing to look like a foolish alarmist and predict that we will see a few more devastating ones in the next 3-5 years before we turn around on our collective stance on Global Warming - An Inconvenient Truth.

Al Gore exhorts the Americans, the Chinese, and other large consumers of energy. He makes decades of scientific evidence understandable to the common man. That is important, since the magnitude of this problem needs the common man to act - governments and politicians do not have the economic will to act in the present, guided by lobbies and short-term solutions that they can shirk responsibility from after their days in office. Instead, they continue to defer to the future - a future of a planet which will come screeching to a halt before its time, if we don't respect a cycle of nature that we fool around with such disdain, in the name of progress and wealth creation.

Progress and wealth creation of a significantly nobler and higher degree is possible. And the realist in me believes that it is the more probable solution to global warming i.e. newer technologies and businesses that will destroy the old businesses on the strength of their economic supremacy, before those archaic destructive fossil fuels reduce life on the planet and humans back to a mass of dead carbon, than one of myriad life forms.

Well, enough said on the well-documented dangers of global warming. Please see the film to hear and learn more. What impressed me as much as the evidence presented is the presenter himself - Al Gore, the environmentalist and an evangelist for the possibility of a more sustainable planet for future generations.

As children, we are dreamers; we are highly impressionable and our formative college years then put us on the path to chase these dreams. Well, that is an improbable story. The real story is that educational institutions and systems are far more rigid, which when coupled with economic realities confronting parents, cripple most of those childhood dreams. Al Gore grew up as a rich farmer's son and graduated from Harvard and Vanderbilt Law. His life's as eventful as a US President's should be (well, add me to the list of conspiracy theorists who believe that he was the President before Dubya stole it) - enlisted and served for a short period as a journalist in the Vietnam War, continued as a reporter on his return, quit Law school to run for Congress, served on some very important committees including heading one critical piece of legislation that expanded the Internet (well, yes, we lost count of the satirical news coverage on his 'I created the Internet' gaffe in '98 but...), lost the '88 presidential nomination to someone called Dukakis, and came back in 1992 to serve two terms as Veep with Billy Boy...and of course, won the Presidential election in 2000.

So, he couldn't serve and finally bring one of his more passionate subjects - the environment, or rather its neglect - to the forefront. Dreams die early, his sympathizers and skeptics may have added. Most people in his shoes would've resigned themselves to their Governor, Senate or Congress constituencies and would've attempted to come back or at least stick to what they know best - politics! - case in point being Kerry, Dean, Edwards, Lieberman. Instead, the man turns down all Democrats' calls to run in '04 (that's when 9 others dived into the White House pool and fell on their stomachs). People, at least everyone I knew and spoke to in the US then, thought he was too sentimental and was relegating himself to the backpages of history, despite some fiery speeches lambasting Dubya, his war and his policies in the run-up to the '04 elections. And we could not have been more wrong. If Al Gore continues at this pace, he surely would leave a more important legacy: of driving sense into the richest, most energy-hungry nation in the world that they need to step up and stop a dangerous trail of irreversible damage to the planet. There is a small window of time to correct course.

Al Gore was fascinated with the subject in high school and college and people thought he was smoking another shade of green when he kept talking 'green', and this was in the early '90's. What few paid attention to was his emphasis back in the '70's and '80s on toxic waste and global warming, as a Congressman. These were yet the days of limited scientific evidence on rising temperatures and uncertainty over the long-term effects and dangers of the trends spotted in warming. Dreaming on, he continued with his agenda as VP but failed to push US to accept the Kyoto Treaty. Inept, lobby-driven politicians put paid to that effort in style - the bill opposing the ratification of Kyoto was voted 95-0! Al Gore has decided that politics is probably a weaker way to fight this battle, to fulfill dreams. He has made this presentation (similar to the film) over a 1000 times himself over the last few years, has trained over a 1000 volunteers, released this film in '06, has written a book of the same title, and appeared as Prez in a parallel world on SNL (Saturday Night Live) in May '06, a world in which he had tackled global warming and all of the other American woes.

Gore almost lost his son (6 years of age at that time) in an accident and lost his sister to smoking (lung cancer, of course). Such experiences change people. One questions the meaning of life, the importance of relationships with family, friends, country, mankind. Then one wonders what he or she can do in the short period that an individual inhabits the earth. Some resort to prayer and faith and wait for heaven, afterlife or Armageddon - take your pick. Others resort to action. When you hear this particular Gore, you'll be convinced that he only wishes to leave one legacy behind to his children and the world - a sustainable ecosystem that can support life as we know it, for at least a few more centuries. And he will seek no rest before he reaches his goal or his grave. For our sake, let's not just pray for the former, but join him in his pursuit.