Raphael Pinheiro

An Inconvenient Truth

Extra Credit Paper

The occurrence of extreme natural phenomena has given us a sign that something is

wrong with the environment. We are living in a time of intense heat waves all over the world,

storms, droughts, hurricanes each time worse than before. All those issues have been pointed out

as consequences of a climate change. In the movie “An inconvenient truth” directed by Davis

Guggenheim e presented by Al Gore, the global warming and its consequences are portrayed in a

realistic form. Using an eloquent rhetoric and excellent audiovisuals resources that exhibit data

and images of recent natural phenomena, Al Gora argue in a convincing way that the Earth

temperature is increasing and that the main cause for that is human actions. The way this topic is

treated is able to remove any doubt that human activities are the main causes of climate change,

and besides that, it let us alarmed with the repeated environmental disasters that we have been

experiencing in our life time. Global Warming is caused by the strengthening of the greenhouse

effect, that is consequence of the excess concentration of certain gases in the atmosphere, the

greenhouse effect gases such as carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane. The production and

use of fossil fuel along with deforestation have been particularly attributed to be the main source

of those gases.

Although scientific researches clearly show us the correlation between the increase in

the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and temperature, although we can simulate

climate changes in computers, and that climate events are increasing in number of occurrence,

there still people that question the veracity that climate is changing on Earth and ignore its

effects. Some of the information published in the scientific environment, and emphasized by Al

Gore, is constantly being judge in regard their consistency. Even though there is a solid scientific
consensus, affirming the correlation between the increase in temperature and the concentration of

carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a lot of people are resistant to believe that men is the main

cause of it. Those who defend the idea that the Earth’s temperature is increasing due to natural

causes say that climate changes occurs periodically since the first stages of the Earth, with or

without human interference, as for example, the Ice Age. They say that what we are seeing today

is only cyclical fluctuations of nature. We all know of those past events, but we should point out

that those changes happened with natural variation of carbon dioxide, way lower than those that

we are experiencing today. The fact is that exist an informational conflict, in one side are those

saying that science is not precise, that the data is inconsistent and that still doubt about what

really cause all those natural phenomena. On the other side, global warming is already a reality.

The truth is that it is each time more evident that something is wrong with our planet:

phenomena that in the past used to happen in ages are now happening in the life span of a

generation.

In the movie, Al Gore calls our attention to the different number of catastrophic

phenomena that happened all around the world, such as the hurricane Katrina here in the United

States, the heating waves in Europe, the floods in China and the landslides at the Mount

Kilimanjaro. He highlights that those phenomena will be more frequent and destructive. He also

says that it was always deemed impossible the formation of hurricanes in the South Atlantic, but

in 2005, Brazil was hit by the Hurricane Catharina. However, the main focus of the movie is not

to be alarmist and fright everyone, the focus of the movie is to inform, clarify the reality and

principally, show us that something must be done about it. Along with the great amount of

scientific data, the movie highlights moments in Al Gore’s personal life such as the accident that

almost killed his son, the death of his sister, the teachings of one professor in a university and his

lost in the Presidential elections. These change a little bit the focus of the movie and clearly
reveal Al Gore’s interest in becoming strong in politics again. Al Gore says that he embraced the

climate change issue as the top priority in his professional life. We cannot deny the enthusiasm

with which he talks about this issue, demonstrating his passion for the “ecological fight”.

However, we cannot also deny that he explicit tries to promote himself politically. The former

next president of the United States highlights his public image when he covers the politicization

of climate change. Beyond that, he points out that the United States, the country responsible for

approximately one fourth of the emissions of carbon dioxide, was one of two countries, the other

being Australia, that did not want to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. He criticizes George W. Bush for

not taking the lead in policies that had a goal of minimizing global warming.

Independently of who is the protagonist in this issue, American or not, in favor or

against Bush, we must say that it is impossible to talk about global warming without placing the

United Stated as the biggest villain in the story. Although Bush admitted that the world’s

temperature is increasing, he insist that there were no conclusive proves that it is caused by

human activities, resisting in a way, to adopt policies that would reduce the emission of the main

gases. For the country with the biggest economy, to reduce the emission of pollutants means

changes in production methods, in the life style of its population, and indirectly, losses in the

economy. Perhaps it is more convenient to ignore the truth, even though they know that its

consequences are inconvenient. However, even without the support of the government, the North

Americans seem to be worried with these problems. Different cities already adopted new

policies, implementing policies with the goal of reducing the pollutants that cause global

warming.

“An Inconvenient Truth” brings awareness to the world population of the real

consequences of global warming, showing us that never in the history of this planet we were so

aggressive against it. At the same time it shows us that there are viable solutions for; at least, try
to minimize its consequences. A lot of those solutions depend in governmental politics, but the

majority of those have to start within ourselves. As he says on the movie, “Each one of us is a

cause of global warming, but each one of us can make choices to change that with the things we

buy, the electricity we use, the cars we drive; we can make choices to bring our individual

carbon emissions to zero. The solutions are in our hands, we just have to have the determination

to make it happen. We have everything that we need to reduce carbon emissions, everything but

political will. But in America, the will to act is renewable resource.” Independently of the

reasons that took Al Gore to embrace this case, perform conferences, write books and produce

the movie, the adoption of actions to reduce the effects of climate change are necessary and

urgent. We have to become conscious that we are responsible for that.

This movie left me with mixed feelings. “It’s not a political issue; it’s a moral issue”.

This is the position that Al Gore defends many times in the movie. The words that appear in the

black screen in the end of the movie, also said in other ways during the whole movie, leverage

these ideas: recycle, save energy, broadcast this information; elect politicians that embrace this

cause. By choosing to place the problem on the individuals, saying that they are the ones

responsible for the changes in climate, the movie weakens the role of the State, and reduces the

complexity of the problem to an individual dimension. The political and economical interests

related to climate change are not shown in the movie. The movie does not question consumption,

development patterns, and the economical paradigm. The North Americans, for whom the movie

is destined, would not need to change their life styles; they would only have to stick to what is

ecologically correct. The questions related to economical growth is not deeply discussed in the

movie and Al Gore only makes a superficial statement about Bush and the Kyoto Protocol

already discussed in a previous paragraph. But it is important to highlight that this small attack

on the Bush administration contradicts what he said and I quoted in the beginning of the
paragraph that the problem is not political. Not signing the Kyoto Protocol is not a moral

problem, it is a political one. The climate circumstances are not only due to the lack of

investments, adoption of better energy policies and the attitudes of individuals. It seems that this

problem is part of an intricate and complex social, political, and economical network. Al Gore

totally ignores this network in the movie, drawing a simplified relationship between the

environment and the economy, saying that in one side of the scale is gold bars and in the other

side is the world. His jokes and examples ignore important issues, making people think that in

reality they are not that important but just a reason for laughs.

Although the movie praises the role of science, the data presented in the movie does not

correspond to the most recent researches. It does not consider relevant information that other

gases such as methane and nitrous oxide significantly contribute to the increase of the

greenhouse effect, giving emphasis only to carbon dioxide. It is interesting to notice that, even

though he does not use data that scientists would say are reliable or make any academic reference

to the scientific community; the effect of scientific truth is reached in the movie through data

presented in maps, graphs, diagrams and experiments. It seemed to me that, for him, his friends

are as reliable as the scientists. The pictures he took in trips, postal cards, and magazine pictures,

are also used as proofs of how certain places were before and how they are in the present. By

doing that, he eases the superiority of science when talking about climate change. The movie

imitates how people deal with this problem in their daily lives: mixing them up and misquoting

information. The movie begins and ends with the idyllic picture of a forest that involves a river,

protecting it. The “pure” nature dominates the screen. The cities show up in aerial images

devouring the nature, with its constructions and industrial plants. Gore repeatedly says, also

using personal drama, that we can lose the earth, that our future generations will not have access

to this nature because we destroyed it. The polar bear, tired of swimming, finds a small block of
ice that breaks down when he tries to hold on it. In the immensity of the ocean, the image of the

Bear without shelter make us think that, maybe, what seems to be a consensus can have a lot of

different point of views.