An Inconvenient Truth

Student ID: b09502095 Name: 邱琬婷

An Inconvenient Truth is a documentary where Al Gore, the former United States Vice
President, brings the issues of global warming to audiences through powerful scientific data. He
begins by showing how carbon dioxides affect global warming, and he also conjointly
emphasizes the severity of this issue through graphics.
Global warming is real and humans are to blame
I was astonished when I saw the slideshows where the glaciers and ice sheets in various
places in the world are melting rapidly so that we can no longer see their past glory. It is
disheartening to learn this fact, and even more depressing to know the consequences it would
bring to the people living by the coasts, knowing we are the main cause of this phenomenon.
Three factors contribute to global warming as explained by Al Gore, including
technological evolution, population growth, and the humans' way of thinking. We need to burn
fuel for combustion engine in our vehicles, producing carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide. As the
human population grows, the demand for food supply increases, and to produce sufficient food,
more farm land is needed, which lead to deforestation. Trees help to absorb carbon dioxides.
When trees are cut, carbon dioxides will be released into the atmosphere. Increased livestock
farming increases methane, which is even more harmful when it comes to warming the
atmosphere. Fertilizers for food crops also produce nitrous oxide emissions, which warms the
Earth 300 times more than carbon dioxide.
Simply speaking, humans are the main contributors here. It is not hard to believe this fact.
It's just that we are unable to see the evidence using our own eyes because global warming
effects take an immense time scale to occur, and we continue to neglect these facts. Nobody will
look at long-term weather forecasts in their free time. People only care about the weather when it
affects their life. But sooner or later, the effects will be laid out in front of our eyes, and we will
no longer be able to act indifferent.
The upsetting fact
Global warming is causing climate change. The emission of greenhouse gases traps sun
radiation, heating the Earth. And the effects of climate change are far more severe than we can
imagine. Ice is melting rapidly, the melted ice will cause the rise of the global sea level. In some
parts of the world, precipitation occurs on a much larger scale, while on another side, some
regions experience even severe drought, causing wildfires, lost crops, and water shortages. This
also causes some harmful animals to rise, bringing catastrophic effects to our environment.
When I see how severe climate change can be, I think of the flood that just recently
happened in my home country, Indonesia. Just a few days ago, the worst flood happened in
North Sumatra, my hometown. It causes at least 11 villages to drown in the rain.
 In the last decades, Indonesia has experienced many disasters as a result of climate
change, including wildfires and flooding. However, despite the unfortunate events that climate
change brings, the country is still in denial about climate change. As shown by the survey
conducted by the YouGov-Cambridge Globalism project, Indonesia has the top number of
climate change deniers, followed by the US and Saudi Arabia. More detailed information shows
that 18% of the citizens do not believe that humans can cause climate change, 6% of them
believe that the Earth's climate is consistent with no significant change, and 8% assume that
human-driven global warming is merely a conspiracy theory and should not be taken seriously.
As an Indonesian citizen, this information is upsetting for me because not knowing the
consequences of human activities can lead to disastrous catastrophes, and yet many choose to
deny it.
As a developing country, Indonesia is very prone to the adverse effects of climate change
due to improper communication between the government and citizens, illegal mining, and
deforestation. On March 2022, A wildfire occur in one of the forests in Indonesia. The outcome
was disastrous. 1000 hectares of land was lost. Later, the investigation showed there is a
possibility that the fire was human-made, as jelly cans were found and the fact that vegetation
have been cleared from the area prior to the fire. Back in 2019, a forest fire also happened, and
the outcome was far more severe. Research shows that the greenhouse gases produce by the
forest fire were nearly as much as twice the fires that burned parts of the Brazilian Amazon.
The denial does not only occur in Indonesia but also in other countries, such as America.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly refused to counter climate change. He loosened the
standard that limits fuel and emissions for new vehicles. He also reinstated the Clean Power Plan
proposed by President Barack Obama by granting permission to more carbon dioxide emissions
from coal and power plants. In November 2019, he instigated the idea to withdraw from the Paris
climate accords, an agreement to keep the rise in temperature of the world below 2 degrees
Celcius. Trump consistently condemns global warming as nothing more than a trick used by
China to sabotage US manufacturing.
My opinion
Perhaps the denial is caused by a lack of knowledge. If more people can be educated for
the knowledge of global warming, maybe it can increase their acceptance. Another reason why
people choose to deny it might be motivation. Since government projects that are going to take
place 10 or 20 years later can be disastrous to the environment and have to be stopped. It is not
strange that conservative politicians are going to deny it as best as they can.
Overall, I think the way Al Gore goes from one country to another country, repeating the
same slideshows over and over again, is worth praise. Though the film may exaggerate a little
about the environmental change, it still gets the message across which is a need to act to
immediately reduce gas emissions.