An Inconvenient Past

Of course it's preaching to the converted. Ever was it thus. But Al Gore keeps plugging away and the film, "An Inconvenient Truth", certainly expands the exposure of the lecture he has been taking around the USA for these many long years. That, after all, is what the film is - a lavish powerpoint presentation embellished by some backgrounding, some good close-ups and a bit of political history. Some have told me that it is a political film. Propaganda. A campaign towards another Presidential run.
This is concluded because the film shows some Gore family background and some of the lost Presidential race. But Gore is between the proverbial rock and a hard place in what he does and does not include in this film. I saw the personal backgrounding simply as context. I think it needs to be there - to explain how he came to the environmental obsession which has caused him to spend his time touring the country with his laptop under his arm, talking endlessly about global warming.
It explains that this was what he was doing before he ran against George Bush and throughout his political career.
There was not a lot I did not know in the film. Then again, I am one of the "converted". I have read "The Weather Makers", Tim Flannery's book on the subject - and, surprise, surprise, much of the scientific evidence is the same. It is the same because it is what it is. The knowledge.
Both Gore and Flannery demonstrate how relatively simple it would be to reverse the crisis and to save the planet for our children. If we could do it for the hole in the ozone layer, we can do it for the greenhouse effect.
What boggles the mind is the campaign of debunking the global warming phenomenon. The Blogsphere is riddled with vitriolic critics and the opinions of so-called scientists who question the status quo. One realises, of course, that the core of their venom lies in the source - in Gore. The Far Right is passionately invested in hating anything they perceive as a Liberal agenda. And, if Gore is proselytising an environmental crisis, then it is tree-hugging lunacy. It must be mocked and discredited. And the minds remain closed out of political spite.
This is the sad baggage Gore must carry.
And the people who are going to see the film are the ones who already care about the state of the planet and who know he is right - and politics be damned. Well, politics is the damnation.

Al Gore
Tim Flannery
Global Warming