DVD Review - An Inconvenient Truth

It's easy enough to throw the tin can in the trash, or run down to the store one more time for salsa. But you might just change your mind about that after seeing this Oscar-nominated documentary. The glorified slide show An Inconvenient Truth encourages you to recycle, buy energy efficient appliances and buy a hybrid vehicle, mostly by showing you just how close our Earth is to big-time disaster. (And we're closer than you think.)

In the interest of full disclosure, I have been known to hug trees in my day. (It's an odd but vaguely stirring feeling, embracing something so old and so still but unquestionably alive. I recommend you try it at least once. But I digress.) So I was already open to the messages former Vice President Al Gore was going to share with us and his studio audience. Still, even I wasn't prepared for the depths he plumbs in an hour and a half.

Gore's schtick is still political but he's thorough in his persuasion. He takes complex environmental theories and data, and explains them through the use of bar graphs, charts, pictures and short videos so that even the densest viewer can follow just how bad it would be if, say, Greenland just melted away. And he does it all with the assurance and persuasiveness of a man used to being in front of an audience. He doesn't use straight scare tactics; he approaches the material carefully and with a genuine understanding and care. Here's a guy who knows his stuff, and he knows how to make sure you get it too. If you don't catch yourself sucking in a deep breath at least once during this movie, you're not paying attention.

The focus is almost strictly on global warming, and what that means for you and me. It's an abstract concept, one that most of us think of only when the mercury tops 100 on a sweaty July day. But the problem is, Gore says, it's bigger than that. We're rushing wholesale into a time when our air might not be breathable, when our oceans could rise 20 feet and flood significant parts of Florida, New York and California, when our inland lakes and seas are drying up to become red deserts. This is happening world-wide, but Gore does point out the US is the worst offender. He takes a few shots at the Bush administration (you can't mention the Kyoto Treaty without doing so) but he doesn't lay it all at Dubya's feet. And he shows how the effect doesn't hit just the States but the rest of the world too. How days are getting hotter. How the ice is breaking up at the poles. How fresh water resources are being depleted. (And what he doesn't say, but I picked up from my own research is, when that happens, guess what? The world will come to Michigan to draw water from the Great Lakes. So this has a bigger implication for the Wolverine state.)

This movie can also be titled "The Resurrection of Al Gore." The slideshow is broken up into personal segments highlighting the Man Who Would Be President, presumably to distract the viewer from the 'This is a slide show!' realization. Gore is unquestionably the star, and at times it feels like environmentalism, his raison d'etre, takes a back seat to 'look at what you COULD have had in the White House.'

That's one of the movie's drawbacks. The other is the fact that there are few solutions presented. From my study it's clear to me that the problems we face can't be solved by individual change alone, although individual change certainly puts a dent in the problem. But we can't do it while companies belch carbon monoxide and other pollutants from their smokestacks tons at a time, earning tax breaks and little environmental oversight. Corporations and governments need to change their policies instead of shouting 'but that will cost jobs!' whenever someone proposes tougher environmental standards (instead, say, of finding ways to move some of those workers into new positions enforcing the tougher environmental standards - Big 3, I'm talking to you regarding the CAFE standards). Gore wants you to take the problem seriously, and a few solutions roll with the credits, but the overall solution doesn't really lie with you and me - it's up to the United States government, regardless of who is in power, to start cleaning up the mess. Unfortunately, it's politically expedient to look at the short term answer. Gore doesn't call out the offenders with the vitriol they actually earn.

And you and I shouldn't feel powerless either. Every little bit helps - it has to. Covering our eyes to the problem isn't going to make it go away, and our efforts might be able to encourage bigger effort. Gore does touch on that, probably because after a while this video starts to feel a little hopeless.

On a lighter note, in the Extras, Gore updates the data he presented in the slide show. It's then I notice that he's starting to really sport a combover - nowhere near Carl Levin status, for example, but watch the slicked-back hair action. I think someone should admit he's lost some hair and move on. Can hair gel deplete the environment?

Animal Trauma: A cartoon polar bear and a cartoon frog are placed in jeopardy. In the extras, there is a still shot of a horse crossing sands that used to be a lake. I dare you not to start singing "I've been through the desert on a horse with no name."

Overall: If this doesn't persuade you that we're in a world of hurt, nothing will. I give it four roses out of five.