Sunday, October 22, 2006

An Inconvenient Truth - the movie

At first, I wasn't very much interested in this movie. It's rather like a publicity work of Al Gore after retirement, like his fellow Bill Clinton, intermingled with the attack of Gore being more said than done above environmental protection. Anyway, I went to the cinema for a quality movie. It turns out impressive.
SPOILER WARNING !
First, you have to assume that everything in the movie about Gore himself is true: that he was enlightened by his science professor in the college to put an eye on the raising CO2 level; that he has been pursuing emission-controlling measures during his earlier days in the Congress and regularly attacked for making wrong statement about emission and global warming; that he has given at least a thousand lecture around the globe since his defeat in the 2000 presidence run.
The way that he gave the lecture on global warming is so persuasive. We heard of the issue for a thousand time. We know the consequences. But we don't think it will happen that soon - it is happening. Ice blocks are dismantling in the south pole and summer come earlier in the north pole; snow line is receding in all snow mountains; and soon, talking about a couple decades, our most civilized regions will be flooded. Flooding is just a tip of an icerberg of the climatic change, which could affect our reliance on nature for ages to go. Drought and heavy precipitation is occurring more unevenly than ever. Heat waves and hurricane are visiting at immense scale. Modern life is no longer as wonderful and carefree as it once promise.
So, what are the people, politicians and scientists alike, doing about this? The scientists are doing good jobs to study and warn, but often they are not able to speak loud as confronted by critics and threat of depriving fund. Technologies are around to relieve the situation. For the politicians, some of them strive to please the business people and their voters, who are unwilling to give up their benefits and convenience.
Gore makes his presentation not only with tonnes of compelling data and eye-catching graphics (and his voice is so loud!), he try to answer, or "demolish" in his word, the common misconceptions with strong arguments. He also adds in the movie the pieces of memory of his childhood in the country farm to recall audience's rejoice of human and nature, which quite soften the hard science and politics.
I am not sure how the world has responded to his call (Branson's devotion to alternative fuel research is a remarkable one, as mentioned in my previous articles), I just hope that people stop to avoid the issue of pollution and climate change. As indicated by the name of the movie, it is not to our comfort to discuss environmental issue, even for good people. Because once you've shown your concern, you have to take up the heavy responsibility to resolve it, including changing the way of life and sacrificing those you take for granted. It's a challenge to the ethical standard of many.
To know more about the movie and learn more about what you can do for the environment, www.climatecrisis.net
To know more about Al Gore, www.algore04.com

 
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