An Inconvenient Truth (2006)

Starring Al Gore; Directed by Davis Guggenheim

An Inconvenient Truth is a surprising, frightening look at the truth behind everything we’ve been hearing about global warming. Al Gore has been assembling a slide show to educate people about global warming, and he presents the fruits of that slide show, which he’s given thousands of times all over the world, in this documentary.

After all we’ve heard about what a poor communicator Gore is, it’s interesting to see him here as he takes the role of a college professor to explain the science, and the consequences of, the warming of the earth’s climate due to the buildup of carbon dioxide caused by the burning of fossil fuels like oil and coal. He’s pretty eloquent as he untangles all the facts and presents them in a straightforward, easy-to-understand manner, replete with helpful slides of various parts of the world and various climatic measurements made during the last 600,000 years.

Lectures can be pretty boring, and its to the credit of Gore and documentary filmmaker David Guggenheim that the film moves briskly and keeps you interested from start to finish. There’s a funny animated introduction featuring a science-fiction solution to global warming: dropping city-sized ice cubes in the ocean to cool things down. Gore talks in a relaxed, entertaining, occasionally funny manner, even though the subject he’s tackling involves a convoluted mess of politics, rhetoric, science, public opinion, and so on.

According to some politicians, global warming is a hoax. Others say the U.S. can’t afford to take the lead on trying to solve this challenge, even though the film reveals that we’re responsible for more than 25% of the problem with only a fraction of the world’s population. Gore has careful responses to these arguments; he comes across as reasonable and measured, and not panicked or extreme. He is no wild-eyed environmentalist.

Gore describes the kind of world we’ll be living in as the fruits of global warming begin to ripen. Since we’re all going to live in the future eventually, it’s a good idea to learn more about this global phenomenon which looks to be dramatically changing the worldwide climate. The prognosis: stock up on suntan oil and bottled water, and make sure your air conditioner is working right. Seriously, though, the film does offer some hope at the end, and lays out concrete steps that every person and every country can take to reverse this ominous slide into ever more hot and chaotic weather.