I ended up liking the movie, but Al Gore’s voice and humor ran a little long for me. He thinks he is a comedian at times, but I didn't know if he would bust jokes during this movie besides the now infamous, “I am Al Gore. I used to be the next president of the United States.”
The jokes do continue, at least into the seventh minute. There are some jokes after that, they just aren't good.
I believe in global warming. It is tragic. There is no doubt about that. I appreciate what Al Gore is doing. His presentation is, surprisingly, somewhat entertaining and only at times all about Al.
His presentation on the increasing strength of hurricanes is essential, but his focus on Hurricane Katrina is a bit lopsided. The reason Katrina was so destructive, at least to New Orleans, was due to the Big Easy’s spectacularly crappy hurricane defenses. Katrina was not nearly as strong as Hurricane Dean. In August of 2005, when Katrina came ashore, New Orleans didn’t even have protection against a 100-year storm, protection which is now being built, but it won’t come close to Amsterdam’s protection against a 10,000-year-storm. True story. That’s impressive.
Gore’s bit of the slideshow when he talks about an ice shelf in Antarctica and ice in Greenland that if melted would raise the sea level by twenty feet is frightening.
An Inconvenient Truth isn’t the “sudden jolt” Gore talks about us needing before we commit whole heartedly to saving the environment. I wish it was, but it just doesn’t seem to be enough. Unfortunately, Hollywood has raised most of the country. We only seem to be awakened to action by catastrophes. The catastrophe of global warming doesn’t move fast enough to scare a huge portion of the population into action. It should. It hasn't yet, and that is what scares me the most.
Gore leaves it at this: there is hope. We have the capacity to reduce our carbon emissions; it is the political will of the United States that needs to change. He points out that when that will has changed in the past the United States has done some awesome things. He hopes that the change happens before it is too late. I can agree with that.
Watch the movie. Check the site. Turn your computer off at night. Do something.www.climatecrisis.net
1 comment:
I just saw this movie in my social problems class and it fired me up. I got so pissed off at that baby boomer generation not paying any attention to their footprint they are leaving behind. It was definitely a "sudden jolt" for me, but my class couldn't have cared less about it.
I don't know what kind of catastrophe the US is looking for before taking more action, Katrina, even though was due to the bad hurricane defenses still when have so many hurricanes came ashore and created so much destruction. They seem to be on the rise.
I also agree that the fact that global warming doesn't scare many people. It doesn't effect their daily lives as much as they think it does. My teacher raised her voice and told us to stop being so caught up in our own lives and to start opening your eyes to things that matter. I wanted to stand up and applaud her.
Teachers like that don't come around often enough.
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