Global warming is real, it is happening so rapidly now and consequences will be horrendous. The insurance companies, especially after hurricane Katrina, woke up to the reality. It isn't just a *cyclical thing.* I saw the movie, The Inconvenient Truth, and it explains the complicated science of it so well that it just may cause the issue to debouch from the esoterical scientific world to the mainstream. Hopefully it will so that we can ethically and responsibly respond rather than be manipulated by messages to confuse us by industries or be subverted by politics into believing that other issues are more terrifying.
Seeing this movie may be the most important way you show your vote to elevate this issue above profit motives and political positioning. We all must own this issue.
I don't want my children and grandchildren to confront and inhabit a nightmare world so radically different from mine and that of my ancestors because I was negligent and failed to nurture the environment. Do you?
Have we been so inured to terror that we tune out rational action? Have we become so complacent to passively receive messages -- true or not -- that we can become easily distracted from being mothers of a world beyond our own front door? This is more than just *The Al Gore Movie* although media-wise, it seems to be the most authentic message from a political leader in modern times. Geeky Gore explains it with charts, images and graphs in a way that regular minds can understand. The teacher in him shows. In fact, you'll feel like you are in a most modern classroom learning and understanding complicated facts that he has been wrapping his mind around for a very, very long time -- pre-vice president, pre-presidential candidate and now, as Issue Instructor for all of us.
The theatre wasn't very packed at the 5:00 afternoon showing when I went with my girlfriend. Hopefully it will have good returns and enough people go see this movie so that it will have a wide release nationally. If it doesn't, see it on DVD. If you only see one movie this year, this is the one to see. I haven't been in a movie in years when the entire audience clapped at the end.
Others will twisticate the truth to make you dismiss this message. On Monday this week, MotherPie's Ramble: Horses and Gore, quoted sources saying how vitally important the environmental message of the film is and how industries and others were spending money to counter the message to protect political interests or corporate profits. Don't be stupid and think there is still a scientific debate about global warming as the pseudo-scientists want you to believe.
Katie Couric interviewed Al Gore on MSNBC this week. Gore said this is the most dangerous crisis our civilization has ever encountered. He's spent his post-White House years lecturing world-wide on global warming with his slide show. With the US as one of only two developed nations not to sign the Kyoto treaty, his interest is educational and he (rightly) said to Couric that the scientific debate about the issue is over.
Hillary Clinton suddenly became the Green Woman on environmental issues this week. Coincidental timing? She spoke at the National Press Club this week about her *Energy Plan* and, as the Washington Post noted: she said she supports higher fuel efficiency standards for automobiles but was cool on nuclear power. Maureen Dowd saw the politics of it all in an article for the New York Times and her article, Enter Ozone Woman, noted that the New York Senator finally took a passionate stand, "giving a courteous nod to her old rival Al as *a committed visionary on global warming* and writing that Hillary *purloined his issue and his revolution*... Dowd's slicing rhetoric:
(Rodham-Clinton's) timing is cunning. This is supposed to be Ozone Man's moment in the sun. His movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," opens today, buoyed by such raves that his supporters believe his green crusade could net him both a gold statuette and a white house. He's being hailed as the new Comeback Kid, as New York magazine calls him, a passionate pedant. (Better than a compassionate conservative.)
Forget the politics and let's move on to the issue. Yes, it's branding time for politicians and, as politics is packaged and
marketed, whoever creates the message first owns it, truth or not. Gore's self-description early in the film, " I used to be the next President of the United States." The audience laughed but he said, "I don't find that particularly funny." He talks about the issue as a moral imperative. He's right, whether his future is political or professorial. The facts trump politics and profits on this one. Don't be duped.
I care about Mother Nature and as a mother I want to do more than be panderingly entertained by the increasingly vicious and televised tsunamis, tornadoes, refugees, floods and hurricanes. This is more than the latest nature reality show on tv. Put your politics aside. Go educate yourself. SEE THIS MOVIE. As a member of the audience said to a stranger in the foyer after the movie when asked what it was about, "It is about our future."
Update: This MotherPie article is featured on ClimateCrisis Blog.
Flickr photo from lakerae
