An Inconvenient Truth

I love me a documentary, independent film and skiing. That's why one of these bone-chillin' winters, I am going to vacation at Sundance Film Festival. Now I've come to find out, I wish it was this year, as one of my most passionate 'causes' was addressed at Sundance, in documentary form, by one of my favorite people. Yep, I mean it. It's An Inconvenient Truth. It's Al Gore. Here's a synopsis of the film:

Extreme poverty, intractable wars, virulent disease, hatred of all stripes–these are a few of the scourges we live with today. And yet global climate change trumps them all; for if it's not addressed, all life on the planet will be devastated, regardless of geography, class, race, or creed. The Inconvenient Truth is the gripping story of former Vice President Al Gore, who became interested in this startling issue while at college 30 years ago, and now devotes his life to reversing global warming. Traveling the world, he has built a visually mesmerizing presentation designed to disabuse doubters of the notion that climate change is debatable. The heart of Davis Guggenheim's film is this elegant multimedia lecture itself, where Gore indisputably correlates CO2 emissions with exponentially rising temperatures, already responsible for dramatic climactic shifts like ice-cap melting, drought, and rising sea levels. Interwoven with this riveting public address are intimate moments revealing the poetic, searching side of Gore as he struggles to define his purpose in the aftermath of the 2000 election. This is activist cinema at its very best, for it serves to popularize and demythologize a problem long obscured by those most threatened by the solution. With humor and searing intelligence, Gore outlines crucial steps we must take to avert impending disaster and proves that inaction is no longer an option–in fact, it's immoral.— Caroline Libresco


It was a huge success at the festival, and was picked up by Paramount for nation-wide release. People are saying they want Gore to run in 2008, but he calls himself a recovering politician and has no plans to do so. I can applaud that. One of the best functions of being president is picking one issue that's especially close to your heart and trying to improve things in that area. For Bush, that's OIL-- obviously, for Clinton--health care. For Gore, if he was president, it would be global warming--so I'm glad to see this documentary out there, because he gets to fullfill his purpose without dealing with the bullsh**t mechanisms of politics. And that's a win-win right there.