Sunday, July 02, 2006

An Inconvenient Truth

Saddening reminders at the movies

We've read most of it before, in bits and pieces over many years. We know the planet is warming. Those of us who look at evidence instead of listening to the bloviaters on Fox News or talk radio have known for years that humans are at least exacerbating the problem with our emissions and deforestation. The service that Al Gore has performed for us is to put together the facts, graphs, evidence, and pictures into a coherant whole. The movie makers have taken Gore's brillant work and made it into a fascinating - and terrifying - story.

It is saddening, even shocking, to actually see pictures of the changes in Antarctica, the Arctic Ocean, Greenland, Mount Kilmanjaro and many more locations on the earth. (Sheila and I saw the shrunken glaciers in Montana in 1979 and pics of the larger ones from earlier in the century)

It is saddening to see ice cores and graphs that illustrate irrefutably the absurdity of the Limbaughs of the world who dismiss the warming as part of a natural cycle.

It is saddening to have driven home, again, the stark tragedy of the 2000 election.

The movie should win awards for the creative storytellng, but more importantly it will bring attention to possibly the most critical issue of our time.

You owe it to yourself and our posterity to see this movie.

No comments:

Post a Comment