Four stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.11.17
Accidentally or intentionally,
justifiably or unfairly, in the moment or only through the lens of history,
great events of progressive socio/economic change often become associated with
a single individual.
 |
| Standing at the foot of Greenland's rapidly dwindling Russell Glacier, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore sadly contemplates the implication of all this ice melt, and the impact that so much water will have, throughout the world. |
John Muir, and the modern
environmental movement. Upton Sinclair, and working-class labor reform. Mahatma
Gandhi, and nonviolent civil disobedience. Rosa Parks, and the civil rights
movement.
Al Gore, and climate crisis.
That modifier is intentional and
preferable, because the phrase “climate change” isn’t getting the job done;
it’s much too passive. Human beings don’t respond to “change,” because it
sounds slow, and therefore easy to ignore. Why bother, folks are inclined to
think; it won’t matter during my
lifetime.
A crisis, however, is an entirely
different issue ... and the climate situation definitely is a crisis. At this
point, nay-saying ostriches have about as much credibility as the Flat Earth
Society, or those who believe Elvis still lives, or those who insist that the
Moon landing was concocted on a secret Hollywood sound stage.
And yet there are so many nay-saying ostriches.
Everybody associates former U.S.
vice president Al Gore with 2006’s An
Inconvenient Truth, although director Davis Guggenheim certainly deserves much
of the credit; he’s the one who carried home an Academy Award, a Humanitas
Prize and dozens of film festival and Critics Circle awards. But Gore remains
most associated with the film — no surprise — because it profiled his
relentless march on the lecture and conference circuit, sounding the alarm
about the dangers of global warming and climate crisis.
For the most part, he preached to
the converted; the film frequently was ridiculed, in many cases reflexively,
along political lines ... as if a pending global crisis were something that
affected only Democrats and liberals, and could be ignored safely by
Republicans and conservatives.
But the mere fact that An Inconvenient Truth provoked debate,
was good enough. There’s also no question that the film played an important
role in what has come to be known as the “sustainability revolution.”
Plenty of people also jeered at
1989’s Roger & Me, but —
similarly — there’s no question that Michael Moore started something, and
opened a lot of eyes.
