An Inconvenient Truth

Imagine, the homes of millions of people all around the world destroyed because of flooding. Imagine having no more glaciers or icy mountains because they have melted, flooded several different countries on the ocean border, and killed millions of people. This rapidly growing dilemma is confronted in An Inconvenient Truth, a movie that opened my eyes to the seriousness of climate change. This movie brought many valid points to my attention, including the overall effect climate change will have on the human race if we do not change the way we live. I have heard many arguments about this immensely growing issue, but I never knew how serious it really was therefore, I never really worried too much about it. I also never exactly knew what I could ever do or change about my life style to change the devastating outcome of our quickly rising climate. However, I believe that by analyzing the movie inside and out, maybe we can all better understand how to fix this issue. This can be possible by analyzing the content of the movie, dissecting Gore’s use of ethos and pathos, and using outside sources to prove and disprove Al Gore’s points from the movie.

This movie is incredibly effective in the way it is constructed. Throughout the movie, it shows Al Gore narrating a power point that he created to present to his audience. He presents this power point for a small live audience but in reality, this presentation was intended for the world to see. Gore talks about how the atmosphere is the most vulnerable part of the Earth and that it is being thickened by pollution. This is trapping in heat and causing the overall temperature of the earth to rise. This process is described as global warming or climate change, a growing issue happening all over the world. He discusses how global warming creates more natural disasters that are devastating to people’s homes and killing our people. For example, when water temperatures rise due to heat trapped in the atmosphere, it creates higher winds and stronger storms. This is how hurricanes are created.

Gore then goes back and talks about how he became interested in his attempt to improve global warming. He showed clips of his son and talked about how he was hit by a car when he was only six years old. Gore’s son nearly died in this terrible accident and this event changed his priorities completely. He realized that nothing else in the world could be more important then his family. He wanted nothing more then his children to live a long and satisfying life. This is where his interest in environmental issues came into play. He began researching all aspects of global warming including how it would eventually affect our world. The future generations were the ones who were going to have to bear the consequences of this growing epidemic, that meant his children, the ones he cared about more then anything in the world. He did not want this to be the downfall of the human race. Gore wanted people to become interested and knowledgeable about this issue, for this is the only way that we can improve and change the way we live to better our planet.

Gores use of pathos throughout the film is extremely effective. He uses video clips and music that pull at the emotions of the audience. The one way he does this is through his son’s accident in which I had described before. Another way in which Gore does this is by talking about his sister. Al Gore grew up on a farm with his family. His father grew many different crops, one being tobacco. Gore’s sister began smoking at an early age and as she grew older she developed lung cancer. After this terrible disease had taken away her life, his father blamed himself because the whole time he was growing and selling tobacco to the tobacco companies, he believed he was contributing to his daughter’s death. He compares this to how we all are contributing to our own death. He explains that if we don’t change our lifestyles, we will all eventually die due to global warming. Gore also shows scenes of himself staring out the window and him narrating about devastating issues in the world. In the background there would be sad music, the kind of music you hear in movies where one of the main characters experience a saddening death of a friend or loved one. We all know how effective this can be when you walk out of the movie theatres in tears and used tissues are falling out of your pockets. If it’s the death of a character’s mom you feel like calling up your very own mother and telling her how much you love her and appreciate her. The method Gore uses is exactly like this. He pulls at the audience’s emotions and makes them want to change the way they live to save the fate our earth and our future generations. Throughout this entire movie he uses ethos to make the audience feel guilt and suggests through his discouraging music and background stories that this rapid climate change is going to be the destruction of our world.

Although Gore’s use of pathos is extremely effective, many argue that his credibility is not satisfactory enough for his argument to be completely valid. When one thinks about Al Gore they think of a politician, not an environmentalist. How much does Gore actually know about climate change? After all, Gore is not technically an environmental scientist. However, the evidence is clear that something strange and unnatural is going on in our environment. In the movie Gore discusses how burning fuels like coal, gas, and oil and tearing down our forests we are causing an extreme rise in our carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Logically, it makes so much perfect sense that we are contributing to climate change. Maybe if we suggest using alternative resources other then oil, gas, and coal we can stop global warming and save our planet.

There are many different anti-Gore sources on the Internet. The first source I came across was a movie review done by Kevin Carr. Kevin described Gore’s movie as a “100 minute campaign commercial” and his main concern at that time was Gore putting himself out there for the 2008 presidential election. However, it is now 2010 and Gore did not run for the 2008 presidential election so obviously this was not his reasoning behind the video. If found another article; in my research written by Tom Harris. In this article he quotes Professor Bob Carter, of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, who says, “Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention”. This quote really baffled me because I really do believe that Al Gore did a great job in all of his arguments. He made valid points and he had evidence to back up all of his statements.

There are also many pro-Gore sources that agree that Global warming is a very serious issue. “Sea levels rose as much as 20 centimeters, or 7.8 inches, over the course of the 20th century, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates a rise of 18 to 59 centimeters by 2099” according to Kate Ross in an article she wrote for The New York Times. With these facts and statistics that not only Gore states, but also other outside sources, it is extremely hard for me to believe that global warming is not a serious issue. In an article written by Ronald Bailey he stated, “I reviewed former vice-president Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth for Reason. I agreed that Gore has "won the climate debate" and that "on balance Gore gets it more right than wrong on the science” though I argued he exaggerates just how bad future global warming is likely to be”.

So that brings me to the question, is global warming as serious of an issue as Al Gore made it out to be? Can this issue lead to the end of the human race and eventually destroy our world? From everything I have researched I think it’s quite fair to say that Al Gore made a very valid argument and if we ignore everything he discussed in An Inconvenient Truth, it can have a serious effect on mankind in the future. Global warming is not an issue that can be disregarded and put off as unimportant. The more we ignore it, the worse it will get and as Thomas Friedman wrote in his article from The New York Times, “…take your socks off yourself. It’s going to get hot around here”.