An Inconvenient Truth

An Inconvenient Truth is a movie starring Al Gore, who discusses his concern with climate change and the danger we are creating for future generations, through a captivating and shocking power point. In the very beginning of his discussion, Gore presents pictures to the audience of beautiful mountains covered in ice. These pictures were taken years ago. He then compares those pictures to pictures taken up to the year the movie was produced (2006). The changes were shocking. There was little to no ice left on the mountains he showed.

Al Gore is an intriguing and convincing public speaker. He is completely convincing in all of his arguments about climate change and how it is affecting our planet. He discussed the way pollution thickens the atmosphere causing heat to become trapped within it. This heat causes the earth’s heat to increase, which can be completely and utterly destructive to our precious planet and the place that we call home. This makes the viewer feel empathetic with earth and guilty for our bad habits and refusal to change our selfish ways. I felt extremely saddened with the way we treat our planet and dissatisfied with the way I go about my everyday life. I, myself, am a contributor to pollution and after watching the movie, I feel I have made little steps to change my lifestyle and help be conducive to the solution of this rapidly growing dilemma. I feel that Al Gore used pathos extremely effectively and I believe many people have become more aware and conscious after watching it.

Al Gore was also effective in the category ethos for me. I feel the background information he gave about his personal experiences related pretty well to the points he was trying to make throughout his entire speech. He mentioned his father’s farm and how his father always would grow tobacco plants and how Gore would help him. He then mentioned his sister who had picked up the habit of smoking and eventually developed lung cancer and passed away. Gore’s father was disgusted that he had contributed to the same companies that had contributed to his own daughter’s death. He then explained that like his father contributing to tobacco companies, we all are contributing to our own demise as a human race. Eventually, if we keep living like we do, we will destroy earth, the only planet we could ever call home.

In conclusion, Gore ended his speech in what is called a “Call to action”. This is supposed to motivate the viewer to be motivated to make a change or follow and believe what the speaker is arguing for or against. He talked about how us, as Americans, need to work together to save our planet. The only way that this problem can come close to being solved is if we take action to make a change and decrease the rate of climate change. This was an effective way to end his speech because it leaves people feeling like they can make a difference and it most of all makes people want to make a difference.