Critical Analysis of Al Gores Documentary An Inconvenient Truth - Movie Review Example

Teacher Critical Analysis of Al Gore’s Documentary An Inconvenient Truth Gore’s argument in his documentary en d An Inconvenient Truth is a already a given or a factual information today that is accepted as a reality rather than a subject that can be debated. During the time when he introduced the inconvenient truth about global warming, people were still debating about it and thought of it as an abstract, a theoretical reality that will not really happen. But with what is happening in our environment today where global warming is now evident in our planet with the fiercer storm, frequent floods, warmer weather and other weather related calamities, that cost us lives and properties destroyed, his argument that global warming is already upon us is now accepted as a given fact. It is unfortunate however that his advocacy and call to action to change our ways is not heeded both by the government and general population that we still continue with our destructive ways with our unabated emission of carbon and other pollutants. Gore’s arguments are already common to the modern audience because his arguments are also used by other environmentalist groups and advocates to increase the awareness of the public about climate change. In fact, many academe today include Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth as part of their curriculum to educate students about climate change. Gore’s discussion about the possibility of melting glaciers in Antarctica has already been documented in camera by National Geographic that would cause the atmosphere to warm and thus, presented compelling evidence that it happened and is still happening right before our very eyes. This similar demonstration of melting glacial sheets was also shown in the documentary An Inconvenient Truth except that we thought about it as an exaggeration. The carbon emission that started it all is also given and everybody knows about that already. In fact right now, governments are already contemplating to make it an official policy with many people thinking that it is already long overdue. His advocacy as a solution to the problem of global warming as stated; "Each one of us is a cause of global warming, but each one of us can make choices to change that with the things we buy, the electricity we use, the cars we drive; we can make choices to bring our individual carbon emissions to zero. The solutions are in our hands, we just have to have the determination to make it happen. We have everything that we need to reduce carbon emissions, everything but political will. But in America, the will to act is a renewable resource (Al Gore)" This in fact is already a common advocacy issue about the environment where we already know and agree about the argument that it is us that cause climate change and therefore it is us who can reverse it. We know that climate change is manmade and it induces global warming which is a phenomenon that arises from the heating up of the temperature of the earth. This happens when greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and water vapor traps the heat from the sun into the earth’s atmosphere (Massawe). The heating up of the earth’s atmosphere causes the sea level to rise as glaciers, permafrost and sea ice as begins to thaw and this phenomena called climate change is a result of global warming. Global warming or climate change has been attributed to be one of the causes of shifting extreme weather pattern that cause heat waves, droughts, excessive rainfall and changes in crop harvests (Miller) which was popularized by Gore in his documentary An Inconvenient Truth. And as the temperature in our waters heats-up, it harms and kills the algae which serve as food to other living organism in the ocean. When that happens, it inadvertently destroys the ecosystem and balance in the ocean (Massawe). The result? Lesser fish harvest because their source of food are diminished. Storms, hurricanes and floods will become fiercer due to changing weather pattern that as more heat is emitted in the ocean, the fiercer the storms will be resulting in unthinkable floods and killer storm surges just like the one that killed an entire province with the recent typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines (WWF). Areas which were never flooded before are now sunk in waters because of changing climate pattern evident now in UK. Thus, climate change is everybody’s concern and we all should take part in protecting the environment because it is our common environment, our common planet. Climate change affects us all and global warming destroys the entire planet and knows no country or territory. To protect the environment, we should collectively change our lifestyle. It is our lifestyle that propels the industrial plants to create more products that we do not really need and in the process emits a lot of carbon dioxide that pollutes and cause climate change. Also, the wastes that we throw also cause climate change. And it is not only limited to the gadgets that we throw away to replace them with newer model but also includes the light that we forgot to switch off to products we throw away because all of them require energy to produce and that energy emits carbon dioxide that causes climate change. Governments must also enforce more stringent measures and standards to business with regard to their carbon emission compliance. These arguments are first articulated by Gore whereby recent advocates only expanded its coverage to include gadget and technological waste and are therefore no longer new. Thus, it follows that climate change is everybody’s concern and we all should take part in protecting the environment because it is our common environment, our common planet. To protect the environment, we should change our lifestyle. It is our lifestyle that propels the industrial plants to create more products that we do not really need and in the process emits a lot of carbon dioxide that pollutes and cause climate change. Also, the wastes that we throw also cause climate change. And it is not only limited to the gadgets that we throw away to replace them with newer model but also includes the light that we forgot to switch off to products we throw away because all of them require energy to produce and that energy emits carbon dioxide that causes climate change. This has been called on before and this still remains to be an advocacy. It is just unfortunate that the realization that Gore’s argument were indeed true is not accompanied by concrete acts through policy implementation and popular support to make Gore’s assertion complete. Unfortunately, Gore’s advocacy remained to be an advocacy and still not a reality because each of us still continues to contribute to global warming, where our governments are stubbornly refusing to adopt environmental policies as a state policy even if we know that we now have to reverse our carbon and pollution emission if we want to save our planet. It is not known how many glacier sheets has to melt or how many killer storms and floods has to hit us for us to heed Gore’s advocacy that we need to change our acts and lifestyles if we are to save the planet (Miller). It is very unfortunate and even frustrating that all these destruction, deaths and injuries wrought by nature can be prevented and that the answer is all in our hands. We know what to do to stop and abate climate change and the technology is available to us to reduce climate change. Alternative and clean source of energy that could possibly reverse climate change are underutilized and we still continue to use carbon fuel even if we know that it pollutes the planet. We just hope that when we decide to seriously reverse climate change by changing our lifestyle, it would not be too late and that the damage caused by climate change is still reversible. Works Cited "Al Gore: New thinking on the climate crisis." YouTube. YouTube, 8 Apr. 2008. Web. 17 Feb. 2014. . Massawe, Antipas T. S. "Global Warming Control To Mitigate Climate Change." Engineering 4.5 (2012): 252-255. Academic Search Complete. Web. 17 Feb. 2014. Miller, Nick. “Nick Miller Presents: An Inconvenient Truth”, Availabe at [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_mr9EqJg18] WWF (nd). “The impacts of global warming”. Retrieved from http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/aboutcc/[accessed February 17, 204] Read More