AN INCONVENIENT AND TERRIBLY WORRISOME PROBLEM.

Former Vice President Al Gore's seminar on global warming is effectively captured on film in the documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, which I just finished watching; a movie now on DVD which ya gotta see folks!

I must say, this film provokes lots of thought and is actually quite depressing. The Industrial Revolution was a great technological advancement in the history of humanity, but it has brought with it lots of terrible consequences to our planet. The massive daily burning of fossil fuels and release of tremendous amounts of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere for decades has finally begun to take its toll on our ecosystem. Gore claims that it is due to all of this uncontrolled burning through factories, automobile use, and general human activity that we are now experiencing an alarming rise in atmospheric temperatures causing all sorts of secondary problems. The worst offender in all of this, the country with the most responsibility for this problem? You got it, The United States. Ironically, Gore does all this traveling by plane and car to spread his message! HAHA! More burning of fuel! But hey, at least he's taking positive action somehow.

The film is very effective in that Gore keeps your attention throughout the 90 minutes. He uses very good graphs, charts, and pics to prove his points. The guy has been on this bandwagon since the 1970s and knows his shit well. I would say Gore is a true hero and pioneer and has been trying to get attention in Washington D.C. on this problem for years, but says that no one wanted to listen, until only recently. He even addresses the skeptics and naysayers, often comparing them to those doctors and scientists who used to believe smoking did not cause cancer.

The dramatic before and after photographs of mountains covered with snow and once majestic glaciers is very disturbing. He shows various places that only twenty or thirty years ago were frozen, now looking like dry or almost parched land. This is very shocking indeed. The quick and rapid melting right before our eyes of the North Pole, Antarctica, and Greenland are also covered, and this spells grave danger for sea levels as Gore shows how Florida and other major places around the world will be under water soon if the melting doesn't stop. PRETTY FUCKING SCARY!

The size and intensity of hurricanes will only get worse, coral reefs are dying as ocean temps get dangerously warmer, and the worst off in all of this: animals. Our living wonderful brethren are suffering and dwindling. Penguins, polar bears, caribou, fish and other living creatures are all dying out or in disarray due to the melting of ice and other significant changes due to human activity. It almost brought me to tears to see the computer animation in the documentary of a lone polar bear drowning after having to swim for miles and miles trying to look for a decent piece of ice to rest on and finding none, which scientists say is actually happening.

That we are responsible for great achievements in thought, architecture, and art is horribly contradicted in the damage we've inflicted upon our one and only home: EARTH. How tragic. We are the most destructive and selfish of all the living species on here. Gore does offer hope that we can begin to change our ways and perhaps thwart or even reverse some of the damage, but the film left me feeling very doomed nonetheless. There is hope in that population growth is actually showing signs of control, but we will still go from six and half billion now to 9 billion by 2050.

Here we are, the lone blue miracle jewel in space. Our one and only home. What have we done? WHAT HAVE WE DONE?! I guess we can all do something at least now and take some action. Doing our part is better than just doing nothing right?

As Gore says, "This is a moral issue."

Yes Al, it is. It truly is.