'Convenient' Gore Promo Still a Good Primer On Global Warming

Summary

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As an environmentalist, I was curious about Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," now showing at area theaters. On the positive side, this film has a lot of good visuals and clear, easily understandable graphs and maps. If you want to learn more about global warming, especially the evidence that it's human-caused, that it's rapidly advancing, and that it will carry serious consequences, this film will show you that evidence. My main complaint is that there was way too much Al Gore in it. It seems as much a vehicle for him to try to ride into the '08 election season on as a documentary on global warming-and that contaminates the message. The self- promotion also uses up time that could have been better spent discussing the solutions, and the trade-offs and decisions they entail.

Then there is the irony of seeing at least half a dozen images of Gore moving through airports, and another half a dozen in which he's riding in a car. Gore never comments on this apparent hypocrisy. At one point, he tells us that we can reduce our carbon "footprint" - we can even reduce it to zero. Check out www.climatecrisis.org, he says. This links you to Native Energy, where you can calculate your carbon footprint, and then send this company money to "offset your emissions" by paying for construction of windmills in South Dakota and methane digesters in Pennsylvania. This is why Gore didn't worry about the environmental impact of making the movie, it turns out-it was all "cancelled out" via this firm's enterprises.

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'Convenient' Gore Promo Still a Good Primer On Global Warming

Questions immediately arise, however. Are the farms where these digesters are being built appropriate for this technology, or will t...

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