THE FAITHFUL CONSUMER July 06

…connecting faith and the environment

By Sarah Streed

I had been intending to write about migrant labor in this month’s column, but instead I’m going to write about “Al Gore’s movie,” “An Inconvenient Truth.” My husband and I went to see it with our friends, Laura and Eric Nordstrom. It was stunning. Yes, I voted for Gore in ‘00—we still have the sticker on our minivan—but even if I hadn’t, I would be hard pressed to deny his prowess in this new role. Intelligent, articulate and passionate, he talks using graphs, charts and photos to clearly show the earth is warming and that we are now entering into, to quote from the movie which is quoting Churchill, “a period of consequences.”

As Eric pointed out, only Al Gore has the connections and resources to accompany a nuclear submarine in measuring Artic ice, or to know the man (Roger Revelle) who first started measuring CO2 in the atmosphere in 1958. Yet Gore is clearly using his access and resources on behalf of all of us. The film periodically goes to scenes from his personal life—his son’s accident, his sister’s death of lung cancer, and his political setback when the Supreme Court ruled that Bush was President rather than hold a needed recount. These scenes serve to make Gore, the environmental apologist, completely believable when he states that alerting people to global warming—not politics—is his life’s work.

But the finest filmmaking of all, to my mind, was that we didn’t leave the theatre feeling depressed and despondent. After all, we had just seen incontrovertible scientific evidence that the earth is warming and our climate is irrevocably changing. But it is Gore’s convincing belief that there is still time to do something about it. Because we Americans are 5% of the world’s population but contribute 30% of total CO2 emissions, if we act now, we can save our earth.

“Truth” is perhaps the most important movie in the history of the world. Because it is appearing in mainstream theatres all over the U.S., if even a fraction of the audience logs on to the movie’s website www.climatecrisis.net and follows some of the steps, this will result in a huge drop in CO2 emissions.

Just one last thing: Whatever your political persuasion, I’m sure you’ll leave the theatre, feeling, as my husband put it, “cheated.” The movie doesn’t dwell on the election of ’00 but after watching this eloquent, smart man endeavor to protect our world, one can’t help but see the contrast to our current president who mangles the smallest of sentences and has started a war based on false evidence. We Americans were cheated, no question. But perhaps we need to do as Al Gore has done and put aside the past and look to the future.

(I’ll return to the topic of migrant labor next month.)

July’s tip: Go see “An Inconvenient Truth.” If that is not possible, put your name on a waiting list from Movie Gallery or Netflix or the library.

Sarah Streed is a board member of the Wisconsin Interfaith Climate & Energy Campaign (WICEC) and runs Write Stuff Works (www.writestuffworks.com ) a writing business. She lives in Stoughton, Wisconsin with her husband and children. Email smstreed@sbcglobal.net

All rights reserved by Sarah Streed.

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