Al Gore's Nature Hike Through The Book Of Revelations
Seattlest got invited to the screening of the new Al Gore flick, An Inconvenient Truth, at Pacific Place last night. (It opens Friday, June 2 in Seattle.) For an Al Gore flick, Mayor Greg Nickels and King County Executive Ron Sims show up. (And they pretend to make nice, because columnist Brodeur scolded them about not playing well together.) Then after the film, Chris Gregoire comes out and introduces surprise guest Al Gore and the crowd goes wild. Especially when she says how a few years ago at a rally, she had the privilege of introducing Gore as the next president, "-- and I was right!"
The film itself is a documentary about Al Gore's PowerPoint presentation on global warming. (It is one freaking incredible PowerPoint presentation, let us tell you. We've never seen better. Gore claims to have given his "slideshow" over 1,000 times, and the way he handles the remote, it shows.) It was screened in theater #8, normally given over to Scary Movie 4. Hah. Oh, the irony.
Early on, there's a shot of Al tooling along in his limo, working on his Mac. He starts reminiscing about how when he was in college a professor of his started measuring CO2 levels. Then Al's standing in front of the red, jagged, always-rising line that indicates CO2 increase. Then he gets onto a hyrdraulic lift to point out where CO2 levels will be in 50 years -- or less. Up, up, up he goes. He points out that 10 of the hottest years on record have been in the last 14 years, that 2005 was the hottest yet.
The "nature hike through the Book of Revelations" (that's a memorable Gore quote) includes the oscillations of flood and drought, hugely powerful storm systems, melting glaciers and ice caps, shifting seasons, plagues of invasive species, insects, and, well, plagues (Ebola, avian flu, Lyme disease), all related to climate perturbations caused by global warming. Gore documents the unanimity of scientific papers published on global warming and its effects, then notes that the popular media somehow finds "doubt" in 53% of its stories on the subject. (Thanks in large part to PR.)
And that's when he gets pissed. (The funny thing is, unlike Bruce Banner, we like him when he's angry.)
The slideshow on global warming, and the film, are clearly motivated by the desire to "tell the people." In particular, U.S. people, who have been living in a fact-free bubble. When it comes to what Gore calls the climate crisis, we're in danger of coming in last. (Less than 20% of our current crop of cars and trucks would meet China's 2008 fuel efficiency standards.) Though the current administration has been no friend to the environment, reminds Gore: "In America, political will is a renewable resource." And in crisis lies opportunity.
Despite all the partisan bickering, Gore's message is that responding to global warming has no right or left. It's a moral imperative for all people to come together and fight for our survival -- in all seriousness, Gore warned the audience that we may only have 10 years before a point of no return. (Just the idea that there is a point of no return is eerie, if you think about it.) But he wants to scare no one from denial into despair: there's plenty we can do, he says. It's just that we've got to get started now. So he's made this movie, there's a book coming out of the same name, and he's going to train 1,000 people to go around giving his slideshow.
"Damn," we mused. "Al's become a global warming bodhisattva." It all fits: the final, crushing ego-defeat of the election, his coming back to his roots, and the fervor with which he's pursuing teaching others about global warming, worldwide. The bodhisattva slays the dragon of indolence, apathy, and "that's just the way it is," with compassion and insight. We made sure to shake his hand and say thank you.
As a postscript, here's a little more local politics:
For his introduction, Mayor Nickels retailed his global warming "Aha!" moment: during a meeting with Seattle City Light about hydroelectric power projections, they mentioned that their numbers were based upon "normal" snowfall. Nickels couldn't think of a recent year that had been normal, and when they checked, they found that since the 1950s the snowpack had decreased 50%. Thus was born Green Greg and the Seattle commitment to the Kyoto Protocol--a city-based movement which now has 226 U.S. mayors representing 44 million people in 40 states and D.C. (In 1999, the graybeards in the U.S. Senate voted 95-0 against the Kyoto Protocol because they're too old to care what the planet looks like in 50 years. "You kids stay off our oil-soaked lawn!" they shrieked and went back looting the future.)
Then he handed over the mic to Ron Sims, his "good friend and longtime colleague" (take that, Brodeur) whose environmental work is "a little less at the forefront because he's been at it such a long time." (Oops. Backhanded compliment. Point for Brodeur after all.) Ron let it go, though. He held up the TIME magazine with the admonition about global warming: "Be worried."
"Don't be worried," Sims said. "I tire of worried people." He suggested the Nobel Prize-winning Kenyan, Wangari Maathai, as an example: "She never accepted that she couldn't succeed." That phrase came back to us as we watched the film, and Gore recounted all the times he'd failed to get people to pay attention to global warming, over decades -- and yet, at the end of the day (and it was almost 10pm), here he was, at it again.
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