The ecoclub at UofC organized a screening of 'An Inconvenient Truth' [7] as part of its activities for the environment week. The screening was well publicized with posters in all important notice boards across the campus. It was organized in a rather large hall and was advertised that the doors of the hall would be closed 30 minutes before the scheduled start of the movie. But, alas, not many people at school were bothered about it and the hall was not even 25% full. Thats precisely the reason why more such movies are needed. They attempt to address the utter lack of environmental awareness.
The movie is an attempt by Al Gore, the former vice president of America (or as he describes himself in the movie, the person who used to be the next president of America), to create awarenss on how human activites affect the global climate. He starts with an explanation of the phenomenon of global warming in lay mans terms. He then proceeds to provide more detailed explanation on CO2 levels in the atmosphere and the corresponding atmospheric temperature over vast periods of time. Most scientists who watched the movie have agreed that the reasoning provided in the movie is based on solid scientific ground [1]. The talk revolves around the melting of ice sheets in the poles and in greenland. He also goes on to describe how this will affect fellow species on our planet and finally, the perpetrators of global warming, humans. All this scientific data is interlaced with humurous cartoons, poignant scenes from his personal life and videos of the live presentations around the world that he has provided on this topic. Images have a greater impact on the human psyche than words and numbers. The movie exploits this fact to the hilt. Every discussion is accompanied by touchy videos and images. For e.g., discussions of melting ice is accompanied by images of breaking glaciers, barren tops of Mt.Kilimanjaro etc...
The movie briefly touches upon the opinions of the detractors of the movie and Al Gore tries his best to convince people with both scientific data and emotional appeal about the importance of the message that this movie carries. It also tries to clear out the misconception that scientists are doubtful about global warming by pointing out that none of the scientific articles on this topic that have appeared in peer reviewed journals have doubted global warming. It clearly points out that all articles that doubt global warming have appeared in magazines. To me, this prooves conclusively that scientists who know the field are in no doubt about global warming. The movie concludes with a number of suggestions of what one can do to reduce ones carbon footprint [2], thereby reducing ones contribution to global warming. The movie is primarily targetted at the american audience as many reports suggest that USA is the primary contributor to global warming [3].
Some people argue that the graphs were not perfect as though it showed a projection of the CO2 levels for the next 50 years, it did not provide the projected levels of atmospheric temperature for that period. While, this is true I feel it is pointless to argue about statistical data. I feel one should look more into the force behind the argument than the words used to argue. Fred Menger's quote, 'If you torture data sufficiently, it will confess to almost anything' [4], comes to mind. While sceptics might harp at this point, it is only because there are no other points that they can talk about. Words have utterly no significance once the meaning has been conveyed. So, I'd simply ask people to mull over the movie at a higher level and not get carried away by trivial and insignificant details.
Lastly, there was one sore point about the movie. Towards the end, Al Gore talks about the mileage of cars in the different countries around the globe. He uses this to refute critics' point that the automobile industry stands to loose if measures to tackle global warming, like ratifying Kyoto protocol [5], are taken. He contends that low mileage american automobile companies like Ford and GM have been steadily losing markets and on the other hand high mileage automobile companies like Toyoto and Honda have been steadily gaining markets. By this, he means implicity, though he does not say this explicitly, that producing fuel effecient cars is better for the company. This argument is wrong from many different perspectives. First, any decent management graduate will be able to tear to pieces the correlation that Al Gore provided between company performance and fuel effeciency. Its like correlating the production of nylon in UK and the growth of population in India. Though it would be great to have a high correlation between company performance and fuel effeciency, as things stand today, they are totally unrelated. While it is true that Toyota and Honda are doing better than GM and Ford, its probably due to 100 other reasons and fuel effeciency is definitely not one of them. Second, if his argument were true, then it automatically means that people want to buy fuel effecient cars and that there is a good amount of public awareness on this issue. I am pretty sure that this is not the case. Lastly, and most importantly, suggesting that companies should improve fuel effeciency so that they can be competitive defeats the whole purpose of creating an awareness of the energy intensive modern lifestyle.
Al Gore also talks about steps one can easily take at a personal level. He talks about using fuel effecient cars, energy effecient appliances, better insultaed homes etc... and claims that if these steps are taken immediately our carbon emissions can be reduced to the level of carbon emission in 1970. I totally agree that the suggested mechanisms are good and very important first steps but I dont agree with the way it was presented. The way he presented them gave the impression that these are panaceas to the global warming problem and if we do these, we will all be fine. This will lead to dangerous complacency and will dilute the seriousness of the problem on hand. These steps can never be the solution. They can only be tiny first steps towards a possible solution. This, I feel, is the truth and one must not be scared to face this. A famous saying comes to min - ' In order to be effective truth must penetrate like an arrow - and that is likely to hurt' [6].
All in all, this is indeed a very good movie. Try to watch this in a theatre near you or try and get hold of the DVD. Also, recommend this movie to as many people as possible.
The movie is an attempt by Al Gore, the former vice president of America (or as he describes himself in the movie, the person who used to be the next president of America), to create awarenss on how human activites affect the global climate. He starts with an explanation of the phenomenon of global warming in lay mans terms. He then proceeds to provide more detailed explanation on CO2 levels in the atmosphere and the corresponding atmospheric temperature over vast periods of time. Most scientists who watched the movie have agreed that the reasoning provided in the movie is based on solid scientific ground [1]. The talk revolves around the melting of ice sheets in the poles and in greenland. He also goes on to describe how this will affect fellow species on our planet and finally, the perpetrators of global warming, humans. All this scientific data is interlaced with humurous cartoons, poignant scenes from his personal life and videos of the live presentations around the world that he has provided on this topic. Images have a greater impact on the human psyche than words and numbers. The movie exploits this fact to the hilt. Every discussion is accompanied by touchy videos and images. For e.g., discussions of melting ice is accompanied by images of breaking glaciers, barren tops of Mt.Kilimanjaro etc...
The movie briefly touches upon the opinions of the detractors of the movie and Al Gore tries his best to convince people with both scientific data and emotional appeal about the importance of the message that this movie carries. It also tries to clear out the misconception that scientists are doubtful about global warming by pointing out that none of the scientific articles on this topic that have appeared in peer reviewed journals have doubted global warming. It clearly points out that all articles that doubt global warming have appeared in magazines. To me, this prooves conclusively that scientists who know the field are in no doubt about global warming. The movie concludes with a number of suggestions of what one can do to reduce ones carbon footprint [2], thereby reducing ones contribution to global warming. The movie is primarily targetted at the american audience as many reports suggest that USA is the primary contributor to global warming [3].
Some people argue that the graphs were not perfect as though it showed a projection of the CO2 levels for the next 50 years, it did not provide the projected levels of atmospheric temperature for that period. While, this is true I feel it is pointless to argue about statistical data. I feel one should look more into the force behind the argument than the words used to argue. Fred Menger's quote, 'If you torture data sufficiently, it will confess to almost anything' [4], comes to mind. While sceptics might harp at this point, it is only because there are no other points that they can talk about. Words have utterly no significance once the meaning has been conveyed. So, I'd simply ask people to mull over the movie at a higher level and not get carried away by trivial and insignificant details.
Lastly, there was one sore point about the movie. Towards the end, Al Gore talks about the mileage of cars in the different countries around the globe. He uses this to refute critics' point that the automobile industry stands to loose if measures to tackle global warming, like ratifying Kyoto protocol [5], are taken. He contends that low mileage american automobile companies like Ford and GM have been steadily losing markets and on the other hand high mileage automobile companies like Toyoto and Honda have been steadily gaining markets. By this, he means implicity, though he does not say this explicitly, that producing fuel effecient cars is better for the company. This argument is wrong from many different perspectives. First, any decent management graduate will be able to tear to pieces the correlation that Al Gore provided between company performance and fuel effeciency. Its like correlating the production of nylon in UK and the growth of population in India. Though it would be great to have a high correlation between company performance and fuel effeciency, as things stand today, they are totally unrelated. While it is true that Toyota and Honda are doing better than GM and Ford, its probably due to 100 other reasons and fuel effeciency is definitely not one of them. Second, if his argument were true, then it automatically means that people want to buy fuel effecient cars and that there is a good amount of public awareness on this issue. I am pretty sure that this is not the case. Lastly, and most importantly, suggesting that companies should improve fuel effeciency so that they can be competitive defeats the whole purpose of creating an awareness of the energy intensive modern lifestyle.
Al Gore also talks about steps one can easily take at a personal level. He talks about using fuel effecient cars, energy effecient appliances, better insultaed homes etc... and claims that if these steps are taken immediately our carbon emissions can be reduced to the level of carbon emission in 1970. I totally agree that the suggested mechanisms are good and very important first steps but I dont agree with the way it was presented. The way he presented them gave the impression that these are panaceas to the global warming problem and if we do these, we will all be fine. This will lead to dangerous complacency and will dilute the seriousness of the problem on hand. These steps can never be the solution. They can only be tiny first steps towards a possible solution. This, I feel, is the truth and one must not be scared to face this. A famous saying comes to min - ' In order to be effective truth must penetrate like an arrow - and that is likely to hurt' [6].
All in all, this is indeed a very good movie. Try to watch this in a theatre near you or try and get hold of the DVD. Also, recommend this movie to as many people as possible.
References
[1] An inconvenient truth - on Wikipedia
[2] Carbon footprint - on Wikipedia
[3] Bargraph of footprint by region
[4] List of quotes on data
[5] Kyoto protocol - on Wikipedia
[6] Quote about truth
[7] An Inconvenient Truth on IMDB
3 comments:
hi partha,
this is a common misconception/obfuscation. that increased efficiency will solve the problem. while it dfntly is a good idea to be pursuing effcncy (good first steps as u say), the real culprit is the unlimited,fast growing 'growth' and consumption. its sad not many ppl talk abt tht. coz thts the REAL 'inconvinient truth'. its all goody goody fluffy fluffy to say we can (efficiently) design ourselves out the crisis! :-(
by the way chk this out
http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf
the latest ipcc report. da most comprehensive study on glo warming evah! :P
true da.. its just being naively optimistic to think that we can manage to grow to infinity and still be sustainable...
have seen the report being analyzed everywhere but never went thru the report.. will do do.. thx for the link...
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