An Inconvenient Post
Because I am an obedient hippy liberal douche, I saw An Inconvenient Truth with Sam last night. I know my opinion on the film won't make any of you go see it if you weren't going to already, so I'll get my opinion on the film out of the way right now: If you're one of the sheep who is convinced that there is no scientific consensus on "questions" like global warming, evolution or gravity, you owe it to yourself to see this movie or do some research on your own. Reading CNN (or Fox News or MSNBC or WSJ or even NYT) headlines does not make you an informed member of society. Scientists have a very strict concept of "fact" and scientific progress requires us to constantly reexamine our commonly-held ideas. That doesn't give politicians the right to treat any aspect of science as an emerging debate with no clear course of action for our leaders.
Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I'd like to comment on the audience reaction to the movie. It's reasonable to assume that anyone who would pay $9.50 to attend a 2-hour PowerPoint presentation narrated by Al Gore at 11:10 PM on a Saturday night in Georgetown falls somewhere between "card-carrying member of the ACLU" and "3rd-party voter" on the liberal/conservative spectrum. This was the exact target audience for the movie, so you would expect the film to strike a chord. After 2 hours of bone-chilling charts, graphs and nature photographs, the natural reaction of a rational individual would be to ask "Ok, so what do I do about it?" Al Gore was ready to answer that question.
As the former President-elect faded from the screen, the house lights rose slightly. I assumed the credits would start to roll, but instead several suggestions for reducing our individual impact on the environment started appearing. Some of the ideas everyone's heard before: recycle, take public transportation and stop farting so much. Many of the ideas were new; I never knew that lots of electric companies sell green power, which is the consumer equivalent buying energy credits.
Surprisingly, most of the people in the theater decided that they had better things to do at that moment in time than sit through 5 minutes of suggestions on changing their lifestyles. Keep in mind that these were the same people who mocked Tom Ridge for telling us to buy duct tape to prevent terrorism. They've been itching for a politician to ask them to become part of the solution instead of politicking our way out of our problems. They say that they want to be asked to make sacrifices. But they can't sacrifice a few minutes to even hear Al Gore out. What gives?
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe these people had to leave to get their Priuses serviced and attend a "Save the Pandas" rally on The Hill. Then again, what am I doing differently today?
Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I'd like to comment on the audience reaction to the movie. It's reasonable to assume that anyone who would pay $9.50 to attend a 2-hour PowerPoint presentation narrated by Al Gore at 11:10 PM on a Saturday night in Georgetown falls somewhere between "card-carrying member of the ACLU" and "3rd-party voter" on the liberal/conservative spectrum. This was the exact target audience for the movie, so you would expect the film to strike a chord. After 2 hours of bone-chilling charts, graphs and nature photographs, the natural reaction of a rational individual would be to ask "Ok, so what do I do about it?" Al Gore was ready to answer that question.
As the former President-elect faded from the screen, the house lights rose slightly. I assumed the credits would start to roll, but instead several suggestions for reducing our individual impact on the environment started appearing. Some of the ideas everyone's heard before: recycle, take public transportation and stop farting so much. Many of the ideas were new; I never knew that lots of electric companies sell green power, which is the consumer equivalent buying energy credits.
Surprisingly, most of the people in the theater decided that they had better things to do at that moment in time than sit through 5 minutes of suggestions on changing their lifestyles. Keep in mind that these were the same people who mocked Tom Ridge for telling us to buy duct tape to prevent terrorism. They've been itching for a politician to ask them to become part of the solution instead of politicking our way out of our problems. They say that they want to be asked to make sacrifices. But they can't sacrifice a few minutes to even hear Al Gore out. What gives?
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe these people had to leave to get their Priuses serviced and attend a "Save the Pandas" rally on The Hill. Then again, what am I doing differently today?
posted by Radrik at 4:51 PM
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