“An Inconvenient Truth” opens in San Francisco, Berkeley, Mill Valley, Nevada City, San Jose, Palo Alto and hundreds of U.S. theaters this Friday. MoveOn.org is asking members to pledge to see the movie and get tickets in advance. They’re also sponsoring a conference call with Al Gore this Sunday, June 4, at 7 pm EST / 4 pm PST.
Also, you can mark the movie’s opening night with its producer and local eco-glitterati at an After Party on Friday, June 2, from 9 pm to 2 am at The Holding Company (Promenade, 2 Embarcadero Center, San Francisco; a short walk from the Landmark Embarcadero cinema) following the 7:50 pm and later screenings. It features some cutting-edge solutions to global warming, hors d’oeuvres, wine & beer, and organic vodka.
Here’s an interview WorldChanging did with the film’s director, Davis Guggenheim, earlier this month.
Meantime, Exxon is behind a major ad campaign designed to discredit the film and the science behind it. Why? Because “An Inconvenient Truth” has the power to fundamentally change the way we act on global warming.
Here’s what The New Yorker says:
Log on to Fandango. Reserve some seats. Bring the family. It shouldn’t be missed. No kidding… …There is no substitute for Presidential power, but Gore is now playing a unique role in public life. He is a symbol of what might have been, who insists that we focus on what likely will be an uninhabitable planet if we fail to pay attention to the folly we are committing, and take the steps necessary to end it.
Oh, by the way, from today’s New York Times:
Looks like Al Gore was right. 2 Studies Link Global Warming to Greater Power of Hurricanes.
Plus, the Times reports, scientists have greatly underestimated the power of greenhouse gases to warm the planet.
Later: Paul Krugman in today’s Times tells this telling but obscene story: Swift Boating the Planet.
A brief segment in “An Inconvenient Truth” shows Senator Al Gore questioning James Hansen, a climatologist at NASA, during a 1989 hearing. But the movie doesn’t give you much context, or tell you what happened to Dr. Hansen later.
And that’s a story worth telling, for two reasons. It’s a good illustration of the way interest groups can create the appearance of doubt even when the facts are clear and cloud the reputations of people who should be regarded as heroes. And it’s a warning for Mr. Gore and others who hope to turn global warming into a real political issue: you’re going to have to get tougher, because the other side doesn’t play by any known rules.
Dr. Hansen was one of the first climate scientists to say publicly that global warming was under way. In 1988, he made headlines with Senate testimony in which he declared that “the greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now.” When he testified again the following year, officials in the first Bush administration altered his prepared statement to downplay the threat. Mr. Gore’s movie shows the moment when the administration’s tampering was revealed.
In 1988, Dr. Hansen was well out in front of his scientific colleagues, but over the years that followed he was vindicated by a growing body of evidence. By rights, Dr. Hansen should have been universally acclaimed for both his prescience and his courage.
But soon after Dr. Hansen’s 1988 testimony, energy companies began a campaign to create doubt about global warming, in spite of the increasingly overwhelming evidence. And in the late 1990’s, climate skeptics began a smear campaign against Dr. Hansen himself. …
There’s a concise way to describe what happened to Dr. Hansen: he was Swift-boated. …
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
Leave a Reply