Introduction
There are some tasks that come across our lives that seem as if they cannot be done but when they are completed that is the time we believe that they are done. These tasks normally drain all our efforts as well as time and everything else seems to have stopped. The experiences gotten from these tasks are so vivid that you cannot forget any bit of them. There are so many controversial aspects of such tasks and there are a lot of uncertainties in them. Some certain events take place in life and leave clear memories in our lives. Films whose driving force is environmental politics have become more common since 1990.
These films have become an object of interest in the publication of trade like the Hollywood movies and in particular The Hollywood Reporter. Between 1991 and 1993, there was an increment from three to twelve articles. These articles then dropped down to three by 1996, then ever since that time there has been a steady increment of the number of articles that focus on environmental content. By 2004, there were fourteen articles that had been produced. Gore is one man who wrote a book concerning things that later came to pass. He has written his first book ‘Earth in the Balance’ after his son was involved in an accident.
This triggered him to think about two things that he found to be very important in his live after the accident of his son. The book mainly discusses about the global warming as well as his life. The book deals mainly on the content of environment that is perceived after reading through it in an eco-critical perspective. However, there is need to examine the production as well as the content practices in relation to the environment (Heumann and Murray 195).
Impact of the book
Half a year after the publication of his book Earth in the Balance, Gore became the vice president of America, and as a part of the Clinton-Gore government, he got an opportunity to pursue a striving schedule of novel policies focusing on the climatic crises. That was the first time the he realized how difficult it would be to convince the congress to adapt to the changes they were appealing them to make.
There was a hot debate as the congress vehemently opposed the motion. This was very controversial to him and it was to be a big task to sail through and make any progress on the motion. The greatest hit back was when the Republican Party took over the leadership in 1994. The congress was composed of aggressive leaders who were conservatives. This was a big challenge to his objective thus the title ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.
Nevertheless, the man was very determined to pursue his mission and calling to enhance the community about the need to conserve the environment. This drove him to arrange for numerous campaigns and events to mobilize the public concerning the climate crisis and to build enough community support to force the congress to take action. Through this, he learnt a lot concerning the quality as well as the nature of America’s democracy conversation.
The year 1997 marked a very big achievement to him when he assisted in achieving a tremendous negotiation about global warming in Kyoto, Japan. This led the world to draft a world-moving treaty whose aim was to manage global warming pollution. The battle intensified when he came to convince and sell the treaty in his home country (Gore 8).
His battle faced a big blow when he learnt that the government of bush was committed to block the policies that had been set on pace to curb the pollution that led to global warming. There was a lot of controversy when Bush and his government launched efforts to weaken, roll back and if possible to eliminate the already existing rules and regulations concerning the global warming. This brought a lot of controversies concerning the efforts to fight the giant animal in the name of ‘Global Warming’. This was a big challenge to the fight against the global warming. As a result, all his plans were set back by the administration of George (Gore 9).
There was a lot of criticism about the book written by Gore. The critics based their negative reviews on what they said was Al Gore’s erroneous predictions. There was an article that tried to respond to the film’s science by the title; ‘The Real ‘Inconvenient Truth’ ’ written by JunkScience.com. He tries to demystify predictions revolving around the catastrophic global warming. Instead, he claimed that the zealots and activists who are regularly arguing about the atmospheric carbon dioxide are misdirecting concentration and endeavor from what is real and potentially addressable domestic, national and global problems.
However, Al Gore succeeds in his mission when he produces his film that was addressing the issue of climate crisis. The success was not mainly because of the predictions it made but because of the eco-memories it evokes. Just like other eco-disaster films of the 1970s, Gore’s film provides a counterargument based on the environmental reminiscence; indeed, Gore’s idea attains rhetorical power when an environmental nostalgia with emotional petition is induced amidst a contrast and comparison format. An Inconvenient truth stresses strongly for a sustainable environmental policies by inducing both universal environmental and personal memories.
The film begins with two sceneries showing two historical recollections of the earth 30 years ago, one of them being a meandering river next to Al Gore’s family farm where Gore and his wife Tipper are shown floating along in a boat over gentle undulations of the river.
There is a lot of highlight of the living nature by the river through the green plantations that lines the river. This living nature is brought out also by the fact that his wife is about to give birth to their first child. The images of the earth take from the outer space illustrate the other universal historical memory. Most of these images show the continents of the earth and the seas as taken by the satellites.
The images help to set a starting point for an emotional slide staging that illustrates to us the impacts human being have had on the globe during the last thirty years particularly. Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth takes us back to the past that personalizes Gore and his message and memorizes a world less changed by human exploitation, the one that was there before the establishment of the first Earth Day in 1970. The variations between Gore and his critics appear to respond to the two main issues: the extent to which human beings have contributed to the global warming and the answer to the question: what should be done in the case of future warming?’
His An Inconvenient Truth is a heart felt private expedition with a narrative format that is extremely exceptional. His work is all but bighead. The book gives a volume of concrete scientific evidence about the global emergency followed by writing on what can be done to prevent any further destruction. However looking at the number of time the man has tried to vie for the highest office the most powerful country on earth, we see behind the scene a picture of an opportunist.
He has tried to vie for the seat twice without succeeding. The question that comes in the mind is: ‘Were the book and the film a platform for his third attempt?’ In a hot debate with Gorgon, Gore replies “So whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, whether you voted for me or not, I very much hope that you will sense that my goal is to share with you both my passion for the earth and my deep sense of concern for its fate” (Vogel and Chichilnisky 31).
Gore uses science skillfully by involving the community in a discussion concerning a problem that has no purely technical solution like climatic changes and then try to find for mutual force, jointly agreed upon in the Kyoto Protocol. There are a lot of articles that were published with an aim of bringing confusion to the main topic. There were some statistics that were taken concerning the whole saga. Gore explains the mechanics behind these statistics. “At the beginning of 2001, President Bush hired a lawyer/lobbyist named Phillip Cooney to be in charge of environmental policy in the White House.
For the previous six years, Cooney had worked at the American Petroleum Institute and was the person principally in charge of the oil and coal companies’ campaign to confuse the American people about this issue. Even though Cooney had no scientific training whatsoever, he was empowered by the president to edit and censor the official assessments of global warming from the EPA and other parts of the federal government” (Vogel and Chichilnisky 32).
After the publication of the book and the production of the movie, there were a lot of transformations in the mind of Americans. According to the poll conducted in 2006 by the Pew Research Centre for press and people realized that 70% of voters believed that there was enough prove of the warming of the earth. Most of the 70% believed that this was as a result of the human activities. The percentage that believed that global warming is serious was found to be forty one.
Twenty percent of the Americans still claimed that the earth is not warming while twenty one percent acknowledged that the earth is warming but not as a result of human activities. Thus there was a lot of effect on Americans after the Al Gore’s work. Although 70% of Americans believe that there is global warming, only a small group of them believe that it is a serous issue that needs immediate attention. Very few of them said that global warming should be the first priority. “While 41% say global warming is a very serious problem, 33% see it as somewhat serious and roughly a quarter (24%) think it is either not too serious or not a problem at all.
Consequently, the issue ranks as a relatively low public priority, well behind education, the economy, and the war in Iraq….Indeed, out of a list of 19 issues, Republicans rank global warming 19th and Democrats and Independents rank it 13th” (Isham and Waage 60). This tells us why global warming is not extensively discussed about during election times. Politicians understand that there are more priority issues that influence the way people vote in America. In June 2006 there was another Pew survey that was conducted at the height of the publicity about Al Gore’s documentary concerning global warming, An Inconvenient Truth.
Then after that time, Time magazine was published with the head letter, ‘Be Worried, Be Very Worried,’ and almost every media outlet aired out bare facts about global warming. Nevertheless, this came as just news to the Americans who brushed it off. Recently, there have been some environmentalists who have stressed that global warming is a moral issue, but the fear is that all these announcements fall on deaf ears.
When the movie was shown on the first time in America, environmentalists walked out convinced that Americans had finally gotten the point. They understood that global warming is too overwhelming and that there was little to be done concerning it. The Americans had various feelings after watching the movie (Hoggan and Littlemore 145). One woman said that, “Well, I for one am very, very worried. As the mother of two young boys, I want to do everything I can to protect their future. But I feel like a shnook buying fluorescent light bulbs – as Environmental Defense recommends – when at last count, China, India and United States were building a total of 850 new coal-fired power plants” (Isham and Waage 65).
If the book was not written at all, there would not be any ecological action that would have been taken. The writing of the book has led to the change of the environmental politics. The society is much aware of the impacts of environmental pollution as well as degradation. Most of the countries have now realized the need to conserve our environment after seeing the aftermath of some of the effects of the global warming.
His speeches throughout the world and then the movie have changed the mentality of many people concerning the global warming. Without the book, the society would not have come to realize some of the naked truth about the global warming. Gore comments that the scientists have unanimously agreed with the facts in the book concerning global warming and the returns are there in. (Ebert 814).
Conclusion
Gore’s documentary and other recent film productions have illustrated one way Hollywood’s film production can go green in film content as well as production practices. The change from film to digital production will boost this environmental turn. The book has tried to show the need to conserve the eco-system for us to live in a more comforting world. Al Gore’s film has inspired ecological action by revealing much about the current state of environmental politics.
Works Cited
Ebert, Roger. Roger Ebert’s Movie Yearbook 2007. Missouri, Andrews McMeel Publishing. 2006. Web.
Gore, Albert. An inconvenient truth: the planetary emergency of global warming and what we can do about it. New York, Rodale. 2006. Web.
Heumann, Joseph K. and Murray, Robin L. Ecology and popular film: cinema on the edge. New York, SUNY Press. 2009. Web.
Hoggan, James and Littlemore, Richard. Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming. Vancouver, Greystone Books. 2009. Web.
Isham, Jonathan and Waage, Sissel A. Ignition: what you can do to fight global warming and spark a movement. NY, Island Press. 2007. Web.
Vogel, Joseph Henry and Chichilnisky, Graciela. The Economics of the Yasuni Initiative: Climate Change as If Thermodynamics Mattered. London, Anthem Press. 2010. Web.