An Incomplete Truth, a critical look at Al Gore’s new film.

Changing my DVD settings to accommodate the Region 1 DVD I was leant gave me a feeling that if the message was so important why wasn’t it released worldwide in one day rather than the usual money making sequential release dates of other more commercial films. My initial scepticism was not lost in what was a film about a presentation tour, which in summary, left me thinking: tell me something I don’t know Al, and more importantly, now what Al?
Two facts that never got mentioned in all of his debate are the ethical ones: “Did the planet betray us”, the film asks? No of course not. Nature doesn’t care about us, because, despite what we think, the planet is not here for our benefit. And, global climate change is yet another proof of the fact that man is an unfortunate biological evolutionary development horribly out of kilter with everything else on the planet.
Let me expand on these arguments, in order.

The film – or presentation - requires little comment, it probably made better viewing for the audiences in the auditoria than for the film audiences. I was never really able to see the content of the slides or fully appreciate the quotations reprinted. Drama was the watchword in this film, not so much about the content but about the delivery. I was again left thinking what has his son being hit by a car or his sister dying of lung cancer and his father consequentially giving up their tobacco farm to do with global climate change? Life changing events perhaps; but they added an air of a moralistic subplot all to often interwoven into many cheap films to come out of the States aimed at a less discerning audience. The use of a platform-lift to point at the ever-increasing line of the carbon content of the atmosphere added a comedy to the drama, unnecessary to make such a serious point. And to add insult to injury, even the film trailer has that deep voiced guy who does all of the deodorant and beer adverts on TV.

So what now? Well signing the Kyoto treaty might be a good start, but then you have to stick to it. A task that seems very tiresome for most countries. One graph Al showed illustrated that a few small changes in our lifestyle can go a long way, right back to pre-1970 levels of carbon output. ‘And’? Was probably the best answer here. But it is not all bad news. No, some is worse, but was not shown. As I alluded
to above, the only ‘none carbon neutral’ animal on this planet is man. And the more of us there are the worse it will get. So why didn’t Al say the obvious, stop having more of us? I suppose, even for the ‘Ex- Next President of the United States’ that is a little too un-p.c. So his mundane suggestions included; buying a hybrid car, or travelling on the bus. But the energy required to produce the car in the first place is so much more than the car uses in its lifetime that, hybrid or not, it just does not help. And that bus you travelled on, it doesn’t stop when you get off, like your car does sitting all day in the garage. No, it travels around the town heating up the atmosphere as you sit smugly in your air-conditioned, ‘Minergy’ office. – Minergy? It’s logic is as flawed as the hybrid car’s. Then to top it all you go on holiday on a jet plane, which is the environmental equivalent of a ‘go directly to jail card’, do not pass go and do not collect £200.00.

Incomplete rather than inconvenient is the real message of this film. It put me in mind of, ‘Houston we have a problem’ and we are going to resolve it with a cardboard box some old tubing and some other things we found lying around. The facts are simple, we have a problem; but the really tough decisions to resolve it are beyond the will of most of us. Remember, the only time the fish stocks in the North Sea increased in the last 100 years was during World War II. So look down at your kids and apologise to the planet for your grievous act of pollution.

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