The movie poster for "An Inconvenient Truth," shown Friday at the SU

Environmental Movie Shown To Full Theater

By: Timothy Bleasdale

Posted: 9/18/06

Friday evening found the Student Union Theater packed with students waiting to see former Vice President Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth." The free showing of this environmental documentary was co-sponsored by the EcoHusky student group, the Uconn Office of Environmental Policy (OEP) and the Student Union Board of Governors (SUBOG).

The 100-minute film takes the viewer on an impressive journey through the facts supporting global warming while dispelling the myths and misconceptions surrounding it. Often with witty humor, Gore explains the frightening climate changes our planet is going through and will continue to suffer unless humanity makes some important lifestyle changes.

"Each of us is a cause of global warming," said the former vice president in the film, "but each of us can be a solution."

He explained how global warming caused the storm season of 2005 to be one of the worst in recorded history, citing Hurricane Katrina in the U.S., the first ever hurricane in the South Atlantic and the record 10 typhoons that hit Japan that summer.

He goes on to explain that these unprecedented meteorological phenomena are only the beginning and the future will see increasingly more destructive storms. However, throughout the film Gore emphasizes that it's not too late for change and if the effort is made the crisis can be averted.

Lending a personal air to the documentary, director Davis Guggenheim weaves Gore's life story in amongst the facts and statistics, revealing the former vice president's passionate mission to fight global warming.

In the film Gore appears in ways previously unseen in the media- as witty, funny and engaging. He shows himself to have been a faithful advocate of the environment through his years in the Senate, as Vice President and even in the wake of the controversial 2000 Presidential election when he began once again to give his famous global warming slide show that became the inspiration for this documentary.

The student reaction in the theater was overwhelmingly positive with the audience uttering collective "wows" at some of the more startling information and applauding at the conclusion of the film.

"I thought it [the film] had a really great message," said David Norman, a 1st-semester business major.

Critics have praised the film as powerful and moving and the New York Times called it "intellectually exhilarating."

However, not all critics praised the documentary. Many, such as Peter Schweizer of USA Today, called the film hypocritical and politically biased. In his review, Schweizer gave various examples of how the former vice president has failed to make some of the very changes he asks viewers to make in the film.

"The issue here is not simply Gore's hypocrisy; it's a question of credibility," writes Schweizer.

Many critics, advocates and opponents alike have expressed dismay at the political nature of the documentary.

Opponents claim that given the extremely political life Al Gore has lived, the film cannot be anything other than biased. Advocates worry that the only people that will watch the film are those that already agree with the views it presents.

"The only disappointing part of the movie was that it had to be political. Everyone here in the audience tonight probably already agreed with Gore on these issues," said Robin Donohue, a 5th-semester environmental management and engineering major and president of the Forestry and Wildlife Club.

Gore addresses this very issue in the film explaining that given the threat to the survival of life on Earth, global warming should be a moral issue and not a political one.

EcoHusky also had a booth outside the theater explaining the basics of global warming.

The group offered a short global warming quiz for the audience to take before the show to win an EcoHusky T-shirt.

"This was an awareness event," explained OEP intern Jenny Sayers, a 5th-semester environmental science and anthropology major who helped organize the event. "We wanted people to be able to see the objective facts and hopefully take them to heart."