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An Inconvenient Truth

Movies and the media are not new ways to portray the worries of the world – soaps do it every day and the ‘Day After Tomorrow’ left us cold the day before yesterday; but is a new era dawning and all of this about to take a step change in a new documentary entitled ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ .

‘An Inconvenient Truth’ is a recently released film–format documentary‚ based on the world tour lectures about global warming given by former US vice president Al Gore. But is it also just another illustration of science fiction from the artistic skills of the film director depicting the woes of the world or will it be the epic that draws the crowds in a climate change ‘cult’.

This is not the first of its kind. We can go back to 1991 and the film ‘Fire on the Amazon’, in which Sandra Bullock portrays an activist assisting a brash photographer investigate the brutal assassination of a famous environmentalist who was trying to stop the destruction of the Amazonian Rainforest. Or also of the same decade‚ ‘Fire Down Below’ starting Steven Seagal as an undercover EPA (Environment Protection Agency) agent investigating the dumping of toxic wastes into abandoned mines in Kentucky, causing contamination and pollution killing wildlife, animals and people.

It is strange that all of these storylines take place west of the Atlantic, yet there is still little sign of uptake of the point. But perhaps the messages were hidden too deep within the filmmaker’s script of entertainment value leading perhaps to the reincarnation of ‘Nero fiddled while Rome burned’ but on a much bigger block-buster scale with a title of ‘Global Incineration through Individual Indifference’, underlining catastrophic climate change to come.

Man’s actions and impacts on the environment are not new subjects, but perhaps what is new is the frequency with which they are now being openly talked about. The two minute sustainability slots in most of the TV News broadcasts, the dedicated programmes on waste, recycling and other environmental topics‚ newspaper articles‚ business reporting‚ government targets‚ legislative‚ regulatory and tax impositions. All depicting the effects of climate change through melting ice caps‚ rising sea levels‚ eroding coast lines‚ flooding‚ localised droughts‚ crop failures‚ heat waves and extremes of weather that kill thousands of people every year.

We all know this is not new; we all know the mounting deadly effects of climate change; we all know what the basic causes are that generate such effects, yet why is it that we press on blindly without taking some action to put a halt to this phenomenon? What will it take to evoke sustainable action into the daily lives of the masses? Perhaps it does need the combination of the short sharp shock treatment depicted by this film coupled with the more subtle messages from the likes of the Buying Solutions ‘Sustainable Solutions Website’‚ or the unfolding ‘Sustainable Solutions Catalogue’ and other such focused material that we produce to make it easy for people to be sustainable.

Unlike the filmmakers’ world we only have one planet to provide for all of our needs; we cannot reconstruct it at the end of the disaster movie – in fact this is not a movie‚ it is real life – so we must start treating it with some respect – now!

Posted by Brian Millsom, Environmental Impact Manager from OGCbuying.solutions on 01/12/2006 - 16:23:30