I just got back from seeing Al Gore’s new movie about global warming, An Inconvenient Truth (check out the trailer). On the way back, my roomates and I were discussing how excellent it was; the film is enormously informative and persuasive, but it is also very entertaining, which is saying a lot when you consider its topic and format. It is especially exciting, as many have noted, to see the “new” Al Gore; 85% of the movie is spent listening to him give his slideshow presentation, yet the man endues the film with the exactly the kind of enthusiasm and humor that he has lacked so sorely in the past.

One of the main points of the movie is that there is the disparity between the scientific consensus and the public discussion on this issue. There is almost no scientific debate about whether or not global warming is occuring, yet our media, our politicians, and most unfortunately our lifestyles are all deaf to the matter. There is a great moment in the film when Gore talks about a study which showed that, out of a random sample of over 900 scientific papers on the subject, every single one treated the issue as a fact, yet something like 50% of the articles about it in the popular media treat it as an undecided debate.

This was brought home most bitterly while we discussed the practicalities of more effecient vehicle standards as we drove back from the movie. We pulled up behind a Hummer, and I thought about America’s perverse love affair with oversized, ineffiecient vehicles. We all made various comments about how the physics of movement means that heavier cars invariably means higher energy consumption. Then, at that exact moment, as if to mock us for even having the discussion, we went to pass and realized that this wasn’t just an H2, it was stretch Hummer Limo.

I feel sick to my stomach when I think that people actually believe driving around in these monstrosities (which get about 8 mpg) is cool. I remember this article from the New York Times a few years ago about those who owned Hummers and about the patriotism they felt when driving in them. How misguided can you be? Real patriotism would be doing something to address the problems of this country. The people in that Hummer Limo I saw earlier tonight not only weren’t acting patriotically- they were in fact acting negligently with regards to our country and the problems we face. Real patriotism involves real sacrifice, not posturing and ignoring the consequences. An actual patriot would be doing something to fix our problem with oil, which is a dual climate and foreign policy crisis, rather than carelessly adding to it.

I very much hope that lots of people go to see An Inconvenient Truth. It’s a good movie; as I said before it is entertaining, but it is also deeply frightening. With any luck it will achieve wide viewership and scare America enough about global warming that we might actually do something about it.