The War on Hot Air
by Eric Ditzian

Over Memorial Day weekend, a film laden with liberal talking points hit theaters that pit one man in a fight against an evolving global threat. But in addition to X-Men: The Last Stand, theaters in New York and Los Angeles were showing another movie laden with liberal talking points that also pit one man in a fight against a global threat. Based on all the rhetorical hot air this movie has generated, you'd think it trafficked in the same fantastical apocalyptic scenarios as X-Men.

But An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's new documentary about the dangers of global warming, is standard Hollywood schlock only in its elevation of one man to the realm of mythic hero. And it is in this context that the reaction on both sides of the political spectrum is most accurately viewed.

The documentary follows the man who used to be the next president as he gives a slideshow about global warming and talks about how his personal life influenced his public beliefs. Climate change is about as unsexy as an issue gets, and the wooden Gore is about as unsexy as a politician can be — so there's great potential for disaster in making a movie featuring both. Somehow, though, the film manages to succeed as a piece of entertainment and education. Mostly.

Employing a geeked-out PowerPoint presentation and a few reliable barbs at the Bush administration's expense, Gore does an excellent job of explaining the science of global warming. He highlights the relationship between increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and rising global temperatures, a development that has begun to melt the polar ice caps and threatens a deadly rise in sea level and oceanic desalination. Gore also discusses less well-known but more human impacts of climate change, such as decreased supplies of drinking water, increased instances of drought and flooding, more intense hurricanes and tornados, and a rise in infectious diseases owing to booming insect populations. As he says, "It's like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation."

Though halfway through you might begin to get some graph-fatigue, An Inconvenient Truth manages to toe the delicate line between entertainment and education. The newly reenergized Gore is emphatic without being alarmist, professorial without being condescending. Cast in, and clearly embracing, the role of elder statesman, he cogently argues that global warming is not speculation but scientific fact, not a political issue but a moral one. The salient question he raises isn't whether global warming is happening, but what to do about it.

The conservative response to An Inconvenient Truth, meanwhile, has been as varied as it has been unconvincing. Some commentators tried the environment-versus-economy argument, as in a recent Fox News poll that asked, "Al Gore's global warming movie: could it destroy our economy?" (Really? As opposed to, say, a $9 trillion budget deficit?) But Gore preempts this question as a false choice, because we already possess affordable technologies to combat climate change. All we need is the political will to use them.

Another conservative strategy has been to discredit the science. A self-declared global warming skeptic and oil industry flack, for example, argued that retreating snows on Mount Kilimanjaro are due not to global warming but to declining atmospheric moisture. That's debatable. Unsurprisingly, the most reliable fact-checking has come from actual (non-partisan) scientists. The folks at RealClimate.org did identify several errors and exaggerations in Gore's assertions. But the bulk of the movie's science is unassailable.

The most telling conservative counterattack to Gore's 100-minute documentary is a 60-second television commercial produced by something called the Competitive Enterprise Institute that ends with a voice intoning, "Carbon Dioxide: they call it pollution; we call it life." That proposition is so scientifically naïve and intellectually dishonest as not to merit rebuttal. But it's the 99-minute difference in the length of the movie and the commercial that is indicative of the difference between liberal and conservative political strategies. In one camp, you have a politician giving a lengthy, fact-heavy hydrogeology lecture; in the other, a slogan fit for a bumper sticker. Is the GOP's electoral dominance any surprise?

The real motivation behind the conservative response, it would seem, is not to discredit global warming but rather to discredit the reemergence of Al Gore as a viable political player. Because owing partly to his credibility on environmental and energy issues and partly to a perceived softening in his image, Gore's presidential prospects are looking increasingly sunny. As the midterm elections approach, it's no wonder embattled conservatives are trying to take him down, along with his party.

The loudest, and perhaps saddest, response of all, though, has come from the liberal press, which has dubbed Gore everything from "The Un-Hillary" to "authentic, funny, self-deprecating." While Gore himself has declared he's not running for president in 2008, it's hard to walk away from this film and take that declaration seriously. As a political weapon An Inconvenient Truth falls somewhere above growing a beard and somewhere below being the vice president during eight years of extraordinary economic growth. Whether the camera is following him rock star-like though stadium corridors or capturing him gazing out the windows of countless planes and cars and helicopters and hotels, the film practically begs you to think of Gore as a man heavy on gravitas and ripe for another run at the White House.

But is he really a changed man? In the uncertain science of political gamesmanship, the answer is anything but clear. One wonders how he would fair once out of the classroom and back on the campaign trail. The largest failing of An Inconvenient Truth is its reluctance to state explicitly that while global warming may be a moral issue, its continued existence is due in large part to a range of political issues stretching back fifty years or more. Chief among them are a foreign policy hamstrung by an addiction to oil produced in some of the most repressive regimes in the world and a domestic policy beholden to the interests of industries that refuse to innovate or adapt. At the same time Gore urges us to reexamine the way we live, one wishes he'd urge our leaders to reexamine the way they govern.

But this failing probably doesn't matter. It's difficult to imagine anyone besides nerds and Bush-haters seeing this documentary. The film's greatest contribution is that it has helped spark a larger debate about a crucial issue. In the end, its box office gross and its star's political future will matter far less than its impact on opinion and legislation. The time has come to have a serious conversation about energy independence and innovation. Either that, or head to the theater to watch Wolverine kick some mutant ass.

Email Eric Ditzian at ericditzian at mac dot com