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Wow. We don't need a bleak sci-fi film to depict how we will all end up - no Bladerunner, no 1984. We actually live in a world where what once would have seemed the most amazing works of alarmist fiction, are happening, all around us. But there is a positive flipside, out there, somewhere in it all. This story has both.

One of the most talked about films at this year's Sundance Film Festival was An Inconvenient Truth , a documentary about Al Gore (directed by David Guggenheim) and his recent humanitarian plight to raise awareness of global warming. The film has been given the blessings by critics throughout the US (it currently has a 92% rating on rottentomatoes.com ), and the infamous Roger Ebert even went as far as saying, "In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to." The film opened in theaters across New York and Los Angeles at the end of May, and instantly became the hottest ticket in town. By the beginning of last month, the film spread throughout the rest of the US, and the accompanying non-fiction literary companion of the film (written by Gore) had topped the best-seller list three times. Today, An Inconvenient Truth has beaten both In Bed With Madonna and Bowling For Columbine, to become the third highest-grossing documentary of all time (not bad for a film that has only shown for two months in the U.S, and is yet to hit screens, globally) .

Furthermore, Al Gore has given away 100% (every last penny) of the film's profits to educational funds for global warming awareness. In the throws of this most ghastly era of global politics (the years of the evil little Texan cowboy), the very man that cowboy so suspiciously beat into office has done something wonderfully unpredictable. Al Gore has emerged from his loss as all the better for having had it, faced a point in his life both intellectually and compassionately revolutionising, and come out the other side of it as a man who is managing to unite a most fiercely polarised public in a humanitarian disaster that makes 911 look like child's play. Al Gore is starting to look better for the presidency than he ever did when he actually ran. While the cowboy has the world terrified into compliance with political agendas based on economy and power, Al Gore has arrived on the cinema screens, to grab our conscience and redirect our eyes to where they should be looking - not in the paranoid hunt for "terror", but the planet we are slowly destroying. Al Gore is actually really fucking cool. Imagine that! It's unexpected, and yet at the same time, so perfect. Karma? Is that you?

 

The truth is, while the message is indeed powerful on its own, it's impossible to separate Gore from it. Naturally, the republicans who are moved by this movie have endlessly reminded us how the movie is powerful because the message defies political boundaries, and that the movie isn't in any way political, bla bla bla. However, the fact that this film has swayed their heads to agree with the message, and more importantly, embark on an ideological pathway that may lead them away from their beloved president (heaven forbid) is so wonderful, I'm prepared to forgive them these ridiculous assertions. The message of global warming has been present for fifteen years. It's there - it's been there, right in front of us. We repeatedly reference - for some reason, often joking about - the unmistakable presence of climate change. How many times have you turned on the news, or even opened the front door, and recognised that indeed something is happening to this great planet of ours? In this way, the time has been right for some time, now. Before, we couldn't see the actual affect - and we're far too immediate, selfish creatures, to adopt sacrifices to our lives for something that isn't affecting us yet. But after three years of devastating hurricanes, droughts, and that unimaginable tsunami, we certainly know what the fuck is going on. Something is, that's for sure. We were ready for the message, but we just didn't have it packaged right for us, by the right messenger. Al Gore is that messenger. Praise be to Al, I say.

And just what is Al Gore's appeal through this film? The Washington Post probably summed this up best;

"You cannot see this film and not think of George W. Bush, the man who beat Gore in 2000. The contrast is stark. Gore -- more at ease in the lecture hall than he ever was on the stump -- summons science to tell a harrowing story and offers science as the antidote. No feat of imagination could have Bush do something similar -- even the sentences are beyond him. But it is the thought that matters -- the application of intellect to an intellectual problem. Bush has been studiously anti-science, a man of applied ignorance who has undernourished his mind with the empty calories of comfy dogma."

While so many of us hoped and prayed for a miracle that would see Kerry in office, the reality was that however preferable to Bush he may have been, he was hardly the epitome of the man we need running this world. Kerry's anti-war ideals were either too ambiguous, or seemed stooped in an adolescent - perhaps even self-indulgent - struggle with the identity of his past. He was smarter than Bush, but his mind was far from astonishing, his resolve far from steely. In the end, Bush was what the world got - a man who holds the world in his hands, and yet can't pronounce simple English, is fried from years of coke and alcohol, and is a greedy, ignorant, discriminating born again, who doesn't mind manipulating the masses (or killing them) to get what he needs. Perhaps in a mild state of helplessness, we all have a laugh watching the Bushism videos, but really, it isn't very funny. So thank Bush's mighty God for Al Gore, I say! Al Gore is smart, strong, and compassionate. It doesn't get much better than that for who we need making changes to the political landscape of our world.

He also has something needed, protecting him against the amunition that allowed the right wing to shoot down Michael Moore et Al, and kept the Moore phenomenon to a movement that preached only to the converted. Gore has facts, facts, and more facts. The film follows Gore giving his free slideshow presentation (part of his appeal is also the quirky eccentricity to a man who dedicates his life to educating via his powerpoint slideshow); and boy, is it a slideshow that backs itself up. Gore is now the messenger of the entire scientific community - you know, they were the smart ones in white coats that warned us for years, without us taking any real notice. In the past few years especially, science has some rather startling evidence, and even better, it's simple evidence that is palatable to people who don't own white coats, like you and I.

This is why the movie is, without question, political. Bush told a press-conference that he refused to see Gore's documentary, and responded to the issue of global warming by putting forward an absurd claim, which science - the very fundamental knowledge of our species - knows is utter rubbish. He suggested that there was no need to debate global warming, because we couldn't be sure if maybe the earth was actually heating up naturally, for some... you know... other reason, and that humans and the pollution they omit could have nothing to do with it. This from a man who just lost hundreds of thousands of his people to the greatest freak hurricane in American history, and more importantly, a man currently plundering a foreign country for the very oil that is partly responsible for carbon dioxide omissions.

And while the film makes no direct reference to Democratic versus Republican politics, it does carefully inject the suggestion that the global warming crisis puts the terrorism panic into perspective, and that to waste money on wars fought partly over oil is misguided. And all this from the man Bush duped out of office. This movie, whether it likes it or not, regardless of how many critics conveniently say otherwise, is political. But shhhhh, it's a secret. If the conservatives and right wingers find out, they'll resist and force themselves away from the perception they need in order to have the penny finally drop for them.

Because while the issue is separate to politics fundamentally, as author Ross Gelbspan explained to ABC's Lateline last night, it simply has to be a political issue, and adequate reduction cannot be achieved merely "by lifestyle changes". Yes, we need to change our attitudes, socially - but without governmental changes (new laws), we cannot reverse the process and save our species. It's that bad, people. As it is, another part of the appeal of Gore's film is the hope it gives. The oil companies have blasted the film as "alarmist", but in fact, the film is quite the opposite. In comparison to the scientific community that simply has (quite rightly) pointed out the doom we're headed for, Gore's position differs. His role is to try to instigate social and governmental changes, because while we are now arriving at the point of no return, for a short time, the Human Race has an opportunity to do something about it. But it has to be soon. Really, it has to be now. Gore is never idealistic - his message is grim, in so far as it knows the little time there is left to be optimistic. But still, the very premise of An Inconvenient Truth is to change things, and save our society, and Planet Earth. That is politics, and the change demands it from a governmental level, in a time where America is run by an oil shark. This film is political, plain and simple.

But what was it that initially led me to declare, with an appropriate sense of the surreal (if only it wasn't very, very real), that we live in the future sci-fi novel having arrived in the present tense? I actually wasn't referring to the increasing decay of our planet, from a natural perspective. As we've discussed, this is a political fight. The fight, my friends, is on. And what it has produced, if you're yet to see it, is about to send a shiver down your spine.

The film tells us that there is no argument in the scientific community over the reality of global warming. True. Almost. Because in the entire scientific community, over the past decade, there has been a single report that goes against global warming. Funded by? The oil companies, of course. As the film points out, this is the same deal as the tobacco companies who threw reports at governments that smoking was good for your health. It should be noted that for decades, the governments listened - just as Bush chooses to listen, now. Money talks.

Their latest move, in response to the film, has to be seen to be believed. You're about to see it. The Competitive Enterprise Institute (a company funded by Exxon/Mobil) has produced a series of television commercials to counter-advertise the documentary as it sweeps across the country.  In these advertisements, Gore and his ideological movement - the world's scientific community - are rubbished as hippies, and we are supposed to be lulled into a soothing trance of deception, as the ever so calm hypnotherapy voice tries to equate carbon dioxide with life itself. Nevermind that their point of argument - that we breathe it out, so therefore the gas should be looked at lovingly - is ignoring that the problem is not the small amount humans breathe out, but the vast amounts we burn up and spew into the atmosphere. Nevermind, that what we breathe out is not "life", but the waste of life (try putting a plastic bag over your head, and see how integral to your life all that gas is, then). Nevermind that their assertion that trees breathe it, actually presents what is part of the problem, since we have logged too many trees to handle the amount we are omitting. I'd also like to know how burning fuel has rid the world of... wait for this... "back breaking labor".

 

And just when you're wondering if modernity can become any more insidious, the oil companies straight out appeal to our selfishness and laziness. Because these hippies are trying to tell us that our fuel consumption is going to kill our children, but you know, petrol-driven cars are just so... well... convenient. And are we expected to sit around in the dark, in order to spare light bulbs? Well, feel free to ignore that there are alternatives to the carbon dioxide problem (if only the companies and governments would allow them to break through). Thanks to those hippies, we're all going to be sitting around in the dark, and, like, walking to places, and stuff. Yuck.

And so, in the true spirit of this decade, a story of political and social hope and inspiration comes head to head with something George Orwell is no doubt watching down upon saying, "I told you so". Click play below, and behold one of the oil industry's responses that, frightening as it is, is currently airing on American screens. Spine chilling propaganda, anyone?