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Review

Al Gore first gave his traveling slide show/lecture on the global environment decades ago. After his White House stint, he’s taken it on the road again, and the climate changes that have occurred in the interim have only strengthened his arguments. This film presentation of his lecture is accessible, comprehensible, well-organized and — really! — fun. It’s chock full of charts and graphs, animated sequences and striking visuals; and it is well organized in presenting lots of complex information with crisp clarity.

The film is unexpectedly entertaining, given its sobering message. Amid stunning images of melting icebergs, belching smoke stacks and the all-too-familiar spiral of Katrina hitting New Orleans, Gore delivers well-reasoned arguments and the basic science of global warming documented by the scientific community, if not the Bush administration. Comparison photography shows the North and South Poles shrinking, melting away with the ice fields of Canada, Greenland and the Himalayas. The Himalayas provide 40% of the world’s drinking water.

The Artic Circle’s permafrost is thawing. Antarctica has shrunk by 40% in 40 years. The big meltdown will wipe out coastal communities world-wide, causing massive population relocation. Flooding in one area relocates precipitation to cause drought somewhere else. Higher temperatures facilitate soil evaporation, crippling farming and inducing famine. While natural fluctuations in weather cycles have occurred over the millennia, our current technical capabilities allow us to inflict a monumental impact on the planet’s delicate balance.

An Inconvenient Truth delivers the message of the moment. All other political and social considerations will be moot if the planet degrades to point of not being able to sustain human life.

Gore’s persona here has been described as the college professor whose classes you never missed. He’s personable, relaxed and charming, funny and articulate. If only this guy had campaigned for president.

 -- Ann Yarabinee