An Inquiry Into the Life and Times of Teridon

The movie An Inconvenient Truth, can never be as effective as a wake-up call to millions of Americans if it were not for the courage of conviction of its main character – former Vice-President Al Gore. The movie’s message is ultimately tied to the manner by which Gore inspired a national grassroots network of Americans that much can be done, no matter how small nor simple, in the war against global warming. This paper shall examine the lengths Al Gore took to send his message to the people of America and the deep-seated changes and prospects which his life-long advocacy fueled and transformed.

Since 2001, Gore has embarked on an educational blitzkrieg of the evil of global warming as to why all governments of the world must come together and act decisively to combat the looming threat not only to mankind but to the existence of life on earth. He lectured in different places – universities, colleges, town halls, theaters – all venues in which Gore can spread the message, inspire people and get them to act together with him in his fight for a better world. He has cut across an entire cross-section of American society in convincing them of the validity of his cause – conservative Christians, liberals, ethnic communities and a host of different diverse groups who otherwise would not have come together unless the fate of humanity is involved. At the center of it all was Al Gore, the defeated presidential aspirant who never lost his spurs despite his tragic loss and even proved to the entire world that a presidential setback can never preclude a good man from serving his people.

Nonetheless, his advocacy is never without intense opposition from an elite section of American society. In a recently concluded congressional hearing, Al Gore was again taken for granted by senior Republican congressmen who obviously had in their objectives the debunking of his premises against global warming by using ad hominem attacks and using argumentation fallacies to bring Al Gore and his advocacy to a corner. They kept on saying that the scientific evidence proving global warming is a fraud, despite the massive evidence presented by international scholars during a meeting in Paris a few months back. More so, Al Gore is being portrayed as simply interested in riding the tide of global warming for his own personal interests as he perfectly knew how important a unifying issue it was for a great majority of the American people.

All of these criticisms and lies never stopped Al Gore from continuing on with his struggle and being true to his mission of education the people on the evils of global warming. His film, The Inconvenient Truth, was even given an Academy Award for being the best documentary of 2006, in recognition of his relentless efforts in molding the minds of the American public. He has been able to create a pressure group to lobby Congress to form policies which would protect the earth from further heating up, and restrict industries from over-producing toxic fumes that would soon enough contribute to the heating process of the earth.

On the other hand, his advocacy of awareness on global warming has also tacitly compelled much of the world to heed his call to lessen carbon emissions and has tacitly given much credence to the global trend of states to phase-out CFCs in industrial, commercial and residential uses, except for products utilized for medicinal purposes, among others. Greater awareness of the issue has even led to the ratification of scores of states of the Kyoto Protocol, save for the United States, which has a powerful lobby that pressures and restrains the American government from fostering and consolidating environmental unity with the world. Nonetheless, as signatories of the Kyoto Protocol, the signatory states are obliged to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases in a given length of time. While much of the industrialized world and even emerging economies have yet to follow the provisions of the Protocol strictly, its ratification and implementation is a good sign that the international community already recognizes the imminent global problem if not enough steps are taken by state actors in the soonest possible time.

However, there is no better indication that his campaign against global warming has taken the high road than the recently released UN Report on Global Warming which blamed much of the world’s heating on human activities which may seem to possess merely localized effects at first but contains environmental repercussions in a global scale, such as the melting of the ice caps and glaciers. This report underscores the truth of what Al Gore has been saying since his early years as a young statesman. If the world continues to immerse itself in a state of denial on the issue, the effects of the heating of the world has dire consequences, such as changing climate patterns and more environmental disasters.

In all of these, it is clear the movie concretely chronicled how deep Vice-President Gore’s campaign and struggle has become, not only for the American people but to the world. His work has inspired a better understanding of the issue and has even led the international community to stand at attention. Without the political pressure that his campaign and movement created, no scientific study on global warming in the magnitude as the UN Paris report above could ever had come about, especially in the light of counter-assertions by developed states against the veracity of the claims of global heating. With this, the work of the movie and the man is halfway done.

# posted by Terry Ridon : 1:44 AM