"An Inconvenient Truth": great! (except last 10 min.)

This film has a lot of hype around it.  For the most part it lives up to it.  Basically this is a presentation by Al Gore, he's been giving slideshow/speeches in hundreds of cities for the last couple years about global warming, this movie is basically that presentation plus a bit extra so it's more of a documentary film than just the speech & slides.

I am an environmentalist (I'm a revolutionary communist).  I am not a liberal or a Democrat (I'm a revolutionary communist).

So I wasn't surprised by any of the films contents, both in terms of the severity of the environmental situation as well as Gore's political misunderstandings.  That said, much of the material was nonetheless shocking in the many details, for example state-sized chunks of ice shelf falling off Antarctica in a matter of weeks (that's past tense mind you, not one of those "projected possibility" things).  Also Gore -- whilst wrong in his individual-based (fill the bucket with many rain drops) solution & stupid patriotism -- seems to be a very honest person.  He even showcases some disillusionment with the political system, talking about how he would go to congress with these hearings on global warming, & come home shocked that they didn't care etc.

He does talk about how ignoring global warming is bad for the economy also, & that the popularised notion of "trees vs. jobs" or whatever is wrong-headed.  Of course in his mind the only possible economy is a capitalist one, even if he means a more "benevolent" capitalism, & you can tell this by some of the examples he uses in that section of the film.  However you can't reduce this to some dogmatic thing of "Gore represents the environmentally aware section of the bourgeoisie, they only want to save the environment to make more profits".  Surely this is true to a point, & I don't know if he is still involved in this anymore, but Gore personally was owner of a company that took land from the U'wa people in Colombia to get natural gas.  So Gore is certainly a capitalist & certainly not a saint, but he also seems to genuinely care about the humanity's future survival.

And that's worth thinking about, everybody, this is survival we are talking about, there will be neither communism nor fascism, nor anything in between, if we don't have an environment fit for human beings.  And similar to the stance taken by revolutionaries faced with nuclear holocaust in the '80s, we can say that we may try to rip a revolution out of huge devastation & death, but it's really better to do it beforehand &/or otherwise prevent the catastrophe.

The film is well-made & Gore's presentation is well-delivered.  Some Seattle Weekly idiot reviewer said they were bored or whatever, only liked the 3 minute cartoon part, but they suck.  It's very interesting to watch & moving, whether you know a lot or a little on the subject.  The science is easy to understand, without being too simplified or condescending.  As I said above though, the last ten minutes or so is a real let-down, he starts talking about "America's greatness" for who knows what dumbass reason, & then gives small individual-based solutions mainly aimed at the middle class, like "buy a hybrid car" etc.

(There's an analogy there too I guess, you can read some Democrats' articles exposing the Bush Regime's fascist actions & imperial blunders, but if you follow their line & solutions, you will get nowhere.)