I recently watched An Inconvenient Truth which is a documentary starring Al Gore and discusses global warming. After viewing the movie, I wasn’t inspired to rally the people and fight global warming. In fact, I was a little depressed and hated the people of the world a little. There was one scene where Al Gore weighed gold on a scale with the world. He said we had to choose between money and saving our globe from global warming. If I could revise that metaphor, I would compare luxury and the saving the globe from us(human beings). Global warming is part of a bigger picture: there will be just to many humans for the earth to support. And to build on that, humans live a life of luxury at the earth’s expense. We use resources like oil, coal, and wood at alarming rates. It isn’t a slow procedure either. We blitzkrieg the land with drilling, mining and mass deforestation leaving the land stripped. To make matters worse, we spew the resources back into the world in a very unhealthy manner like fossil fuels and CO2. We use too much water, and pollute the sites from which we draw it.

Agent Smith from the Matrix movie claimed humans were like a virus, populating an area until it can’t hold us anymore then we move to a new area. Humans are throwing off the world’s natural cycle. We are overpopulating the world with our luxurious lives. We need to change the way we live and reduce our carbon footprints so that we can slow down our speed of destruction. Humans need to balance between living comfortable lives and caring for our earth. Right now we support our luxurious lifestyles more than we are caring for the health of the globe.

I would also like to add comments about the use of visual media in An Inconvenient Truth. In Al Gore’s actual presentation, he used quite a bit of visual media, but the visuals used in the movie were totally different.  Al Gore used images of nature to stir “homegrown” emotions about what we would be losing if we didn’t take care of the world now. He also used visuals of his life to personalize, and humanize the movie. In his actual presentation, he used many pictures of suffering glaciers because of global warming. He showed diagrams and charts to better communicate his ideas. He also used the famous scissor lift to enhance his point about growing CO2 levels. It was a good blend of visuals, very effective.