Gore delivers a passionate plea in film

By CARRIE RICKEY
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
The global heat wave has crept above the Arctic Circle, where melting ice leaves polar bears homeless and at peril of drowning.
If the warming trend continues at both poles, might the sequel to last year's popular documentary be called "The Death March of the Penguins"?
Mercifully, such alarmism is absent from "An Inconvenient Truth," where a disarming, funny and animated Al Gore, once a robot among presidential candidates, proves himself a rock star among environmental activists.
Armed with information on strategic energy reserves and a PowerPoint presentation in which he comes off as DJ of an eco-mashup, Gore declares that "political will is a renewable resource." He proves it by delivering a presentation as electrifying as it is unsettling.
In time-lapse photographs taken from space, Gore shows polar ice caps shrinking from hat to button proportions. He also shares aerial shots from over Mount Kilimanjaro that reveal that the fabled snows at the summit are no more. Probable cause? Increasing levels of carbon dioxide that increase temperatures.
Who knew that a talk about the perils of C02 could pack such suspense? This is a disaster movie, a real-life one, with the former veep challenging the audience to change the outcome.
A different Gore
Filmed in auditoriums and lecture halls from Berkeley to Boston and beyond, Davis Guggenheim's documentary follows Gore on his Global Warning campaign trail. This is not the Albert Gore Jr. of the 2000 presidential race speaking in lockbox lockjaw. This is a man with a plan playing to receptive houses, a guy who by way of introduction says, "I used to be the next president of the United States."
Which raises a question. Is there another agenda behind Gore's environmental agenda? Guggenheim's film shows Gore both onstage in action and backstage in reflection -- humanizing him in a way his handlers failed to in 2000.
But just as I scribbled in my notebook, "Is this repositioning AG for the 2008 presidential campaign?" Gore said ruefully, "Good people of good politics of both parties" are "ignoring" global warming. He wants to make the global cool-down a bipartisan effort.
In spite of Gore's criticism of the current administration's failure to ratify the Kyoto accord (to reduce levels of greenhouse gases), the film doesn't feel like an extended-play campaign ad. Like former President Jimmy Carter talking about Habitat for Humanity, Gore comes off as a recovering politician finding his post-politics voice and mission. And if "An Inconvenient Truth" is both political campaign document and personal mission statement? It's not so different from his 1992 eco-book "Earth in the Balance," published the year he was elected vice president.
I admit that when Gore held forth about the "moulins" in Antarctica (moulin is the word for glacial caving as a result of rising temperatures), I needed toothpicks to prop open my eyelids.
I was roused back to alertness by Gore's discussion of climate's ramifications for industries. If he is right, jet stream disruptions caused by global warming account for recent killer tsunamis and hurricanes.
"An Inconvenient Truth" is a powerful film that educates as it engages. Viewers 10 and older will understand -- and challenge -- Gore's assertions.