Heresy

I popped popcorn to get ready for the viewing of the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.” I’m not sure of the reason that I did it; but I think it was to make the viewing of a difficult film easier.

In the end, the movie wasn’t as hard to watch as I imagined.

I had spent the afternoon with the book, and the movie followed the text exactly. It’s true; with 70 million tons of greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere every day, our world is heating up. There is a direct correlation with the increases of carbon emissions and the increases of the temperature of the earth. The ice caps are melting; glaciers are smaller than they have ever been; the world’s water supply is diminishing and the effects of all of this will be devastating on every population on earth.

Not surprisingly, news reports are now linking the genocide in Darfur with shrinking water resources. We can definiately expect more turbulent weather, more experiences like Hurricane Katrina.

It’s all dire news; and that is what I expected from the movie. But I wasn't prepared to be in awe at Al Gore’s persistence in presenting his slide show over 1,000 times and his ability to deal with the reality that our Congressional leaders and our administration take a less than an aggressive stance toward this known catastrophe.

It is heartening to see one man, inspired by a truth that he knows, be consistently clear in a simple message. "We need to act now. We need to reduce our footprint on this earth. We need to be proactive in protecting our way of life."

And we need to be pointedly clear: Our way of life is respectful of the interdependent web of life of which we are all a part. Anything less than that is, quite simply, heresy: a distortion of what we all believe to be so.

At this time when the news is depressing and activists have to make movies in order to get the public's attention, I was caught unexpectedly by one man's sense of hope and purpose.