The Daily Campus

Issue date: 9/18/06 Section: News

The movie poster for "An Inconvenient Truth," shown Friday at the SU

Friday evening found the Student Union Theater packed with students waiting to see former Vice President Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth." The free showing of this environmental documentary was co-sponsored by the EcoHusky student group, the Uconn Office of Environmental Policy (OEP) and the Student Union Board of Governors (SUBOG).

The 100-minute film takes the viewer on an impressive journey through the facts supporting global warming while dispelling the myths and misconceptions surrounding it. Often with witty humor, Gore explains the frightening climate changes our planet is going through and will continue to suffer unless humanity makes some important lifestyle changes.

"Each of us is a cause of global warming," said the former vice president in the film, "but each of us can be a solution."

He explained how global warming caused the storm season of 2005 to be one of the worst in recorded history, citing Hurricane Katrina in the U.S., the first ever hurricane in the South Atlantic and the record 10 typhoons that hit Japan that summer.

He goes on to explain that these unprecedented meteorological phenomena are only the beginning and the future will see increasingly more destructive storms. However, throughout the film Gore emphasizes that it's not too late for change and if the effort is made the crisis can be averted.

Lending a personal air to the documentary, director Davis Guggenheim weaves Gore's life story in amongst the facts and statistics, revealing the former vice president's passionate mission to fight global warming.

In the film Gore appears in ways previously unseen in the media- as witty, funny and engaging. He shows himself to have been a faithful advocate of the environment through his years in the Senate, as Vice President and even in the wake of the controversial 2000 Presidential election when he began once again to give his famous global warming slide show that became the inspiration for this documentary.

The student reaction in the theater was overwhelmingly positive with the audience uttering collective "wows" at some of the more startling information and applauding at the conclusion of the film.

"I thought it [the film] had a really great message," said David Norman, a 1st-semester business major.

Continued...

Page 1 of 2 next >

Article Tools