A little less than a month ago as I write this, I let it be known that I had not yet seen Al Gore’s global warming movie, An Inconvenient Truth. Since I figured that, as a researcher in the field, I already knew what the message would be.

Well, now I have seen it. My church arranged for a free screening, and I agreed to moderate the discussion afterward. I saw pretty much what I expected to see in the movie. But the event provided an opportunity for some random reflections. Which, since I need to get something onto this blog this week, I thought I’d share.

Ten people – counting the three organizers – showed up on a Tuesday night to see Al Gore’s production. Perhaps that’s all I really need to say, right there. Yeah, Boothbay Harbor is a fishing village in mid-coast Maine, and everyone knows there’s nobody in Maine, especially at the end of the tourist season.

But there was sure one hell of a lot of nobodies at the Mark Knopfler concert down the street a few days ago, and they had enough in their no pockets to retire a million-dollar mortgage on our recently-refurbished Opera House. Ain’t that right, Johnny?

And yes, I know, the timing wasn’t the best. This week, fears of global warming have been chased off the radar by fears of global incineration. Yes, terror is front and center again, courtesy of North Korea. Just in time for the US elections. Hmmm … is the Dear Leader, Kim Jong-Il, a closet Republican? Perhaps he’s confused about the “red state" phenomenon. Or is it that there’s something they’re not telling us about those “stalled" negotiations? Wonder what the Hangul is for nucular …

An Inconvenient Truth runs for 96 minutes. The actual global warming message takes up about 25 minutes. The rest is all Al Gore, all the time. The Noble Warrior. Sober, concerned, committed. And, haunted. By personal trauma and a System That Will Not Hear – and, oh by the way, they jobbed him out of the White House in 2000.

Al, take a memo. The Presidency in 2000 was yours for the taking. All you had to do was ensure that the McDonald’s down the street from the White House put plenty of saltpeter in your Commander in Chief’s Big Macs. Or, you could have used the same powers of persuasion on exhibit in your flick to get him to at least take his fellatio the hell out of the Oval Office.

Surely you’ve been in politics long enough by now to know what kinds of things determine the fates of people and programs in these United States. Budgets, balanced or blown? Nah. Lies about supposed state terrorism? Nope. Secret CIA torture camps? Bzaaaaaat. You didn’t need that testicle anyway. Tramping on the Constitution? What was that about your constitution? A return to the “robber baron" corporate culture of the late 19th century? Har de har har.

C’mon. It’s the blue dress, Bill. Screams in high places, Howard. The emails that got away, Mark. After a year of Denny Hastert playing the little Dutch boy at the dike. If it ain’t on the pages of the National Enquirer, on sale in supermarkets everywhere, it don’t matter.

Of course, this has all been done before. Way back in Renaissance Italy, there was this guy who threw lavish parties, surrounded himself with art, culture, groupies, all kinds of National Enquirer stuff – and, incidentally, ran the finances of Florence into ruin. His name? Lorenzo de’Medici, “The Magnificent". His father played a major role in establishing the fortune that Lorenzo had such a good time spending, but he wasn’t much at partying. His name? Piero, “The Gouty".

Near the end of the film, Gore resoundingly declares that the world’s scientists have a critical role to play in our society, as the source of disinterested, dispassionate information on the true state of the planet. Which is great. Except for one thing. Somebody has to pay for that dispassionate assessment. And while initiative after initiative to build the funding base for public-domain science in these United States goes down in flames, and while the agencies responsible for managing what funds there are become increasingly politicized, the “disinterested" scientist is becoming an endangered species.

My colleagues at my workplace used to be able to run their laboratories on the basis of one or maybe two grant awards a year. Now, it’s impossible without four or five running simultaneously. If you can get them. We have a lot of part-timers now. There just aren’t very many million-dollar patents to be had in environmental research. And where that carrot’s not dangling, there isn’t much in the way of public funding support.

So, more and more scientists are entering the private sector, where their researches are directed at those patents, and their discoveries are locked up in the prison of intellectual property. To be released only in the form of pain pills that cause bankruptcies and heart attacks. Not to mention dick pills at $100 a cum.

And, it’s getting harder and harder to recruit new scientists, public or private sector, in America. The educational and financial ante is high, the pay is low (often not covering the “opportunity cost", particularly in lower-income fields like the environmental sciences). Who the hell wants to work so hard for so little? Especially when the good townspeople refuse to fund science labs in the high schools or the teachers to make effective use of them. And then turn around and donate three times that money to put NFL-style stadium lighting on the high school football field.

It so happens that most of the things that are represented as “science fact" in An Inconvenient Truth are, at least, within the ranges of observation and inference that most scientists would have accepted at the time (late 2005) that the movie was recorded. In other words, Gore tells no obvious lies.

But that doesn’t really mean much. Because if the facts were the thing, as they would be if a scientist were talking, the movie would, as I’ve said before, run 25 minutes. And probably put most people to sleep. And hacked off the rest. The inconvenient truth of An Inconvenient Truth is that the facts don’t really matter. Except as tools to get you to react. Not think. React. Do as Al says. Go out into the world and do … what? He doesn’t really say. Never mind. Follow me and all will be well.

A Chinese girl in the movie actually asks the question, “What do we do?" Gore releases a 45-second torrent of words in response, but he never answered the question. The few positive steps that do appear in the movie – during the credits! – are right out of the era of the Arab oil embargo, in the flippin’ 1970s. We the People were even doing them! And then the good times rolled, and so did the SUVs. Status. We in our corporate suits must have status. The environment be damned if it gets in the way of The Ladder.

But never mind the facts. It is enough to build a feeling. “Al Gore is Right. We Must Follow." Just like Bush and the Neocons are doing with their “terror / anti-terror" campaigns. “Bush is Right. We Must Have Security. We Must Follow." Slogans, emotions and the Leader Principle. The perfect solution to deep and difficult national and world challenges for a people whose high school graduates have one-fourth the vocabulary of their counterparts a half-century ago, and whose public schools are starved of everything but propaganda and steroid-chomping fifteen-year-old offensive linemen.

Dr. Goebbels would have been proud.

   - O Ceallaigh

Copyright © 2006 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.

All opinions are mine as a private citizen.