Childhood Obesity

I recently viewed An Inconvenient Truth, a documentary based on Al Gore’s global warming campaign. The documentary can certainly be looked upon as a piece of risk communication. It provides a combination of clips from Al Gore’s informational campaign on global warming and narratives where Al Gore tells about his life experiences. I think this unique combination of data and story telling offers a meaningful message. Visual images were a crutial part of the message portrayed, and gave the audience something to focus upon.

In the beginning of the film Al Gore quotes Mark Twain, “What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know – it’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.” This shows Gore’s belief that people whom are so sure that global warming is a hoax are only setting themselves up for trouble. He spends a large part of his campaign presentation on educating the audience on the straight facts. Graphs and charts were provided to give a visual picture of what is occuring in the world today. This terrifying information is not open for interpretation, the concrete data speaks for itself. Our world is experiencing global warming. What is often disputed is the cause of this crisis. Gore speaks of the Scientific Revolution and it’s effects on the environment…including possible contributors to the rising temperatures on Earth. In addition, he displays a chart of the increasing carbon dioxide levels on Earth over the past. As the 50 year projection was shown the data skyrocketed off the charts. Another screen above was used to extend the data, and Gore himself used a lift to bring himself up to its level. This extreme visual aid was successful in getting the audience to grasp just how large a change the world is seeing.

I thought that one of the most effective aspects of the documentary was the narrative and stories told by Gore. Several times he gave an insight to his personal life, making himself more relatable to the audience. Telling tales of his childhood and family link the issue being discussed to emotions. Specifically, Gore tells of his father’s tobacco farm. Even after the Surgeon General’s warning about the dangers of tobacco and smoking his family continued to run a tobacco farm. It wasn’t until after his sister died from lung cancer that they stopped. It wasn’t until it was too late. The parallel between this story and the dangers of global warming is evident. If global warming is not made a more publicly acknowledged problem, and if people don’t start acting out soon…it may be too late. As the films title says: The truth may not be convenient, but it’s still the truth.