Cassandra  

I finaly had a chance to see the Al Gore movie last night. A few thoughts:

Despite the whole Al Gore lovefest aspect of it (I really need a print of Al's Melancholy Gaze for my living room), there is some serious energy here. Obviously it's a movie that seeks to create buzz about a particular issue, and for me it has to be a huge success on that dimension. I've never been an environmentalist, and yet I found the movie both sobering and affecting. It hit all the right notes, and the science was plainly comprehensible thanks to the avoidance of any statistical gyrations.

As I understand it, the movie has also fueled Gore's comeback hopes, or rather created a Gore fanbase who are now agitating for a comeback. I don't know what his intentions are or what will happen, but it's pretty clear that this kind of narrative single-issue approach can work for him. I think what it does more than anything is establish some identity for him, beyond just his long history in politics and a single unfortunate event. Democratic political strategists should take note, because Democrats across the country are having difficulty establishing an identity; the lesson here might be that working passionately through a single issue can capture imaginations.

One thing I did note with concern was the extent to which the rhetoric on this issue is tuned to instill fear. I guess the nature of the threat is such that we're surrounded by ghoulish eventualities, but it's hard not to see parallels in the justifications for the War on Terror. Gore mentions our form of government and his commitment to it a couple of times in the movie, but I can't help but dwell instead on the gross deficiencies of representative democracy: for questions of such staggering consequence, we the people are on one hand expected to trust some authority, on the other hand required to choose a course of action. In this context it's no surprise that politicians are playing on our fears, but the disconnect between the issues we're facing and the government we've constructed to deal with them is a little jarring.