An Inconvenient Truth

• 1. Origins And Development

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  Producer Laurie David attended a town hall meeting in New York City on the 27th of May 2004. She watched Al Gore present a ten-minute version of his slide show about global warming. The event coincided with the premiere of the movie The Day After Tomorrow. David felt inspired by what she saw and decided to document Gore's efforts. She met with producer Lawrence Bender and director Davis Guggenheim to adapt the presentation into a film. Gore initially resisted the idea because he viewed the slide show as his personal project. He had presented it over one thousand times worldwide since 1989. The production team faced a grueling schedule. They needed to edit and cut the film starting in January to screen at Sundance in May. Lesley Chilcott managed the logistics of pulling off this tight timeline with a low budget. Gore enlisted Duarte Design in 2004 to update his material and add video animations. Ted Boda used Apple Keynote software to create engaging visuals for the presentation. During filming, Gore constantly updated his climate data to reflect current events like wildfires that happened just days before.

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• 2. Scientific Content Analysis

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  The film presents specific data including the Keeling Curve from the Mauna Loa Observatory. This graph shows atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations rising from 315 parts per million in 1958 to 395 parts per million in 2013. Researchers at the University of Bern and EPICA provided Antarctic ice core data showing CO2 levels higher than any time during the past 650,000 years. A 2004 survey by Naomi Oreskes analyzed 928 peer-reviewed scientific articles on global climate change published between 1993 and 2003. Every article either supported human-caused global warming or did not comment on it. The Associated Press contacted over one hundred climate researchers about the film's accuracy. All nineteen scientists who saw the movie said Gore accurately conveyed the science. William H. Schlesinger called the presentation thorough and accurate. Robert Corell found no errors after watching the presentation. Brian Soden noted Gore was careful not to claim a direct correlation between Hurricane Katrina and global warming. Michael Shermer stated the slide show shocked him out of his doubting stance. Eric Steig described the film as remarkably up to date with reference to some of the very latest research.

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• 3. Critical Reception And Awards

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  The film opened in New York City and Los Angeles on the 24th of May 2006. It grossed an average of $91,447 per theater on Memorial Day weekend. This set a record for documentary films playing on only four screens at the time. An Inconvenient Truth won two Academy Awards at the 79th ceremony. These awards were Best Documentary Feature and Best Original Song for Melissa Etheridge's I Need to Wake Up. The film became the eleventh-highest-grossing documentary in the United States with over $24 million domestically. It earned nearly $26 million in foreign countries with France contributing $5 million. Roger Ebert gave the film two thumbs up calling it horrifying yet enthralling. David Remnick wrote that while it might not be the most entertaining film of the year it could be the most important. A. O. Scott said the editing kept it from feeling like ninety minutes of C-SPAN. The film received a 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on one hundred sixty-six reviews. It also won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 alongside the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

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• 4. Political And Public Impact

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  George W. Bush responded to questions about watching the film by saying he doubted he would watch it. He stated that new technologies would improve the environment regardless of whether greenhouse gases were caused by mankind. John Howard refused to meet with Gore or agree to the Kyoto Protocol because of the movie. He told reporters he did not take policy advice from films. Kevin Rudd ratified the treaty in his first week as Prime Minister after winning the election in Australia. David Cameron urged people in the UK to watch the film to understand climate change. Margaretha Guidone persuaded the entire Belgian government to see the film including Guy Verhofstadt and Yves Leterme. Óscar Arias screened the film in Costa Rica and championed the issue afterward. The Competitive Enterprise Institute released pro-carbon dioxide television ads featuring a little girl blowing a dandelion. They used the tagline Carbon dioxide. They call it pollution. We call it life. A YouTube video titled Al Gore's Penguin Army appeared to be astroturfing by DCI Group according to The Wall Street Journal. Sixty-six percent of respondents who saw the film said it changed their mind about global warming in a 2007 survey.

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• 5. Educational Controversies

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  Stewart Dimmock filed a lawsuit against the UK Government in May 2007 regarding the film's distribution in schools. Viscount Monckton helped him point out thirty-five serious scientific errors. High Court Justice Michael Burton ruled on the 10th of October 2007 that the film contained nine scientific errors. He stated these errors must be explained before showing the film to school children. The judge concluded that Gore's presentation was broadly accurate despite the errors. The Federal Way School Board in Washington State voted in January 2007 to require approval for teachers showing the film. They mandated an opposing view be presented alongside the documentary. This moratorium was repealed after a predominantly negative community reaction. The National Science Teachers Association declined fifty thousand free copies of the film. They argued distributing unsolicited materials violated long-standing policy. Gerry Wheeler promised to explore alternatives but received no satisfactory offers from the association. Muriel Newman filed a petition in New Zealand to protect schoolchildren from political indoctrination through the Education Act.

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• 6. Cultural Legacy And Sequel

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  Gore founded The Climate Reality Project in 2006 which trained one thousand activists to give his presentation in their communities. The group now has three thousand five hundred presenters worldwide. An initiative called Inconvenient Youth launched in 2010 to help teens lead efforts to solve the climate crisis. Mary Doerr inspired this project as a sixteen-year-old who trained as a presenter. Grant Jacobsen found zip codes within ten miles of where the film was shown experienced a fifty percent relative increase in voluntary carbon offset purchases. Producer Kevin Wall conceived the 2007 Live Earth festival following the film's release. Giorgio Battistelli wrote an operatic adaptation titled CO2 premiering at La Scala in Milan in 2015. Al Gore announced a follow-up film would open at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival in December 2016. Paramount released An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power on the 28th of July 2017. The sequel screened in the new Climate section featuring themes of climate and environment. Laurie David stated that everything predicted in the original movie had come to pass by the time they made the update.

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