| July 21, 2006 Red Alert by Soren Wuerth An
inconvenient truth about An
Inconvenient Truth
A rising line on a graph of global temperature has more lift than Rush Limbaugh on Viagra. Charts showing tree ring data and ice core samples indicate 650,000 years of relatively consistent carbon dioxide accumulation. Then, in the 20th Century, there is a sudden jump. Photos comparing snowfields over time (Alaskans just have to look at our glaciers) prove beyond question an inconvenient truth about global warming. The threat to the planet is scary. But the real shock comes at the end of Al Gore’s movie ... what can be done? Al Gore has successfully used the new documentary as a personality campaign. His grainy face, with blue eyes rolling in their sockets like the earth from space, was recently featured on the cover of Wired Magazine. The magazine hopes for technological salvation, blaming the carbon build-up on outdated machinery, like the internal combustion engine, and promising hope in Green alternatives, like hybrid cars. Gore seems to go along with all this. In the movie, he describes the problem as a “moral” one, saying he wants to “demolish obstacles.” He is a sure-fire candidate for the 2008 presidential election, say local Democrat insiders. But what Gore fails to consider is the culpability of our economic and political system. Unlike Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico’s leftist presidential candidate, Gore did not call his supporters to the streets after Fox News declared Bush the winner in 2000. “I accepted the finality of this outcome,” Gore said in Inconvenient Truth. Without organizing mass movements of people, something Gore leaves out of his list of “what you can do” at the end of the documentary, oil will continue to grease the political system. And Gore, whose family became rich from its ties to Occidental Petroleum, must know this. A trailer before An Inconvenient Truth, advertising the movie Who Killed the Electric Car?, raised more questions about oil industry tampering with energy politics than Gore’s entire film. Under the mud of political fraud, scandal and whoring lies the gooey scum of a capitalist economy that has created the conditions not only for an oil-influenced political agenda to flourish, but that has created societies wholly dependent on petroleum products. By allowing the industry sweeping global economic power, without controls for worker rights, safety, and environmental regulations, King Oil has become a geo-political and economic megalomaniac. Capitalism (or “corporatism,” as John Perkins calls it his indispensable Confessions of an Economic Hit Man) needs to evolve. As is being done in countries such as Bolivia and Venezuela, we need oil industries to be accountable to the people, governments and other public institutions, first. Only then can we move beyond truth to action. Soren Wuerth is perhaps Alaska's best known community activist, and is the winner of the Alaska Press Club's 2006 'Best Columnist' award. He resides in an undisclosed location in rural Alaska and can be reached at soren@insurgent49.com. |
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