Rodale, Erasmus, PA. 2006. 327 pp. $21.95

An Inconvenient Truth – starring Al Gore.

This has to be a first: if you can think of another book and movie that have appeared simultaneously from a major American political figure just before the long presidential selection process starts in earnest, you have a better memory than I. Ronald Reagan had long since ridden into the sunset in his last movie before he got the presidential fever. Al Gore probably never lost his, since being saddled with the curse by his famously successful father during his boyhood.

Thus, the first point is that the simultaneous release of a book and movie on a topic of great pitch and moment is a major political event, Gore’s comments to the contrary notwithstanding. It also raises the question whether one comments on these productions based on their journalistic and entertainment merits or as two different, but provocative forms of political theater. They are hard to separate.

Let’s start with the merits. Al Gore lays out the case in both the book and movie that the world faces an imminent crisis due to the buildup of greenhouse gases. Gore has honed his rhetoric through presenting the slide show that forms the narrative of the book and movie roughly a thousand times by his count since he “used to be the next president of the United States.”

Gore uses an astonishing collection satellite images of the earth as well as then-and-now photographs to illustrate the shrinkage of ice caps and glaciers. He uses film footage and stills from the floods attending hurricanes and stark scenes of the march of deserts across southern Asia and Africa to underscore the global dimensions of climate change. He illustrates complex technical facts with charts and graphs that are disarmingly clear and easy to understand. He intersperses biting quips from the likes of Mark Twain, Upton Sinclair and Winston Churchill to skewer global warming skeptics. Finally, because Gore packages his urgent message in a low key, first person slide show format, it comes across as homespun knowledge that you and I and other “plain folks” should “get.”

Gore gets credit from virtually all the scientists whose work he quotes for getting the science right, which is no mean feat. Perhaps the single most compelling graphic (in the book) is a foldout of the record of carbon dioxide concentrations trapped in air bubbles from the Antarctic during the last 650,000 years of the earth’s history. During all that time the concentration of carbon dioxide has fluctuated and caused temperature fluctuations, but has never exceeded 300 parts per million (ppm). Our atmosphere now exceeds 360 ppm for the first time in over half a million years. It is both arresting and scary.

In terms of political theater, Gore has managed to become a much better public speaker during his years of exile. He is relaxed, though earnest, and occasionally even funny. Every hint of the painful wooden clunkiness that was so successfully parodied on Saturday Night Live has been successfully effaced from the scenes we watch in the movie. He has learned how to modulate his voice for effect and to use pauses. He no longer sounds like he is from Harvard and a lot smarter than you and everyone else. And when in the movie, Gore gets to the 650,000 year graphic from the Antarctic ice core, he uses a hydraulic lift that keeps ascending to show us where carbon dioxide concentrations and hence temperatures are headed. It is effective theater.

Regardless of your politics, you should see the movie or read the book. You can actually read the book in less time than it takes to see the movie, although the movie, because we are such visual creatures, will probably leave a more vivid impression. And regardless of what you may think of Al Gore as a potential presidential candidate, you should see this movie, because my bet is that it will launch a new bid.