Freezing Our Asses Off at the Feet of Al Gore

An essay first posted at GetUnderground.com and BlueOlives back in 2006 that is still highly relevant here in 2022.

Dateline: August 2006 –The last time my wife Marion and I went on a date was back in 1990–before $3.00 gallons of gasoline; before the Prius; before the iPod; before the World Wide Web; before frickin’ Harry Potter. We saw the movie Darkman. Marion was so disgusted by the opening scene where the super bad guy, Robert Durant, cuts off a small-time hood’s finger with a cigar trimmer, that she walked out of the packed theater (I got her to come back, and there were no more problems, but it was a boring movie–very dark, but that’s about it). We were just past the age of 30 back then and it felt like we had the world by the tail. Nothing was dark to us except movies, novels, and closets. 

On a scorching Friday night in early August, sixteen years later — Sam, the oldest, off in Maine, Jesse in Florida playing in the national 14-U USSSA baseball world series, and the youngest, Conor, at his friend Charlie’s for an overnight – we decided it was time to rekindle our pre-child relationship. There was only one movie to see for baby-boomers freed to roam the real world once again: An Inconvenient Truth. We’re so happy we went, even if it cost $19.00 to get in, the popcorn line was insanely long (we went without), and we felt utterly lost in the Big Box suburbs of Philadelphia. The man playing Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth is fascinating and disarming, and the movie is important for everyone in this great country of ours to see at least once. I will not ruin your day by doing a review of it. By now you’ve read and seen enough I’m sure (although it really is important to note that the liberal version of apocalypse is just as weird as the fundamentalist version).

I do, however, want to share a number of ironies and interesting tidbits about An Inconvenient Truth that should at least be amusing, if not downright deep.

First of all, we were dismayed when we got to the theater parking lot to find that the Regal Cinema folks did not have Big Al’s movie posted on the giant marquee over the theater. There was just a blank space. In a flash we were back to our old conspiriologist days. Could Regal somehow be in league with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, ExxonMobil and the Koch Brothers? We didn’t know, but as practiced curmudgeons and rebellious old-guard freedom fighters we certainly weren’t going to leave blank spaces like that up to chance – nor were we going to take it lying down. Something had to be done! But what? We didn’t know. (Later we realized that they just didn’t have enough lettering for every one of their movies since they did indeed post An Inconvenient Truth on the marquee out in front of the theater plaza where all the cars and trucks and SUVs were whizzing by – or sitting in traffic).

Secondly, An Inconvenient Truth had been running for something like ten to twelve weeks by the time we went to see it. You’d think that on a Friday night, love birds that we are, a couple of wayward mid-career parents would be the only people in the theater (I was hoping we could make-out during the boring parts). Not so. The room was at least half full, maybe more. I’d say they made about $900 bucks off of us responsible and concerned citizens. That’s not bad when just down the hall Will Ferrell’s and John C. Reilly’s idiotic Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky and Bobby was packing them in on its opening night.

Perhaps An Inconvenient Truth was well-attended due to the heat waves we experienced there at the end of July and early August. It sucks when your basic feeling towards the outdoors is: “Screw this 21st century summer crap. I’m climbing in the fridge. Let me know when it’s over.” When things suck like that, going to see a movie called An Inconvenient Truth is a way to feel at least mildly empowered against summers everywhere.

In fact, during those first few days of August several respectable media outlets reported that scientists feel there is a definite connection between global warming and the overwhelming heat waves we’ve had around the world over the past few years. Probably the most disturbing aspect of these studies is the insight that average nighttime temperatures are on the rise. A good resource for some of the new data out there is the NOAA site (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) – especially for skeptics and naysayers. Real information! No bull!

The third irony here is that Gore learned in college, way back in the 1960s, that carbon dioxide traps heat at the outer reaches of the earth’s atmosphere. All that and more from his professor at Harvard, Roger Revelle, who had been studying carbon dioxide levels since at least 1958 (the year I was born). In fact, the history of the science of the planetary greenhouse effect goes back more than another 100 years.

I couldn’t help thinking about the fact that there were people who knew that global warming was a real possibility while the rest of America was busy with its hippie phase – extravagantly loony, frenetically political, overtly dedicated to all manifestations of love, and rebellious as hell. Imagine if we could have tapped into that frenzied positive energy back then and added global warming to the list of causes.

But the most ironic experience of our special night at the movies was that we froze our asses off sitting there staring up and “tut-tut-tutting” along with our good buddy Al while he talked quite amiably about how hot it was getting. The air conditioning in the theater had to be set at 68-degrees – maybe lower. I was wearing long pants for the first time in two months, along with a sweater. If Marion hadn’t been there to snuggle with, they might have had to throw me out because my chattering teeth would have violated the “silence is golden” rule broadcast before the movie started. My guess is the Regal spent about $100 on cooling that it didn’t need.

Later on, we went to dinner at the UNO Chicago Bar & Grill and had the same problem. We begged the waitress to put us as far away from the air conditioning vents as possible. Whatever we paid for our dinner was used to keep everyone else cucumber cold.

Sadly, a bit more than four months after opening night, An Inconvenient Truth is fading from theaters. More than likely, it will be out as a DVD shortly or even cable. And for those moved and touched the most by this onetime President-elect’s carbon concerns, Gore has set up a non-profit called The Climate Reality Project to support the mission that his movie started.

In closing, I would like to note the following: There should be no need to argue about whether global warming is real or not once you see this movie. Yes, there are a few issues and technical points that Gore probably could revisit, but the main ones are kind of inescapable – unless you don’t understand math and science. The question now is whether Americans are willing to take responsibility for their 15,000 pounds a year of greenhouse gases, or whether they don’t actually give a damn. There really isn’t a middle ground. Hopefully, it’s the former and not the latter.

Note: This essay, originally published in 2006, has been revised and updated modestly. In particular, most of the links are now more current since virtually all the old ones were dead.