Al Gore's global warming documentary generates big buzz

Hollywood put out a green welcome mat on May 16 for former Vice President Al Gore and his film about global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth." Larry David, David Duchovny, Sharon Stone and Garry Shandling were among the actors and activists who entered the theater on a green carpet instead of the usual red one. The documentary premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and will be in theaters in New York and Los Angeles on May 24. Plans are to show it in every major city across the country. In the film, director Davis Guggenheim melds the science of global warming with Al Gore's personal history. Gore presents a wide array of facts and information in the film, which is intended as a rallying cry to protect the planet. "It is now clear that we face a deepening global climate crisis that requires us to act boldly, quickly and wisely," said Gore. "Al Gore strips his presentations of politics, laying out the facts for the audience to draw their own conclusions in a charming, funny and engaging style, and by the end has everyone on the edge of their seats, gripped by his haunting message," said Guggenheim. Hollywood Reporter writer Kirk Honeycutt says the film successfully accomplishes what he sees as its two goals–"to bring to a much larger audience... Al Gore's fascinating multimedia presentation of the facts and issues arising from the phenomenon of global climate change" and "to re-introduce to the American public a man we thought we knew but clearly did not." On the day of the film's premiere, government scientists said that the lower 48 states experienced the warmest April ever, based on records dating back to 1895. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, NC, reported that drier than average conditions and severe drought persisted across large portions of the southern and southwestern US. April was 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average, the NOAA scientists said. Texas and Oklahoma had their warmest April on record, while New Mexico, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri and Tennessee recorded their second warmest. Twelve other states recorded one of their top five warmest Aprils on record. None of the 48 contiguous states was cooler than average. Globally, NOAA scientists said this was the seventh warmest April since 1880, when reliable instrumental record-keeping began. The warmest April was in 1998 with an anomaly of 1.26 degrees Fahrenheit above the mean. Paramount Classics has committed five percent of their domestic theatrical gross of their film, "An Inconvenient Truth," with a minimum guarantee of $500,000, to be donated to a new bipartisan climate effort, Alliance for Climate Protection. The deal was announced on May 10 by Gore, Jeff Skoll, CEO of Participant Productions and John Lesher, president of Paramount Classics, the specialty film division of Paramount Pictures. This unprecedented donation runs the entire length of the film's domestic release. "An Inconvenient Truth," produced by Participant Productions, which had previously pledged to contribute their profits to the Alliance, was acquired by Paramount Classics at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. "I hope that 'An Inconvenient Truth' will be an action movie in the truest sense of the phrase–that the film will motivate people to take action to address the climate crisis," said Gore. "In addition, the more tickets that are sold, the more funds will be raised giving the Alliance the opportunity to educate and galvanize millions more around this issue and inspire them to be a part of the solution." Alliance for Climate Protection will use the money for a national education and organizing campaign to mobilize the public on global warming. The primary goals of the campaign are to motivate a critical mass of the public and influential constituencies to demand action to cut US emissions and to make solving global warming a national political imperative. The group also seeks to implement solutions to global warming that cap and cut US global warming pollution emissions in the near term, and develop a political consensus for further international agreements that include full participation by developing economies in achieving emission reduction targets.